|  |  |  | | | | Aberdeen scientists make advance in understanding of common blood cancer | | | | |
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Release Date: 28 February 2008
Aberdeen University scientists, funded by leading UK blood cancer charity Leukaemia Research and Friends of ANCHOR, have made significant progress into understanding how non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), the sixth most common cancer in the UK, can avoid detection by the body's normal immune system.
A team supervised by Dr Mark Vickers and Dr Sajjan Mittal has shown that the lymphoma cells protect themselves with special 'regulatory T cells', which allow the tumour to evade detection and grow. Using blood and tissue samples from NHL patients at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, the Leukaemia Research team found that the patients with NHL had much higher numbers of 'regulatory T cells' in their blood compared with healthy people.
The team have shown that the lymphoma cells manipulate the immune system by turning cells that should normally coordinate the killing of the tumour into 'regulatory T cells', which then protect the tumour from attack. The lymphoma is effectively a 'wolf in sheep's clothing' free to grow and avoid being attacked by the body's usual defence mechanism - the immune system.
Dr Vickers' team has also previously shown that Hodgkin's lymphoma cells use an almost identical technique to stop themselves being destroyed.
The breakthrough in understanding how NHL cells 'protect themselves' from the body's immune system could also lead to new treatments for lymphoma by specifically targeting and destroying the 'regulatory T cells'. Another possibility is to test for the number of 'regulatory T cells' in the blood of patients as a measure of how advanced a patient's NHL is and the level of treatment they need.
Dr Mark Vickers said: "Nearly half of the 12,000 patients diagnosed with a lymphoma in the UK each year do not survive this cancer. Our research is significant because it opens up new ideas on how to treat the disease. It may be that blocking these special T cells may be an effective new approach to treatment ".
Dr Vickers' exciting new findings are published in the highly respected journal, Blood.
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