T-helper Cell Type May Boost Cancer Vaccines
Cancer vaccines haven't lived up to their promise in clinical trials and the reason, many researchers suspect, is that the immune cells that would help the body destroy the tumor – even those reactions boosted by cancer vaccines – are actively suppressed. Cancer vaccines are designed to boost the body's natural defenses against cancer. They work by training the immune system to recognize and attack specific tumor peptides, which are a kind of identification tag for tumors. These peptide "tags" help the immune system find and attack cancer cells. There are three types of cells that can "see" and react to these tags: T-helper cells, cytotoxic T cells, and B cells, and researchers thought that all three were trained, or tolerized, to ignore the tags on cancer cells. read more