United States: A new study has found that severe COVID infections may actually help shrink cancer, based on research done in mice. This surprising discovery could lead to new cancer treatments by showing how the immune system interacts with cancer cells. However, scientists stress that this doesn’t mean people should try to get COVID.
As reported by the Science alert, The information regarding the role of the immune system in cancer is vast and many drugs work with the immune system, awakening its functions, is one of the main directions in my work.
In the study being reported here, particular attention was paid to one of these cells, monocytes. These immune cells have a critical function as far as the body’s defence against infections and other threats is concerned.
However, as is seen in the cancer patients, monocytes can actually be taken over or captured by the tumour cells and changed to work for the tumour rather than to help the body’s immune system combat the growth.
What the researchers actually found was that severity of COVID brings into life special type of monocyte that effectively fights cancerous tissues. These “induced” monocytes are hired for the specific purpose of going after the virus, but they do not lose their cancer killing abilities.
To clarify, let us consider the genetic data of exactly what causes COVID – the virus.
“COVID” stands for coronavirus disease, which was first detected in 2019; science today knows that it is caused by a virus. The induced monocytes contain a receptor that the researchers discovered binds specifically and effectively to a particular sequence of COVID RNA.
Ankit Bharat, one of the scientists involved in this work from Northwestern University in Chicago explained this relationship using a lock-and-key analogy: If the monocyte was a lock and the COVID RNA was a key then COVID RNA is a perfect fit.
To verify their hypothesis, the research team first used mice model with different kinds of progressive (stage 4) cancers, such as melanoma cancer, lung cancer, breast and colon cancers.
The researchers administered a drug that made the mice think they were infected with a very serious form of COVID, but in reality, the mice were producing these special forms of monocytes. The results were remarkable. The tumors in the mice started to regress across all four types of cancer that were analyzed.
While normal monocytes can be transformed into protective cells by the tumour, these induced monocytes did not lose that ability.