New cancer-fighting method leverages the mechanical force of T cells

Mechanical force of T cell automatically breaks the DNA - thereby releasing the drug © my SCImage / 2020 EPFL - Scientists have developed a cancer treatment method that destroys tumor cells using the mechanical force of our bodies- own T cells. They have just completed a proof of concept for their novel immunotherapy approach. Immunotherapy is a promising weapon in the fight against cancer. It has proven to be much more effective than chemotherapy and radiotherapy in treatment of some cancers. The drawback is that it manages to cure only about 20% of patients; the remaining 80% do not respond to this kind of treatment. -But if doctors use a stronger form of immunotherapy in order to treat more people, it could become toxic for patients and lead to side effects,- says Li Tang, the head of EPFL's Laboratory of Biomaterials for Immunoengineering within the School of Engineering. His team of scientists is developing a method that focuses immunotherapy only on tumor cells, so that the treatments are more effective and less harmful to the body as a whole.