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The immune system (white blood cells) of patients with cancer are often overwhelmed and exhausted by the cancer they are fighting. Since the first donor-derived natural killer cell infusions reported in 2005 we have known that it is safe and effective to infuse natural killer cells into patients with cancer to boost their existing responses.
There are many sources of these donor-derived natural killer cells, so called 'allogeneic' natural killer cells, since 'allo-' means 'other, different' and '-gen' means 'born from' in Greek. T cells are another type of immune cell that also have the ability to kill cancer cells and have proven very effective at treating leukemia and lymphoma. An advantage of natural killer cell therapy over T cell therapy is that natural killer cell therapy is safe even when the genetic background of the donor and patient are not matched. This means natural killer cell therapy can be prepared and stored in advance, ready as an 'off-the-shelf' therapy as soon as patients are diagnosed. Earlier infusions took the natural killer cells from a donor's blood and infused them into only one patient. Breakthroughs in technology have meant that natural killer cells from a single donor can be expanded until there is enough to treat hundreds of patients from a single source. The most recent innovations involve the production of natural killer cells from reprogrammed skin cells, where thousands of doses can be prepared from a single, quality-controlled origin.
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