Until recently, I had never heard of T-Cell and Dendritic Cell Therapy, after hearing about it though, I wanted to know more. Dendritic cells circulate in the bloodstream and are ready to display any foreign antigen to the killer cells of the immune system. Dendritic cell therapy is an interesting method used to fight cancer. A quick rundown of dendritic cell therapy is that within a lab they will multiply your dendritic cells and then train them by putting them in the presence of your very own cancer cell type so that when they are put back into your body, they can fight it off. This treatment is very personalized because you have to use YOUR dendritic cells and present YOUR type of cancer to them. Therefore, I bet it is no cheap or quick fix. Mainly, this type of therapy is just boosting your immune system. Especially with cancer, we need all the help we can get to fight it off.
When doing my research on dendritic cell therapy along the lines of cancer, I discovered a research article that discussed this method. They actually referred to the method as a cancer vaccine. If there were vaccines for cancer, I would bet you that even the anti-vaxxers wouldn’t be able to resist it. This would be a therapeutic vaccine though, meaning that it would not be used for the traditional prevention purposes, but rather as a treatment that would boost the immune system.
Another type of therapy that is being used against cancer is T-Cell Therapy. T cells are important for finding and destroying the invaders of the body. A specific type of T-cell therapy is CAR T-cell Therapy. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “CAR T-cell therapy is a type of cancer therapy that uses a patient’s own modified white blood cells to kill cancer cells.” This is done by removing the T-cells from the body, genetically modifying them in a lab so that they are more capable of detecting cancer cells, multiply the amount of these T-cells within the lab, and then return the T-cells to the body in hopes that they will do their job and attack the cancer cells. This makes me think of someone putting a soldier on the frontline and then realizing he is not good enough for it. So they take him off the frontline and train him for a couple weeks and train even more soldiers and then they put them right back where they started on the frontline hoping for a more successful battle.
Although it all sounds like a field of flowers, it has its downfalls as well. Some side effects of dendritic cell therapy may include fever, insomnia, anorexia, joint soreness, and/or rashes. These don’t seem to be too intense of side effects though, so overall I would say it is worth the risk in most cases. Risks that come with CAR T-cell therapy may include a low white or red blood cell count, neurological events such as aphasia or encephalopathy, and/or cytokine release storm which has flu-like symptoms. These seem to be a little more troublesome than those mentioned for dendritic cell therapy, but once again, we must weigh the risk factors with the successful treatments. Not to mention, both of these treatments are quite expensive. T-cell therapy is normally around $375,000 and dendritic cell therapy is approximately $18,500 per “set,” which is usually 5-7 vaccines. That is a heck of a lot of money that most don’t have just laying around.
It is always amazing to hear about these new methods that are being created to fight off any disease. It makes me in awe of the creativity of the human brain and the discoveries we are able to make. People are so smart…well, when they want to be :).
Magnifying Microbiology 