Leukemia Cancer Cells Can Benefit Body? May Transform to Immune Cells According to Scientists

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Scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine have been able to turn deadly leukemia cells in the lab into harmless immune cells called macrophages by chance observation, according to Stanford.

In trying to find a way to prevent cancer cells from destroying the body, scientists have discovered a method that involves making the deadly cells matures into harmless human cells that could help fight off other tumor-causing cells. The study was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last March 16.

The observation was made by Ravi Majeti and his colleagues when they were trying to keep leukemia cells in a culture plate alive. The cancer cell was a B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with a Philadelphia chromosome mutation. They were trying many things to keep the isolated cells alive so they exposed the cells to a transcription factor.

The change in shape and size was because early B-cell mouse progenitor cells can be transformed into macrophages when exposed to proteins that bind to DNA sequences, as noted by Scott McClellan and conceded by Majeti.

The newly transformed cells adopted the characteristic of a white blood cell called a macrophage. These are cells that are majorly responsible for keeping our immune system healthy. These cells were also able to engulf bacteria, one of the many functions of a macrophage in the body, as noted by IFLScience. In addition, they incorporated the cells into mice without immune systems and the promising result was that they did not cause cancer.

The scientists are hopeful that these transformed cells may also neutralize and help the body in identifying and obliterating the cancer cells left in the body, "Because the macrophage cells came from the cancer cells, they will already carry with them the chemical signals that will identify the cancer cells, making an immune attack against the cancer more likely," Majeti mentioned in the Stanford article. The next step of the research will be to find ways to make a drug that will create the same reaction so they can base it for a leukemia therapy.

The authors of the paper are Ravi Majeti, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, Scott McClellan MD, PhD, postdoctoral scholar, Christoper Dove, MD/PhD student, Andrew Gentles, PhD, a computational biologist, and Christine Ryan, a medical student at Stanford. The research was also supported by the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Walter V. and Idun Berry Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.