> The mechanical destruction of tumors likely leaves behind recognizable traces of cancer proteins that help the immune system learn to identify and destroy similar cells elsewhere in the body, explains Wood

Seems a little too speculatively worded, IMO.

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flir 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If it was true, couldn't you get the same effect by taking a biopsy, fragmenting the cells, and injecting them back in? Like a vaccination, in fact. Somebody must have studied that approach already.

	▲	londons_explore 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I assume the immune system probably already reacts to this in a specific way. For example, a major bruise has a lot of broken up cells, but doesn't warrant a big immune response.
	▲	klipt 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Cancer immunotherapy is a whole field of research and treatment, yes.
	▲	cowsandmilk 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Major damage tends to cause a much larger immune response than a vaccination. That said, they do have therapeutic cancer vaccines that present proteins from cancer (sometimes patient-specific) with adjuvants to help stimulate the immune response.

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underlipton 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Interested layman here: IIUC, immunotherapy is currently the holy grail for difficult-to-treat cancers like pancreatic. There are designer mRNA vaccines available that have ridiculous efficacy, but they must be tailored to each individual and so are extremely expensive (and are currently undergoing trials). mRNA COVID vaccines have been shown in some studies to increase the lifespan of pancreatic cancer patients. So, it's not hard for me to imagine that a treatment that gives the immune system a crack at learning to identify and destroy pancreatic cancer cells will boost survivability.

Part of the freak-out about the Trump admin's attacking of scientific research (including, especially, of mRNA research) earlier in the year is that it threatened these trials.