In a groundbreaking moment for cancer, Chinese researchers turned the immune response provoked by organ transplants to fight the leading cause of death worldwide.
According to Columbia University’s Department of Surgery, 10–20% of patients who undergo transplant surgery will experience at least one rejection. However, researchers in China ingeniously turned that negative into a positive by directing that powerful impulse to attack cancer cells.
Called a “tumor-to-pork” strategy, a new study published in Cell earlier this year demonstrated immense success in engineering a virus that tricked the human body into believing that cancer cells were pig tissue, according to the South China Morning Post, thereby triggering a hyperacute inflammatory response. The virus began attacking the tumor with a staggering 90% success rate, to the point of curing a patient with advanced cervical cancer.
