Elderly immune system needs a boost
Sunday, October 11, 2009 - 07:56
in Health & Medicine
Elderly cancer patients need a combination of treatments tailor-made to their specific needs to successfully combat the disease. The challenge is to boost their immune response to cancer vaccines, because like the rest of our organs, our immune system ages and gradually becomes less efficient as we get older. Dr Joseph Lustgarten, from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in the US, reviews the effects of ageing on the immune system and strategies used to activate a stronger antitumour immune response in the elderly, including genetic modifications in animal models. His findings have just been published in the latest issue of Springer's journal Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy...