Scientists have created a groundbreaking cancer treatment that illuminates and destroys microscopic cancer cells, paving the way for surgeons to more efficiently target and eradicate the illness in patients. According to experts, a new type of photoimmunotherapy could become the fifth major cancer treatment.
Engineers, physicists, neurosurgeons, biologists, and immunologists from the United Kingdom, Poland, and Sweden collaborated to create the new type of photoimmunotherapy.
After surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy, experts believe it will become the world’s fifth major cancer treatment.
The light-activated therapy causes cancer cells to glow in the dark, allowing surgeons to remove more tumours than previous techniques – and then kills any remaining cells within minutes after the surgery is finished. Scans revealed that the novel treatment lit up even the tiniest cancer cells to help surgeons remove them – and then wiped out those left over – in a world-first trial in mice with glioblastoma, one of the most common and aggressive types of brain cancer.
Trials of the new type of photoimmunotherapy, led by the Institute of Cancer Research in London, also revealed that the treatment elicited an immune response that could prime the immune system to target cancer cells in the future, implying that it could prevent glioblastoma from recurring after surgery. Researchers are currently investigating a new treatment for the childhood cancer neuroblastoma.
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