Freezing cancer tissue

Health & research

Jan 21

Who: Haukeland University Hospital

What: Cryoimmunotherapy

Where: Bergen

Project period: 2014-2020

Web: CryoIT

Cryoimmunotherapy - abbreviated CryoIT - is cancer therapy combining freezing of cancer tissue and immunotherapy.Cancer cells have the ability to multiply into cancer cells with new properties. Mutations and genetic reprogramming underlie heterogeneous (different) cancer cells in the patient. This is a major problem in the treatment of cancer. Although the treatment destroys the majority of cancer cells, there are often subtypes that have developed resistance to the treatment and restore the tumor. A clinical trial that can overcome the problem of heterogeneous cancer cells is now underway based on immune cells called dendritic cells.

Normally, there are only a low number of dendritic cells in the bloodstream. However, white blood cells can be drained from the patient's bloodstream and transformed into dendritic cells in cell culture. Dendritic cells are specialized in detecting everything that is "foreign" in the body, such as viruses and bacteria. "Alien" molecules are "eaten" by the dendritic cells and then presented to the other immune system that attacks. Also, changes in the cancer cells are perceived as "foreign" to the body.

Our method is to inject a large number of the patient's transformed dendritic cells into the cancerous tumor that is first frozen and thawed with special equipment inside the patient. The dendritic cells have a formidable ability to detect "foreign molecules" formed in mutated cancer cells. The freezing process makes foreign cancer molecules more accessible to the dendritic cells. The injected dendritic cells then instruct the patient's immune system to attack all cells with cancerous molecules wherever they are found in the body. This is a method that bypasses a major problem in other cancer treatment by utilizing the heterogeneity of the cancer cells in the treatment principle itself.

The method is strengthened by an additional treatment that stimulates the immune system to attack the different types of cancer cells. A multidisciplinary team of scientists and doctors in Bergen have tested and plan further development of CryoIT against different cancer types.

The first clinical trial was recently completed with 18 patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Results are so far encouraging and show that that CryoIT was safe and well tolerated by the patients. Radiology, blood tests and new advanced methods to study the immune response indicated treatment responses. The clinical teams are consequently planning for the next phase clinical trial to start in 2021. That trial will test CryoIT on additional cancers, including kidney cancer and gynecological cancer.

Grieg Foundation has financed the freezing equipment (Cryocare) for freezing of cancerous tissue and of equipment to make it possible to produce dendrittic cells in Bergen (Miltenyi CliniMACS Prodigy).