Scientists discover how to change human leukemia cells into harmless immune cells

After a chance observation in the lab, researchers found a method that can force dangerous leukemia cells in the lab to mature into harmless immune cells called macrophages.
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that when a certain aggressive leukemia is causing havoc in the body, the solution may be to force the cancer cells to grow up and behave.
After a chance observation in the lab, the researchers found a method that can cause dangerous leukemia cells to mature into harmless immune cells known as macrophages.
The findings are described in a paper that published online March 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with a mutation called the Philadelphia chromosome is a particularly aggressive cancer with poor outcomes, said Ravi Majeti, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine and senior author of the paper. So finding potential treatments is particularly exciting.
Majeti and his colleagues made the key observation after collecting leukemia cells from a patient and trying to keep the cells alive in a culture plate. “We were throwing everything at them to help them survive,” said Majeti, who is also a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

An unusual metamorphosis

Postdoctoral scholar Scott McClellan MD, PhD, a lead author of the paper, mentioned that some of the cancer cells in culture were changing shape and size into what looked like macrophages. Majeti concurred with that observation, but the reasons for the changed cells were a mystery until he remembered an old research paper, which showed that early B-cell mouse progenitor cells could be forced to become macrophages when exposed to certain transcription factors — proteins that bind to certain DNA sequences. 

“B-cell leukemia cells are in many ways progenitor cells that are forced to stay in an immature state,” Majeti said. So he, McClellan and student Christopher Dove, an MD/PhD student and the paper’s other lead author, did more experiments and confirmed that methods shown to have altered the fate of the mouse progenitor cells years ago could be used to transform these human cancer cells into macrophages, which can engulf and digest cancer cells and pathogens.

http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/03/scientists-discover-how-to-change-human-leukemia-cells.html

Great news! Can't pretend to understand the science of it lol but great news!

Hence why I never lose faith we can find ways to help people become better.

Hold my hat off to all those who persevere and who never give up the belief they can find cures.
Long way to go here yet, but it is very promising.

Brasidas wrote:Hence why I never lose faith we can find ways to help people become better.

Hold my hat off to all those who persevere and who never give up the belief they can find cures.
Long way to go here yet, but it is very promising.

Yes Cancer research is a great charity and hopefully we will beat the bastard one day.

this would be very interesting if it succeeds in practice.
i wonder if similar methods could applied to other bone and blood cancers.

Heard about it on the CLL site. Unfortunately it is only for B cell, not T cell and they have only been able to get it to do anything in Acute, not chronic. Still very much in it's early stages and a bit like bone marrow transplants were going to be a cure all. Lovely if it works, but all leukaemia sites are urging caution.

one small step sassy, and quite rightly we shouldnt get too over excited...BUT any step forward has got to be good, and as ever who knows where it will lead...well done those guys....

Oh definitely, every small step is great, it's just in the community there have been many such steps, some end up working, some don't, so we tend to wait and see what works first and this is a long way from being approved.  As leukaemia research is very underfunded, it's great they have found something by accident without using up research funds, that always helps.

We have not long had gene therapy, but that only works for some as well and then it was found in some people it actually caused leukaemia.

darknessss wrote:one small step sassy, and quite rightly we shouldnt get too over excited...BUT any step forward has got to be good, and as ever who knows where it will lead...well done those guys....

Indeed Victor, some people are so negative they fail to see how far reaching this could possibly be, they look only at the negative and not the positive. Any breackthrough which can help in the fight against cancer should be heralded as a step in the right direction and even if ity cures some, then it has been a success for those people who were suffering.