Gene boost makes cancer more visible

Immunotherapy is the term used to describe techniques that provoke the immune system to attack and remove cancer. The argument goes that because the immune system is extremely specific in what it targets, and because it has a memory and can learn and improve its action as it goes along, this is a powerful weapon for fighting malignancies. But we need to show the immune system what to attack, which is where a new development from researchers at Yale Medical School comes in. What they’ve done is come up with a way to find the genetic differences between cancer cells and healthy cells, and trigger the tumours to massively over-produce the products of those altered genes, reasoning that this will set them apart from healthy tissue and provide a target for the immune system to latch onto. And in animal tests, it seems to work very well. Sidi Chen is the inventor...