Plasmodium infection may be used for immunotherapy of lung cancer

Recently, a series of advances have been made in experimental studies of lung cancer immunotherapy conducted by the Chen Xiaoping Research Group of the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Academician Zhong Nanshan, Institute of Respiratory Diseases, Guangzhou Medical College. Studies have shown that Plasmodium infection (malaria) may be used in lung cancer. The immunotherapy may also be used as a new carrier carrying tumor antigens for the development of new and effective therapeutic lung cancer vaccines, and has a positive application prospect.

The researchers found that Plasmodium infection significantly inhibited the growth and metastasis of lung cancer in Lewis mice, significantly prolonged the survival time of tumor-bearing mice, significantly inhibited the proliferation of tumor cells, promoted the apoptosis of tumor cells, and inhibited the generation of tumor blood vessels. Plasmodium infection can activate the body's natural immune system, induce a large number of interferon-γ (IFN-γ) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and so on, significantly enhance the killing activity of NK cells; Plasmodium infection can also be Inducing tumor-specific and systemic tumor-specific immune responses in the body can completely regress tumors in approximately 10% of tumor-bearing mice and preserve long-term effective tumor-specific immune memory. The study also found that there is a clear synergistic effect of Plasmodium infection and lung cancer DNA vaccine. These findings indicate that Plasmodium infection can inhibit tumor growth and metastasis by activating innate immunity and specific immune responses and inhibiting tumor angiogenesis.