Researchers in China have discovered a way to supercharge the treatment of lung cancer by transplanting mitochondria into the tumor environment. This transplantation increases the effectiveness of chemotherapy while boosting the immune system’s ability to fight the cancer. The team combined cisplatin (a lung cancer chemo drug) with mitochondrial transplantation.
Chemotherapy has always been a major part of treating lung cancer. However, this therapy usually compromises immune system function, thereby making long-term cancer suppression challenging since the immune system becomes weak and can’t control the progression of the cancer. By using the new approach, researchers were able to boost immune cell presence within the tumor while also making the chemotherapy drug more effective.
In this approach, mitochondria were transformed from merely being powerhouses of energy into becoming formidable allies in the fight against cancer. This approach could introduce a new paradigm in the way cancer is treated in future.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of death among all cancer types, and about 85% of all people with lung cancer have NSCLC (non-small cell lung cancer). When NSCLC is advanced, chemotherapy is the go-to treatment option, but the treatment has severe toxic effects and resistance to the treatment often emerges. Additionally, chemotherapy damages the immune cells within the tumor microenvironment. This makes it hard for the immune system to combat the cancer, thereby giving the tumors an opportunity to grow and spread.
Immunotherapy has been helpful to some patients, but the vast majority remains unresponsive to this treatment. This has created an urgent need to devise new approaches that can deliver the needed clinical outcomes in lung cancer patients.
The research team from the School of Medicine at Tongji University, together with their colleagues at Nantong University came up with a new way to treat NSCLC by leveraging mitochondrial transplantation combined with cisplatin therapy.
The team obtained healthy mitochondria from humans and transplanted these into in vitro and in vivo models of NSCLC. They observed that on its own, mitochondrial transplantation didn’t harm the cancer cells. However, enhanced tumor suppression was observed when transplantation was combined with cisplatin therapy. Crucially, transplantation had the effect of restoring the functioning of mitochondria within the cancer’s microenvironment, and natural killer cells together with T cells exhibited vigorous activity.
Body weight was preserved in the animal models used, and organs functioned normally. No additional toxic levels resulted from this combination therapy.
This research is exciting because it shows that using mitochondrial transplantation alongside cisplatin can serve a dual purpose of rearming immune function while at the same time disarming tumors.
Further work is needed before this approach can be tested in clinical trials and eventually used to treat lung cancer patients. The existing limits to cancer treatment could be overcome with such novel approaches.
Other entities, such as Calidi Biotherapeutics Inc. (NYSE American: CLDI) are also running their own R&D programs on oncolytic viruses to treat lung cancer. It is just a matter of time before next-generation therapies against this cancer are approved and become available to patients.
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