SUNDAY June 28, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- Researchers at Wake University Baptist Medical Center are ready to conduct a small trial in humans on a new cancer treatment that has proved to be 100% successful in curing advanced cancer in mice.

The treatment involves transfusing specific white blood cells called granulocytes, which can be obtained from healthy donors, into patient with advanced solid forms of cancer.

The donors will be tested to make sure their granulocytes are highly effective at fighting cancer.

Zheng Cui, Ph.D., lead researcher and associate professor of pathology, will be announcing the trial today on June 28 at the Understanding Aging conference in Los Angeles.

The trial, already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is based on a discovery by the researchers published five years ago that certain mice are extremely resistant to cancer and their blood cells when used to treat mice with cancer were able to eliminate advanced malignancies in ordinary laboratory mice.

A similar cancer-killing activity in the white blood cells of some health humans has also been identified and the human white blood cells have been demonstrated in laboratory studies to be highly effective against human cervical, prostate and breast cancer cells.

Now the researchers know that the cancer-fighting ability primarily involves granulocytes of the innate immune system, which are known for fighting off infections.

"In mice, we've been able to eradicate even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors," Cui said. "Hopefully, we will see the same results in humans. Our laboratory studies indicate that this cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans."

Granulocytes, the most abundant type of white blood cells that account for up to 60 percent of total circulating white blood cells in healthy humans, are isolated from donors through process called apheresis, which returns other blood components back to donors.

The researchers have found in a small study of volunteers that people under 50 have the high levels of cancer-killing activity in granulocytes.   The activity was found to be lowered by factors such as winter or emotional stress.

They believe that the key to the success for the new therapy is to transfuse sufficient granulocytes from health donors while their cancer-killing activities are at their peak level.

For the trial, 500 people younger than 50 and in good health will be recruited to have their blood tested.   Of the recruits, 100 with high cancer-killing activity will be asked to donate white blood cells for the study. The treatment will be tested in 22 cancer patients who do not respond to the conventional therapies.

The treatment will last three to four consecutive days on an outpatient basis. Up to three donors may be needed to collect sufficient amounts of white blood cells for each patient.

The patients will be evaluated on how they will tolerate the high dose of granulocytes and after three months, patients will be evaluated to see if the treatment results in any clinical benefit.

Editor’s note: This article provides lots of interesting information about cancer.   First, cancer development results from a weak immune system.   Readers may learn from somewhere some people are claiming that humans’ immune system can’t recognize cancer cells and kill them because cancer cells are part of human body and the immune system is blind to such cells. The researchers’ work has suggested that that assumption is in fact wrong.

Second, readers may notice is that the cancer-killing granulocytes are also the ones that help fight infections.   What does that mean?   It means that if a person who is more susceptible to infection may be more prone to cancer development.

Third, the cancer-fighting activity of granulocytes is lowered in winter and stress.   We have already known that stress can weaken immune system making it easier for a person to develop cancer.   How would winter affect the cancer-killing activity?   There is a likely possibility that in winter people get less exposure to sunshine and have low levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D has been associated in many epidemiologic studies with cancer risk and mortality.   So it is likely vitamin D may affect cancer risk by affecting the activity of granulocytes.

Fourth, in the future, a test may be used to evaluate the risk of cancer in a person.  The method the researchers in the report use is meant to evaluate the cancer-killing activity in granulocytes.   If simple and cost-effective, such a test may be used in clinics to help people to have some understanding of their risk of cancer.

In any case, people need to do whatever they can to protect their immune system.