Cancer patients appeared to benefit from natural killer cells obtained from donors in an experimental method of treating cancer that involved an aggressive army of immune system fighters endowed with the ability to home in on malignant cells and destroy them.
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The natural killer cells were pre treated with nicotinamide, a compound widely known to most people as niacin, or vitamin B3.
It's a substance with a special affinity for natural killer cells, enhancing their capacity to annihilate cancers. Once primed in the laboratory, these natural killers are ready to be unleashed against formidable targets. The evolving methodology has shown promise in a preliminary study aimed at forcing hard to treat cancers of the blood into remission.
Prior to the new research, which is published in Science Translational Medicine, attempts by other teams to use natural killer cell infusions as a therapeutic for leukemias, lymphomas and other blood malignancies, weren't always effective.
Doctors were confronted with a problem: some people simply didn't respond to the investigational treatment, which was offered after standard therapy failed.
Now, in a unique take on this emerging form of cancer treatment, medical scientists in the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation at the University of Minnesota, have devised a way to boost the effectiveness of natural killer cells, enhancing their role as a therapeutic. The innovative approach boosted the impact of natural killer cells and brought about remissions in patients with otherwise recalcitrant cancers.
In the small preliminary study Dr. Frank Cichocki and collaborators found that nicotinamide not only enhances the activity of natural killer cells but boosts their persistence in the blood and bolsters the capability of these cells not only to hunt down cancer cells, but to handily destroy them.
The combination of nicotinamide enhanced natural killer cells and monoclonal antibody treatment was safe in 30 patients, including 20 with relapsed or difficult to treat non Hodgkin lymphoma. ■