Forget Batman and Robin, there’s a new super hero team in town!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Cancer cells are the ultimate diabolical villains. Drugs can activate T cells, our immune system’s caped crusaders. But they can also cause collateral damage to healthy cells. What if we gave T cells a sidekick, to minimize the damage to good cells?
Enter Feng Lin and team at Peking University. They developed a drug called Multi-TAC. It coordinates T cells with scout-like immune cells called dendritic cells. The Multi-TAC can now attack cancer baddies, while leaving civilian cells unharmed.
They tested it directly on lung tumor cells. And? Multi-TAC slowed down cancer in almost ninety percent of cases! KABOOM!
My heroes! Sound effects—and spandex—not included.
Reference: Lin, F., Yin, S., Zhang, Z., Yu, Y., Fang, H., Liang, Z., … & Chen, P. R. (2024). Multimodal targeting chimeras enable integrated immunotherapy leveraging tumor-immune microenvironment. Cell.