In the future, individualized cancer treatment may simply be the insertion of virtually invisible discs into the patient's body. Scientists at the University of Michigan made their first strides by testing 10nm "superdiscs" that teach the human body to kill cancer cells. Each disc is filled with neoantigens (or tumor mutations) that teach T cells in the immune system to recognize and kill these neoantigens. When paired with immune checkpoint inhibitors (that stimulate the T-cell response), they can not only destroy existing cancers, but also prevent them from reoccurring.
The test has so far only been conducted in experimental mice, but it is undoubtedly promising. It took the nanodiscs 10 days to destroy the tumors, and they cleared out identical tumors when they reappeared 70 days later. Currently, researchers are faced with a big problem related to the expansion of the scale of the experiment. The goal is to see if the tumors in larger animals can be dealt with. If this approach proves to be effective in humans, the days of current cancer treatments will be numbered - once doctors can obtain a sample of tumor tissue, they have a real chance of coping with the disease.
Igor Abramov