Changes to the BB prevented me from including the URL in this post.
Interesting article.  Human trials may have already started.
The web page also has many related articles summarized on the side panel.

Changes to the BB prevented me from including the URL in this post.
Interesting article.  Human trials may have already started.
The web page also has many related articles summarized on the side panel.

Blood Stem Cells Engineered to Fight Melanoma

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2011) — Researchers from UCLA's cancer and stem cell centers have demonstrated for the first time that blood stem cells can be engineered to create cancer-killing T-cells that seek out and attack a human melanoma. The researchers believe the approach could be useful in about 40 percent of Caucasians with this malignancy. 

Done in mouse models, the study serves as the first proof-of-principle that blood stem cells, which make every type of cell found in the blood, can be genetically altered in a living organism to create an army of melanoma-fighting T-cells, said Jerome Zack, the study's senior author and a scientist with UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.

"We knew from previous studies that we could generate engineered T-cells. But would they work to fight cancer in a relevant model of human disease, such as melanoma?" asked Zack, a professor of medicine and microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics in the UCLA Life Sciences Division. "We found with this study that they do work in a human model to fight cancer, and it's a pretty exciting finding."

The study appeared Nov. 28 in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers used a T-cell receptor — cloned by other scientists from a cancer patient — that seeks out an antigen expressed by a certain type of melanoma. They then genetically engineered the human blood stem-cells by importing genes for the T-cell receptor into the stem cell nucleus using a viral vehicle. The genes integrate with the cell DNA and are permanently incorporated into the blood stem cells, theoretically enabling them to produce melanoma-fighting cells indefinitely and when needed, said Dimitrios N. Vatakis, the study's first author and an assistant researcher in Zack's lab.

"The nice thing about this approach is a few engineered stem cells can turn into an army of T-cells that will respond to the presence of this melanoma antigen," Vatakis said. "These cells can exist in the periphery of the blood, and if they detect the melanoma antigen, they can replicate to fight the cancer."