Dr. Jeanette Boudreau, an immunologist and the Scientific Director of the Beatrice Hunter Cancer Research Institute, is pinning her hope – and her knowledge – on Natural Killer (NK) cells. These white blood cells, which circulate constantly through the bloodstream and tissues, eliminate viral infections and sick cells, including cancer cells.
Boudreau’s research focuses on how to aim those cells at specific types of hard-to-treat cancers, super-charging the immune system to recognize the signals these tumours emit and then destroy them. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat successfully, and one of the chief targets of the natural killer cell research Boudreau and her graduate students and post-doctoral fellows pursue. Ovarian cancer is another focus of researchers in Boudreau’s lab.
Once Boudreau and her colleagues understand the genetics of the Maritime population and the role NK cells can play in tackling pancreatic and other types of cancer, they can design new genetic-based therapies. “I’m trying my best to do things on a scale that could be implemented, are not too expensive, and could be done with the processes that already exist, as patients are already being treated,” Boudreau says. “We think with NK cells we can make a scalable, much more affordable immunotherapy, so we can treat more patients.”
Read the full article: Channelling the power of Natural Killer cells to beat cancer | Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine | Advancement