Dr Drew Pardolla, the director of a program on cancer research at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center found the answer to the question how a tumor is created the most important. Immune system’s white blood cells should attack and destroy cancer cells. Why it is not soothe case? Is the immune system too weak or perhaps there is another reason?

It was claimed in the past that cancer cells were forming non-stop but the immune system destroyed them. And everything which weakens it, for instance stress, may impede fighting the intruder. “Nowadays no one holds that opinion anymore”, says dr. Pardoll. Experiments on mice devoid of immune system did not confirm saliently higher cancer morbidity. Also among people with immune disorders under the influence of drugs preventing transplant rejection or as a result of AIDS a higher cancer prevalence ratio was not found. (…)

What is happening with the immune system of those suffering from cancer then? Each tissue includes white blood cells and cancer cells are not an exception to that rule. However, the proteins occurring on the surface of cancer cells differ substantiallyfrom normal cells’ proteins. The immune system is able to recognize that it has to do with an intruder but for some reasons does not do so. As has been established by dr Pardoll and other scientists, proteins on the cancer cells surface halt the attack of the immune system. At the same time the tumor emits molecules which make the immune system help cancer spread in the organism. “We know very little about this immune reaction”, says Pardoll.

However, a new conception of tumor treatment results from this discovery, namely proteins of cancer cells which block the immune system need to be neutralized, or there is a need to stimulate the system to be more aggressive. The possibility of applying the first method is just being investigated, the other has been tested for some time. In case of mice even the types of tumors the most difficult to fight were eradicated by means of antibody injections or vaccination. Research to apply this method in humans continues.

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