Release time set by Nature. The killer cells are transformed lymphocytes, said Dr. Si-Yi Chen, assistant professor of cancer biology and a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest University, writing in today's issue of Nature.
Lymphocytes are the body's major disease fighters.
In the new research, Chen and his colleagues genetically modified lymphocytes to produce and secrete a toxin, or poison, that attacks the breast and other kinds of cancer cells because they have a specific protein, an oncoprotein, that is present in thes e cells and to a far lesser degree, or not at all, in ordinary cells. Both in tissue culture and in animal models, the toxin-equipped lymphocytes killed the cancer cells. Chen and his colleagues said that the potent anti-tumor activity probably was a combination of the lymphocytes' enhanced ability to find the cancer cells , and the accumulation of the toxins inside the cancer cells. In other words, loading the toxin into the lymphocytes and sending the lymphocytes off to find the cancer cells works far better than the traditional way of simply infusing toxin into the bloodstream. With this new approach, the cancer cells are killed while the ordinary cel ls are spared.