Development of a magnetic guidance strategy for improving the trafficking of cellular therapies into tumours

目前的许多癌症治疗方法都受到未能深入肿瘤的限制。单核细胞和巨噬细胞是一种特殊的白细胞，已被证明可以大量进入肿瘤，通常聚集在这些难以治疗的区域。科学家已经证明，当这些细胞受到抗癌剂的刺激时，它们在实验室中具有杀死肿瘤细胞的能力。这导致医生从癌症患者身上取出这些细胞，在实验室中对它们进行刺激，然后将它们重新注入患者体内，试图减少癌症的生长。虽然这种方法被证明是非常安全的，但成功的迹象非常小，主要是因为到达癌症的单核/巨噬细胞很少。现在，我们实验室已经开发出一种新的磁靶向方法来解决这一问题。这包括将微小的磁铁插入单核细胞并注入磁性细胞？进入血液中。我们发现，如果在肿瘤上放置一个小而强大的磁铁来产生磁场，就会吸引更多的单核细胞进入肿瘤。单核细胞在肿瘤的深处被发现，这些区域是目前放射治疗或化疗难以获得的。这种方法的优点之一是，磁铁确保只输送到肿瘤，从而防止对健康器官的损害。在我们之前的研究中，我们使用了浅表肿瘤(在皮肤下)，这些肿瘤很容易定位，然后在皮肤表面放置一个小磁铁。我们现在想要使用磁共振成像(MRI)，这是一种在临床上广泛应用的技术，来帮助引导我们的磁性细胞进入体内深处发现的癌症，如转移瘤。然后我们想用它来提供一些抗癌药物来防止肿瘤的生长和转移，以及直接杀死肿瘤的药物。一项学科跳跃拨款将把肿瘤学和磁共振物理学这两个不同的科学领域结合在一起，希望这两个领域的结合能提供一种有价值的方法，迫使更多的磁性细胞进入肿瘤，以攻击癌症。这种新的磁靶向治疗方法可能预示着癌症治疗的新纪元--在这个时代，将抗癌治疗输送到疾病部位要有效得多。

Many current cancer treatments are limited by the failure to penetrate deep into the tumour. Monocytes and macrophages are specialist white blood cells which have been shown to enter tumours in large numbers often settling in these areas that are difficult to treat. Scientists have shown that these cells have the ability to kill tumour cells in the laboratory when they are stimulated with anticancer agents. This led doctors to remove these cells from cancer patients, stimulate them in the laboratory and reintroduce them back into the patients in an attempt to reduce cancer growth. While this method proved to be very safe, the signs of success were very small, mainly due to few monocytes/macrophages reaching the cancer. Now, a new magnetic targeting method has been developed in our laboratory to overcome this problem. This involves inserting tiny magnets into monocytes and injecting the ?magnetic cells? into the bloodstream. We have found if a small powerful magnet is then placed over the tumour to create a magnetic field this attracted many more monocytes into the tumour. The monocytes were found deep in the tumour in the areas which are difficult to access using current therapies like radiotherapy or chemotherapy. One of the advantages of this approach is that the magnet ensures delivery to only the tumour thus preventing damage to healthy organs. In our previous studies we used superficial tumours (under the skin) these were easy to locate and a small magnet was then placed on the surface of the skin. We now want to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a technique widely applied in the clinic, to help guide our magnetic cells into cancers that are found deep in the body like metastasis. We then want to use this to deliver a number of anticancer agents that prevent tumour growth and metastasis as well as agents that directly kill the tumour. A discipline hopping grant will bring together two different areas of science, oncology and magnetic resonance physics, the combination of which is hoped to provide a valuable method where magnetic cells are forced into tumours in significantly greater numbers to attack the cancer. This new magnetic targeting approach could herald a new era in cancer treatment - one in which delivery of anti-cancer therapy to the diseased site is a great deal more effective.