With a special type of stem cell that can be spun from skin or blood, researchers have developed a vaccine that helped stave off cancer in mice, opening up another branch in the booming field of immunotherapy.
Cancer cells and stem cells share some of the same molecules on their surfaces. In the new research, which was described Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell, scientists injected mice with their own stem cells, essentially training their immune systems to launch attacks when they identified those molecules — called antigens — elsewhere, including on cancer cells.
“The antigenic similarity between stem cells and tumor cells has been known for an awful long time, but no one has really taken advantage of this until recently,” said John Eaton, who studies stem cells and cancer at the University of Louisville and was not involved with the new study. “It makes a lot of sense to go after something that’s shared.”
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