Italian researchers have created a new type of treatment against skin cancer they say is ten times more efficient than existing ones.
The gene therapy, conceived by Italian biotechnology company Molmed, has been successfully tested on mice and has just gone into clinical trials at Milan's cutting-edge research hospital San Raffaele.
Clinical tests have just started on 30 patients with metastasised tumours and "preliminary results correlate perfectly with those seen in mice," Molmed CEO Claudio Bordignon told ANSA.
He said it would take "at least a year" to have definitive data.
The new therapy, Bordignon explained, uses a different type of human immune cells from those so far employed to take genetically modified genes (so-called 'anti-genes) to the best targets for attacking skin tumours.
Hitherto, Bordignon said, scientists have used a type of immune cells called 'dendritic' (from Greek 'dendron', tree) to carry the cancer-fighting genes to the sites.
"But they poop out before they get there and lose many antigenes along the way," Bordignon said.
Instead, the Molmed-San Raffaele team used a type of white blood cells called lymphocytes to penetrate right into the lymph nodes where tumours typically proliferate.
"In this way, we have succeeded in getting tonnes of anti-genes to the lymph nodes so as to trigger a very effective immune response".
"This new approach is ten times more efficient than standard techniques based on engineering dendritic cells," he said.
The Molmed-San Raffaele research is illustrated in Friday's edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Skin cancer is the most common form of human cancer and can be fatal unless its most malignant forms are caught early enough.
