Study: Chemo drug may hike tumor immunity

NEW YORK, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have discovered a chemotherapy drug might enhance patients' immunity to tumors, helping them to more effectively fight the disease.

Rockefeller University researchers have found that a chemotherapy drug called bortezomib can kill multiple myeloma cells -- cancer in immune cells in bone marrow -- in culture in such a way that it elicits a response by memory and killer T cells.

Until recently it's been thought radiation therapy and various forms of chemotherapy were separate but equal treatments. Now, however, new research is beginning to show it's not just killing the cancer cells that matters -- it's also important as to how they are killed.

A study by Associate Rockefeller University Professor Madhav Dhodapkar, postgraduate fellow Radek Spisek and colleagues shows bortezomib kills tumor cells in such a way that it might allow the immune system to recognize them.

The study is detailed online in the journal Blood.