UF Health researchers have found a way to target an aggressive brain tumor, using rats.
A patient’s immune cells are used to make tumor-specific T-cells, which can find a tumor and kill it through a process called immunotherapy, said Jianping Huang, director of clinical laboratory operations at the UF College of Medicine. She’s looking at a type of tumor called glioblastoma, because it is especially aggressive and the most deadly type.
Huang said in the past 30 years there hasn’t been much improvement in treatment, which inspired her to conduct research.
“Immunotherapy has shown some promise in past decades,” Huang said. “People thought that cancer immunotherapy would be the breakthrough of the century and so, compared to surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy; immunotherapy is a new promise in patients with cancer.”
The research has been published in two academic journals: Neuro-Oncology and the International Journal of Cancer, Huang said.
Huang’s team includes researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the Harbin Medical University in Harbin, China.
Linchun Jin, a UF research scholar from China, has been working on the project for two years. He said the glioblastoma is like a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” because the tumor hides itself in healthy tissues, making it hard to detect.
“(Before immunotherapy) the basic thing is chemo and radiotherapy, but it won’t help a lot, so I was really eager to help find a new approach to cure this aggressive tumor,” he said.
Although the treatment has yielded positive results, Jin said there’s still a long way to go before it’s widely available. He said it will take more than 10 years before it can go to patients, but he remains optimistic.
“I am confident that we are able to make this work and help patients,” Huang said.
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