UCL in the News: Skin cells 'fight child cancer'

Scientists at UCL said they were able to stimulate the immune system of mice by injecting the animals' skin cells into a neuroblastoma tumour. …

But the authors, writing in the British Journal of Cancer, said clinical trials in humans were at least five years off. …

Once the skin cells were genetically modified they became "little factories" producing a sort of protein which helped the immune system, said lead researcher Dr Stephen Hart [UCL Institute of Child Health]. …

Research in the past has show that genetically modified tumour cells can be turned against the tumour they came from, "but use of the patient's own skin cells would be much easier", Dr Hart wrote.

"These cells can be taken by a routine skin punch biopsy, grown in the lab then genetically modified before injecting into the tumour site." …

BBC News