‘Pancreatic cancer doctor’ Casper van Eijck and his team have developed a new treatment for this debilitating form of cancer. After cell therapy, nine out of ten participating patients were still free of tumors and in good health after an average of one and a half years. Without that treatment, the cancer usually returns within this period. The research has yet to be published.
Pancreatic cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer after lung cancer, killing eight people every day in the Netherlands. Van Eijck, who is affiliated with the Rotterdam hospital Erasmus MC, is trying to find affordable treatment for the disease by 2030.
Recognize and clean up tumor cells
In the new treatment, Van Eijck uses so-called dendritic cells, which are known to help immune cells attack tumor cells. In dendritic cell therapy, a protein is added outside the body to these cells, which are taken from the patient’s blood, which also occurs on the tumor cell.
Then these dendritic cells are returned to the body where they look for the so-called killer T cells (white blood cells that can destroy tumor cells). The dendritic cells stimulate these killer T cells to recognize and clear the tumor cells that cause pancreatic cancer.
You can see how this works in the animation below:
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