Dendritic Cell Therapy!

If you are like me, then you have never heard of dendritic cell therapy, and even if you have, then you probably don’t know a whole lot about it. During my research, I stumbled across an analogy that helped me better understand the basics of dendritic cell therapy from this article. In this article, the author explains that our immune system has to fight against tumors in our body, but sometimes, the cells of our immune system are not able to handle this “enemy” on their own. Under natural conditions, many cells in the immune system are unable to effectively target tumor cells, and some may even aid the growth of the tumor. Therefore, scientists are developing ways to equip our immune system cells, such as T cells, natural killer cells, and dendritic cells, with better “weaponry” so that they can fight against the tumor cells more successfully. To make this possible, scientists extract some of a patient’s immune system cells, modifies them, and then inserts them back into the patient.

              This article went on to explain a few specific ways that scientists can help tumor-infiltrating cells be better at their job. One of these methods addressed the issue that many tumor cells can hide from immune system cells, so scientists extract some of the patient’s cells, stimulate them with IL-2 and modifies them in other ways to make them more active, and then re-inserts them into the patient. Some cancers mutate rapidly, giving them the ability to present different antigens, and this can make it difficult for a single drug to effectively treat a patient’s cancer. Using and enhancing a patient’s immune system can be more effective than drugs because our immune system can detect many different antigens. From personal experience, my grandma has cancer and her treatment changes every few months because one stops being effective as the cancer cells adapt to it, so I am hopeful that further development o this type of treatment would prevent this issue in treating other cancer patients.

              Once I understood the basics of this type of therapy, I felt prepared to tackle this scientific article that discusses the use of dendritic cell therapy to treat glioblastoma patients, which is a common and aggressive form of brain cancer.  Trials of this treatment have not been completely effective, but scientists remain hopeful that they will be able to fine-tune this type of therapy so that it becomes a more effective option for treat glioblastoma patients. However, according to this article, this treatment comes with a hefty price tag of nearly $375,000, so it may not be worth the cost to many patients when its success rate is not extremely high yet. I could not find an article from the last six months explaining the side effects, but I did find this article from 2018 that presented the side effects of this type of treatment. Some of the side effects include cytokine release syndrome (which results in flu-like symptoms), neurologic events that vary in severity, neutropenia, and anemia. Fortunately, most of these side effects are easily treated and will likely go away on their own following treatment.