Scientists at Rice University in the United States have prevented advanced cancer in mice by using an implantable "drug factory", and this new therapy can take effect in only a few days. The study has been published in clinical cancer research. Although this method still needs some time to be tested in humans, the current results show that people have a powerful new method to eradicate an aggressive lung cancer - mesothelioma. The "drug factory" is composed of tiny beads made of alginate. Each bead is only 1.5 mm wide and can burst continuously to produce interleukin-2 (IL-2) - a natural compound that can activate human leukocytes to fight tumors. Brian Burt, a thoracic surgeon and surgical oncologist at Rice University School of Medicine, said that pleural mesothelioma is a very aggressive malignant tumor of the lung lining. It is difficult to completely cure by surgical resection, that is, there are often residual lesions. Using local immunotherapy to treat such residual lesions, that is, to provide relatively high doses of immune drugs locally in the pleural space, is a very attractive method to treat this disease. The team also combined implants with checkpoint inhibitors, which are drugs that do not directly treat cancer, but can train the immune system to better recognize and eliminate cancer cells. The new study uses inhibitors that target PD-1 protein. In mouse experiments, the "drug factory" implant itself can eliminate more than half of the tumors. When combined with checkpoint inhibitors, tumors in 7 mice were completely destroyed. The data showed that the targeted delivery of these immunotherapeutic granules to mice with mesothelioma produced a very intense and effective therapeutic response. The researchers believe that if it relapses, this treatment is also likely to effectively train memory T cells in the body to fight against mesothelioma again. Although IL-2 treatment has been proved to be effective, it may also bring some very serious side effects. The targeting of the new treatment can help because it limits the body parts to which the drug is exposed. More importantly, researchers have used the same "drug factory" technology to try to treat ovarian cancer before, and the human clinical trial of this therapy is planned to start in the next few months. The researchers said that from the beginning, their goal was to develop a platform therapy that could be used for a variety of different immune system diseases or different types of cancer. (Outlook New Times)