We will be reviewing the new developments in treating cancer that have moved the needle against the scourge over the next few days.

One of the first ones we’ll examine is a 3D printing approach to treat solid tumors.  Solid tumors are cancers found in our bones, tissues (muscles/tendons) or organs (liver, kidneys).

The two types of solid tumors are sarcomas and carcinomas.  A sarcoma is a tumor in a blood vessel, fat tissue, ligament, lymph vessel, muscle or tendon. About 15000 of these cancers arise new each year. A carcinoma forms within epithelial cells (cells found in skin, glands, and organ linings).

Both of these have been found to be subject to attack by NK (natural killer) cells.  These NK cells recognize the diseased structure the very first time they encounter them.  (The NK cells also activate and alert the rest of our immune system.)  The problem is that cancer cells grow very quickly and NK cells also die out to quickly, so they are a short-lived approach to stop the cancers from spreading.

So, researchers took to tweaking the NK cells to live longer, to multiply, and find means to inject them into a patient to fight the “good fight”. As of now, this approach works well for those folks who never had surgery to remove the cancerous cells.

But, when encapsulating these cells in a hydrogel (that is then 3D printed into a porous shape and implanted at the site of the removed tumor)- that shows promise.

3D Printing of Functional Hydrogels – YouTube   (not this product, jut background)

This gel was designed to develop additional, smaller holes over time, and as the NK cells were allowed to multiply in the lab, they’d be released from those “micropores” and clump together — thus helping them multiply and remain viable.

So far, the process show promise against leukemia and solid tumor cells in the lab.  The researchers at Seoul National University (D Kim, JM Seok, K Lee), Korea University of Science and Technology (S JO, SM Kim, TD Kim [senior author]), and the Korea Institute of Machinery and Business (D Lee, KM Seok, SJ Yeo, JH Lee, JJ Lee, SA Park [senior author]) published their findings, NK cells encapsulated in micro/macropore-forming hydrogels via 3D bioprinting for tumor immunotherapy in Biomaterials Research.

The City of Hope (Duarte, CA) has been targeting proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) using AOH1996, under the direction of Dr. Linda Malkas for a while.  Her words- PCNA is like an airline terminal with multiple gates, but AOH1996 is like the snowstorm tat comes in and shuts down operations (at those gates where cancer exists).

The drug is now licensed from the City of Hope  to RLL, LLC (a biotech firm cofounded by Malkas, headquartered in Lutherville, MD). Since AOH1996 targets and kills cells by disrupting the normal cell reproductive cycle- in particular the transcription replication conflicts.

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