NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

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Kate is once again fighting the brain cancer she beat three years ago.

http://date4kate.com/home/

http://www.immune-therapy.net/en/spektrum/dc-therapie.php

Using Immature Dendritic cells ??? NWBO in Germany

Immunotherapy with dendritic cells

The immune system helps people to stay healthy by recognizing bacteria and viruses as well as cancer cells as noxious and by killing these. It has been know for quite some time that for the recognition of foreign materials (antigens) the body needs antigen presenting cells. These antigen presenting cells alert the immune system to the intruder and activate further immune cells that fight the antigen by various means.

Amongst the most important antigen presenting cells are the dendritic cells. They have tree like arms (Greek: Dendron=tree) with which they search the lymphatic fluids for foreign materials.

Cancer cells differ from healthy cells. This difference is harnessed by immunotherapy by fighting the cancer with the bodies own immune system.

Antigen presenting cells in the skin, the Langerhans cells, have been shown to be highly relevant during the process of preventative vaccinations. There are also a few of these dendritic cells in the blood stream. These were first described by Steinman and Cohn in 1973 (Nobel Prize in medicine 2011 for R. M. Steinman).

In addition to being able to isolate small amounts of dendritic cells from the blood or the bone marrow, they can be grown from precursor cells in the bloods, so called monocytes. Only the discovery that they originate from the myeloid lineage made it possible to produce larger quantities of antigen presenting cells easily (Peters et al., 1987).

During immunotherapy with dendritic cells a subgroup of white blood cells of a patient, the monocytes, harvested through conventional blood taking or leukapheresis, is isolated. In the laboratory these monocytes are differentiated into antigen presenting cells, the monocytic dendritic cells, by addition of cellular messengers (cytokines, growth factors).

During this time the immature dendritic cells can additionally be “made aware” of the cancer by for instance adding lysed tumor cells or known tumor antigen peptides to the cells. The immature dendritic cells can take up tumor antigen or lysed tumor cells and present important parts of these on their surface. This process is called priming. In addition dendritic cells are capable of taking up tumor antigens in the patient’s body and this can be enhanced by giving certain cellular messengers.

Depending on the individual situation of the patient and the properties of the tumor each patient will receive an individual stimulation protocol.

After 7 days the primed and activated dendritic cells are injected into the skin or a vein of a patient. Sometimes there will be concurrent immunological stimulation with cellular messengers locally as this can improve the immune response in certain cases.