There is a new ray of hope for cancer patients as a city hospital is
in the process of conducting clinical trials with Dendritic Cell (DC)
therapy, an FDA approved mode of treatment for prostate cancer.
Clinical trials will be conducted for use of this therapy for treatment
of other cancers too as it relieves from the accepted modalities of
cancer treatment including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.
DCT is Food and Drug Administration
approved and has been effective in treating prostate cancer, Dr Ashok
Vaid, chairman, department of medical oncology and haematology of
Medanta Hospital said.
"We are in the process of conducting
clinical trials with help from dendritic cells for all types of cancer.
If it is effective for treatment of prostate cancer
then why not find its effectiveness for other cancers too. DCT is based
on immunotherapy which is an autologous therapy and enhances the immune
system of a patient naturally and helps combat the cancer cells," he
said.
Dendritic cells are present in every person's tissues. They
function as an immune cell but are present in small numbers. They
identify cancer cells and process them into bits and jump start the
immune response by bringing the foreign substance to the attention of
the rest of the immune system.
However, he said, "In a cancer
patient when dendritic cells are not formed in a natural manner they are
harvested outside in large numbers from the patient's own blood cells.
The blood cells monocytes of a patient are separated from blood and
cultured in the laboratory and matured into dendritic cells by exposing
them to patient's own tumor cells.
"This is done mainly to ensure
that the dendritic cells mature into DCs that are specific to the tumor
type of the particular patient. These DCs are then administered to the
patient intravenously at regular intervals to boost and fortify the
immune system of the patient and provide the necessary impetus the body
requires to fight back the cancer."
