BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: leukemia

Teaching Cancer to Fight Itself

Many of us know someone who has suffered from cancer and we have watched loved ones undergo the harsh treatments for it. With treatments such as chemotherapy, the side effects are hard to bear. So, what if your body could be taught to treat cancer on its own without having to experience the hair loss, fatigue, nausea, and anemia that external treatments can cause.

Cancer cells are very different from normal cells as they hide from the immune system which usually eliminates damaged or abnormal cells. Cancer cells also trick the immune system to help cancerous cells stay alive and grow. But, what if these cancer cells could be altered to teach the body’s immune system to fight the cancer that the cells come from?

7 Most Deadliest Cancers

In an experiment done by Stanford Medicine researchers used mouse leukemia cells to train T cells to recognize cancer in a way that could mimic the natural occurrence in the body, similar to vaccines. T cells recognize pathogens due to special antigen presenting cells (APCs) gathering pieces of the pathogen to show to the T cells what to attack. In cancer, the APCs would gather up the many antigens that characterize a cancer cell so T cells could be trained to recognize cancer antigens and wage a multi-pronged attack on the cancer.

Killer T cells surround a cancer cell

The researchers programmed mouse leukemia cells to be induced to transform themselves into APCs.  When they tested the cancer vaccine strategy on the mouse immune system, the mice were able to clear the cancer. The immune system was able to remember what the cells had taught them and when they reintroduced cancer to the mice 100 days they were able to have a strong immunological response to protect them. Additionally, they tried to see if the tactic used with leukemia would work with solid tumors so they used the same approach by using mice fibrosarcoma, breast cancer, and bone cancer. They found that the solid tumor transformation was not as efficient to that of leukemia, but it still had a positive result. With all three cancers, there was significantly improved survival rates.

They then went back to leukemia, but this time they studied acute leukemia in human cells. When the human leukemia cells APCs were exposed to human T cells from the same patient, they observed all of the signs that indicated the APCs were teaching the T cells how to attacked the leukemia.

This relates to what we have learned in AP Biology because we learned about cell division and how cancer differs from normal cell division. Cancer is a disease where some of the body’s cells divide and grow uncontrollably. This can start anywhere but also spread to other parts of the body very quickly. In its normal process, human cells grow and multiply through interphase and mitosis to form new cells as the body needs. Interphase is the phase in the cell cycle that prepares for cell division by growing cells and undergoing the process of DNA replication. The body has checkpoints that regulate the G1, S, and G2, phases of interphase. There are also checkpoints for mitosis, which is the division of cells that results in two daughter cells. When the cells become old or damaged, they die and new cells are regenerated. When this process breaks down and abnormal or damaged cells grow and multiply when they’re not supposed to, the body goes through a process called metastasis where cancerous tumors are formed. Cancer cells ignore the checkpoints and continue to divide and multiply.

This research has introduced a new way that could eventually treat cancer in a more harmless way while also ensuring that the body can fight off recurrence. So do you think that this will be the new treatment for cancer?

 

New CRISPR Technique can Potentially be a Treatment for Leukemia

An article published on December 11, 2022 on newscientist, shares fascinating information on a 13 year old patient with leukemia, having no detectable cancer cells after being the first person to receive a new type of CRISPR treatment, to attack cancer.  

The 13-year-old leukemia patient, Alyssa, has had many treatments that have been unsuccessful in helping her condition. Leukemia is caused by immune cells in the bone marrow dividing and growing rapidly. This relates to what we learned about in Biology class in how cancer cells become cancerous by cells dividing uncontrollably. It is also related to how cancer is caused by changes to the DNA (mutations) that alter important genes and change the behavior of them. Leukemia is also caused by the mutations in DNA.

Normal and cancer cells structure

The most common treatments for leukemia are known as killing all bone marrow cells with chemotherapy and then replacing it with a transplant. If this treatment is unsuccessful, an approach known as CAR-T therapy is used. This involves adding a gene to a type of immune cell known as a T cell that causes it to destroy cancerous cells. This also relates back to how in biology class we learned about the functions of T- cells being vital because they protect us from infection. The modified cells are called CAR-T cells. Alyssa’s leukemia was caused by T cells so if they used this technique to modify CAR-T cells to attack other T cells, it would lead to these cells killing each other. Wasseem Quasim at the University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, has discovered many drawbacks with this treatment. Due to the many problems conventional gene editing can cause, Qasim and his team used a modified form of the CRISPR gene-editing protein, and Alyssa is the first person ever to be treated with. Alyssa received a dose of immune cells from a donor that had been altered to attack the cancer, and tests revealed 28 days later she had no signs of cancer cells. CRISPR is technology that can be used to edit genes. It finds specific DNA inside a cell and then changes that piece of DNA. It has also been discovered that CRISPR can be an effective tool for cancer  treatment. This new approach to CRISPR treatments could be hugely beneficial  to cancer patients and Many other treatments involving CRISPR base editing are being developed.  

 

 

 

 



Goodbye Leukemia– We Are Getting Closer!

A new finding suggests that the protein nup98 found in mouse cells may have another job. This is big in the biology world! Scientists already know this protein helps control the movement of molecules in and out of the nucleus, but they didn’t know it is directly involved in the development of blood cells. After further study, scientists from the Salk Institute found that nup98 enables immature blood stem cells to differentiate into mature cell types. However, this was not even the biggest finding– this differentiation process can contribute to the formation of leukemia!

The journey to make this discovery Salk’s Chief Science Office, Martin Hetzer calls, “combined genomics, proteomics, and cell biology.” It was a complex process at the least. It all started with the Hetzer’s lab focusing on a class of proteins called nucleoproteins (nups), part of the nuclear pore complex, which regulates the space between the nucleus of the cell. Why is this space so important? Because it is where the genetic material is located and the cytoplasm contains multiple important structures! There are about 30 of these proteins and some of them even have functions beyond forming the nuclear pore as transcription factors. Thus, the idea that a protein has more than one function (like nup98) was not a total surprise for the researchers (I still would have been surprised).

Although we know that nup98 has plays a role in hematopoietic (blood) cells, we do not know how yet. That is a question of the future. However, “The investigators found that it acts through a link with a protein complex called Wdr82-Set1/COMPASS, which is part of the cell’s epigenetic machinery.” Wait what do those numbers and epigenetic machinery mean? It is basically just a process that controls when genes are transcribed and when genes are blocked (hope that helped). The other big question is how this study will parallel in primates and humans, but the future is bright.

The continuation of this study in regard to Leukemia is now left in the hands of leukemia researchers, but cancers driven by a single genetic change like this have been proven easier to treat with drugs than cancer driven my multiple genetic changes. Although this discovery is only the first of many, there is hope for an even bigger finding in the future! I am excited to see what research is to follow. What about you?

Could there be another reason?

From Chris Berwick's blog- White blood cells amongst red blood cells

Leukemia has always been a tough form of cancer to combat. It is the leading cancer found in children and can also be found in adults. Leukemia “is a cancer of the blood or bone marrow (which produces blood cells). A person who has leukemia suffers from an abnormal production of blood cells, generally leukocytes (white blood cells).”

In this specific case, long island doctor Steven Allen had a patient with cell leukemia. Cell leukemia is a rare form of leukemia and usually has fatal results within 6 months. Recently Dr. Allen’s patient died after just three months after she was diagnosed.

Cell leukemia is rarely treatable because most patients have a genetic mutation in a gene called KIT. This gene refutes any type of drug that is typically used on patients with leukemia. The phenomenon about Dr. Allen’s patient in particular case is that she did not have this genetic mutation on KIT, but her body still would not accept any drug, which resulted in her early death.

With her death came two discoveries that were ground breaking in the cure for leukemia. Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have found two other gene mutations that refute the other drugs that have recently been studied as a cure for people with mast cell leukemia with a mutation on the gene KIT.

While Dr. Allen remains confident that this is going to change the direction of cures for leukemia, his colleague said “We must reallykeep in mind this was a single case study and we have to follow it up with many other studies.” These studies will help  “prove the mutations are present in other patients.”

What still confuses me is: if these mutations are the cause of mast cell leukemia, are there other mutations we have not yet discovered in all other forms of  cancer. If this be the case how do we know that the drugs we are using are not just a waste of time. Maybe it would be better for doctors to understand all gene mutations leading to each persons specific type of cancer before rushing into one form of treatment that has worked on others. Besides aren’t all humans different?

photo credit: angleys82

Sources: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/li-researchers-make-leukemia-discovery-1.3400035

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/142595.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD117

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