Word: interleukin
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...form of immunotherapy, an experimental technique that has been refined substantially in the past five years as an alternative to surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. Immunotherapy enhances the immune system's disease-fighting capabilities by using some of the body's own chemical agents -- the interferons, tumor-necrosis factor or interleukins, for example. Last year, in one of immunotherapy's most promising clinical trials to date, Rosenberg's team used the hormone-like substance interleukin-2 to turn certain white blood cells into cancer destroyers called lymphokine- activated killers. Reinjected into the bloodstream with more IL-2, LAK cells shrank...
...technique was tested on ten different types of cancer in 25 patients, for whom standard treatments had failed. Crucial to the experiment was a potent natural substance called interleukin-2 (IL-2), one of a variety of chemical messengers called lymphokines that help control the activities of the immune system. Studies have shown that IL-2 is capable of transforming certain white blood cells into powerful, anticancer killer cells. Using an elaborate blood-separating apparatus, Rosenberg and his team withdrew white cells from each patient and treated them with IL-2. After incubating for three or four days, the activated...
...just one of a number of lymphokines and related natural substances showing promise in the immunological treatment of cancer. Interferons, tumor necrosis factor, interleukin-1 and a substance called colony-stimulating factor all play a role in the normal functioning of the immune system and may ultimately find a place in the treatment of cancer. It has been only within the past five years that genetic-engineering technology has made large quantities of these substances available to researchers. Many physicians believe that IL-2, which has also been genetically engineered, will eventually be used together with some of these other...
Kradin said future research will center on keeping the artificially grown lymphocytes alive in the body for longer periods of time by injecting Interleukin 2 directly into a tumor in addition to cultivating a sample outside the body
...Although Interleukin 2 has been available since 1976, in previous experiments doctors have concentrated on multiplying lymphocytes in general, and have not reproduced and experimented with the cells specifically associated with a malignant tumor...