Using the cancer cells invading your body to kill the cancer sounds like poetic justice. Jianlin Gong, a researcher in the immunotherapy unit at the School of Medicine, is working on just such a strategy. She is developing a vaccine for patients in remission from cancer that works by training cells in the patient’s immune system to attack any cancer cells lurking in the patient’s body.

Healthy immune systems naturally seek out and destroy cancerous cells. However, the immune systems of those already afflicted with cancer are less effective in this respect, making many cancer patients vulnerable to redeveloping the disease.The vaccine Gong and her colleagues are developing jump-starts the immune systems of these vulnerable patients so that the reactivated immune system can find and destroy any residual cancer cells.

The research team is creating the vaccine by fusing dendritic cells extracted from the patient’s own blood or bone marrow with cancer cells also taken from the patient. Dendritic cells are the “teacher”cells of the immune system. The fusion creates a specialized cell that is greater than the sum of its parts — it is able to train the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells in the body that are of the same type used in the fusion.

In animal studies, Gong has found that the fusion cells can effectively cure different types of cancer. Her success in treating breast, ovarian, and leukemia cancer cells in the laboratory led to permission to run clinical trials in human subjects. In 2004, in collaboration with Adam Lerner, an oncologist at Boston Medical Center, Gong and her team began testing a vaccine for leukemia patients in remission. She expects to begin testing the treatment in other types of cancer soon — and is hopeful that poetic justice for those afflicted with cancer may someday be a reality.

For more information, contact Professor Gong at: jgong@bu.edu

Fused cancer and dendritic cells such as these are at the core of Gong's approach to fighting cancer with cancer. (A) Stained images of dendritic cells, ovarian cancer cells, and fused dendritic/ovarian cancer cells; scanning electron microscope images of (B) dendritic cells, breast cancer cells, and fused dendritic/breast cancer cells, and )C) dendritic cells, ovarian cancer cells, and fused dendritic/ovarian cancer cells.

— Elizabeth Dougherty