Engineered Cancer Cells Tackling Cancer

Every year over an estimated 8 million people die from cancer across the globe. Incidence of cancer is rising along with increasing life expectancy, by 2030 future estimates are that over 20 million people will be diagnosed with cancer. Cancer is a top contender for cause of death among people under the age of 85, with the majority of mortality being the result of metastases.

The process of cells from the primary tumour enter the blood or lymphatic system and establish in other tissues is how metastatic cancer develops. Tumour cells have self-homing abilities which enables travelling from distant locations to a tumour site facilitating congregation of tumour cells at a new site. The self-homing ability has been harnessed to develop a novel cancer therapy. Genetically engineered tumour cells have been developed by the team of researchers to include a cytotoxic mechanism, when introduced into the body these engineered tumour cells are drawn to tumour sites, delivering treatment targeted to exactly where it is required. This novel anticancer approach overcomes the challenge of delivering drugs specifically to tumour sites without damaging healthy cells.

Using CRISPR-enhanced reverse engineered cancer cells the team was able to design an anticancer tumour with a kill switch to provide targeted treatment for tracking down and destroying tumours, which can be employed using either pre-engineered tumour cells needing to be tissue matched to patient, or using tumour cells harvested from the patient to be genetically modified and then reintroduced. Both of the mentioned approaches have been tested in model mice of primary and recurrent brain cancer, as well as breast cancer that spread to the brain. The engineered tumour cells travelled directly to specific sites of the tumours where the kill switch incorporated into the genome of the modified tumour cell was then activated, which then successfully destroyed the primary, recurrent, and metastatic tumours. The approach was found to increase survival of the model animals.

The team is now following up in the promising results and developing a potential roadmap for treating  primary, recurrent, and metastatic tumours in clinical practice.