Articles about 'immunotherapy'

A life-saving cancer therapy is being scaled up in Cambridge to deliver more treatments to more patients for more cancers. 

Sir Greg Winter, of the University of Cambridge, has been jointly awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Frances Arnold and George Smith, for his pioneering work in using phage display for the directed evolution of antibodies, with the aim of producing new pharmaceuticals.

Nanobots that patrol our bodies, killer immune cells hunting and destroying cancer cells, biological scissors that cut out defective genes: these are just some of technologies that Cambridge researchers are developing which are set to revolutionise medicine in the future.

Our immune systems are meant to keep us healthy, but sometimes they turn their fire on us, with devastating results. Immunotherapies can help defend against this ‘friendly fire’ – and even weaponise it in our defence.

A weight loss condition that affects patients with cancer has provided clues as to why cancer immunotherapy – a new approach to treating cancer by boosting a patient’s immune system – may fail in a substantial number of patients. 

A small molecule that can turn short-lived ‘killer T-cells’ into long-lived, renewable cells that can last in the body for a longer period of time, activating when necessary to destroy tumour cells, could help make cell-based immunotherapy a realistic prospect to treat cancer.

A new therapy for peanut allergy has been successful in the majority of the 99 children who took part in a clinical trial.

Researchers have identified how the ‘wall’ around cancer tumours functions and how to break it down, enabling the body’s own defences to reach and kill the cancer cells within.