New therapy uses immune system to fight cancer

Make way for a new weapon in the arsenal of cancer treatments — dendritic cell therapy (DCT). Doctors in major Indian centres, like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad, have been carrying out medical trials of this new treatment for a year now and the results have been very encouraging.

The therapy works on the principle that the immune system of a cancer patient is extremely important in battling the disease. The process involves the drawing of blood into a cell separator, which filters out immunologically active mono-nuclear or dendritic cells.

About 120ml of these dendritic cells are required. They are then treated with various agents, including a portion of the cancerous tumour in an incubator to make a vaccine that is injected into the patient’s body once in a couple of weeks.

“So, what we are doing is essentially using the cells of the body’s immune system to fight the cancerous cells by making the immunologically active cells stronger. These cells present the malignant cancerous cells to the body’s immune system for clearing. They act as an interface between the body’s immune system and the tumour,” says Dr Ashok Vaid, senior oncologist with Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon.

This dendritic cell vaccine that is created externally in the laboratory can be used alongside chemotherapy, to help boost its effectiveness, as well as on its own, according to Dr Sameer Kaul, head of surgical oncology at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital at Delhi .
“I’ve treated about 19-20 patients using this therapy and I’ve had a success rate of over 50%. I’ve used DTC on its own and in conjunction with chemotherapy. The results have been very positive.”

Doctors say the benefits of this therapy are not only restricted to prostate cancer. “I’ve used DCT to treat ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, malignant brain tumours as well as some non-cancerous conditions like pulmonary fibrosis. For brain cancer, it is said to improve the survival rates by five times,” says Dr Purvish Parekh, an oncologist and haematologist at Mumbai.

The doctors  understand the necessity of conducting proper trials before the treatment is made widely available to cancer patients across India. “The trials are ongoing. Hopefully, we can get the approval from the Indian authorities by next year,” said Dr Kaul.