Skip to Content
MIT News: 77 Mass Ave

A new angle on immunotherapy

Cancer cells injured by chemotherapy can be harnessed to unleash the immune system against tumors in mice.

December 17, 2021
cancer cells
Wikimedia Commons

Immunotherapy offers the promise of stimulating the body’s immune system to destroy tumor cells, but it only works for a handful of cancers. MIT researchers have now discovered a novel technique that they hope could enable it to target more types.

The surprising key to the approach is using chemotherapy to injure cancer cells without killing them. Led by professors Michael Yaffe and Darrell Irvine, the researchers remove tumor cells from the body, treat them with existing drugs, and then place them back in the tumor. When delivered along with drugs that activate the immune system’s T cells, these injured cancer cells appear to act as a distress signal that spurs the T cells into action against the tumors. Chemotherapy drugs that cause DNA damage are especially well suited for this type of treatment.

In 40% of mice with melanoma and breast tumors, the treatment completely eliminated the tumors. And when the researchers injected cancer cells into these same mice several months later, their T cells recognized them and destroyed them before they could form new tumors.

“When you create cells that have DNA damage but are not killed, under certain conditions those live, injured cells can send a signal that awakens the immune system,” says Yaffe. He hopes to test the approach in patients whose cancers have not responded to other immunotherapy.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI

The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models. 

The Biggest Questions: What is death?

New neuroscience is challenging our understanding of the dying process—bringing opportunities for the living.

Rogue superintelligence and merging with machines: Inside the mind of OpenAI’s chief scientist

An exclusive conversation with Ilya Sutskever on his fears for the future of AI and why they’ve made him change the focus of his life’s work.

How to fix the internet

If we want online discourse to improve, we need to move beyond the big platforms.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.