Source: University of California - Los Angeles
Date: November 28, 2011
Summary:
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 this approach could be useful in 40 percent of Caucasians with this malignancy.
Done in mouse models, the study serves as first proof-of-principle that blood stem cells, which make every cell type found in blood, can be genetically altered in a living organism to create an army of melanoma-fighting T-cells, said Jerome Zack, study 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. The study appears Nov. 28, 2011 in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
