Antioxidant can make anti-cancer therapy truly effective.

According to Medical Express, American scientists have revealed of how to make immune therapy, such as T-cell therapy and transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells (THC), more effective. They propose to change T-cells by using thioredoxin - a natural antioxidant.

T-cell therapy is a cancer immunotherapy, in which the patient's immune cells (T-cells) are changed in such a way that they begin to recognize the markers of cancer cells. First, the patient's blood is taken, and then T-cells are subjected to genetically modification to learn how to attack cancer cells. As a result, the modified T-cells are injected back into the patient. Nowadays, therapy is actively used to treat leukemia and lymphoma. But re-injected cells do not live for a long time, and the disease returns.

THC therapy is a classic immune therapy, in which the stem cells are taken from the donor and injected into the patient. This should provoke the production of new immune cells in the patient's body to fight the disease. The therapy has a serious side effect – donor cells can attack both diseased and healthy cells.

In turn, the rodents and human cells tests have proven that by neutralizing toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS), thioredoxin antioxidant prolongs the life span of injected T-cells. It is known that tumors have high concentrations of ROS that can kill immune cells. The scientists propose to treat cells with antioxidant before transplantation. In addition, thioredoxin is absolutely safe.

Source: Medical Express.