Immunoassay and Regulation of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Cancer Patients

The immune system is our body’s defense mechanism, which helps us to resist foreign pathogens and cancer cells in the body. However, if the immune system is too weak, too strong, or unbalanced, it will be susceptible to get bacterial and viral infections, unable to fight cancer, or cause allergies, autoimmune and rheumatic diseases. At present, there is no good western medicine to strengthen immunity when the body is insufficient immunity. However, strong immunity causes autoimmune diseases and need to be treated by steroids and immunosuppressive agents. These drugs have limited efficacy and often have many side effects. In the clinical practice of traditional Chinese medicine, tonify qi, supplement blood and nourish yin are often used to enhance immunity. However, there is no clinical test to demonstrate the modulation of immune response after traditional Chinese medicine treatment.
In our preliminary study, the investigators identified that the basic immune response of cancer patients is weaker than healthy people by testing the level of IFN-r (promoting T cell activity, anti-tumor, anti-viral), TNF-a (promoting B cell proliferation, producing antibodies, anti-tumor, anti-viral) and IL-2 (regulate the proliferation and differentiation). Besides, some Chinese herbal extracts can significantly stimulate the immune response higher than the general average basic immunity of cancer patients. Further, we will use the stimulatory Chinese medicine extract to administer to cancer patients and examine the immune response of cancer patients after taking them. Therefore, this test can provide actual data on the basic immunity of healthy people or cancer patients and the modulation of immune response by traditional Chinese medicine treatment. This analysis platform provides patients to select the medicines that can enhance the immune response for individuals and analyze the changes of the immune response after conditioning with the candidate Chinese medicines. Therefore, this test could be applied clinically to validate the immunological regulation of Chinese herbal medicine as well as analyze the immunological modulation against different cancer by various Chinese herbal medicine.

免疫系统是人体的防御机制，可帮助机体抵御外来病原体与体内癌细胞。然而，当免疫系统过弱、过强或失衡时，人体易罹患细菌、病毒感染，无法有效对抗癌症，或引发过敏、自身免疫性疾病与风湿类疾病。目前尚无疗效确切的西药可在免疫力不足时强化免疫功能；而免疫亢进引发的自身免疫疾病，则需通过类固醇（steroids）与免疫抑制剂（immunosuppressive agents）进行治疗，但此类药物疗效有限，且常伴随诸多不良反应。在中医临床实践中，医者常采用补气、补血、滋阴之法增强机体免疫力，但目前尚无临床试验证实中药治疗可调节免疫应答。
在本团队的前期研究中，研究者通过检测干扰素γ（IFN-γ，可促进T细胞活性、发挥抗肿瘤与抗病毒作用）、肿瘤坏死因子α（TNF-α，可促进B细胞增殖、产生抗体、发挥抗肿瘤与抗病毒作用）及白细胞介素2（IL-2，可调控细胞增殖与分化）的水平，发现癌症患者的基础免疫应答弱于健康人群。此外，部分中药提取物可显著刺激免疫应答，使其高于癌症患者的整体基础免疫平均水平。后续本研究将使用具有免疫刺激活性的中药提取物对癌症患者进行给药，并检测给药后患者的免疫应答变化。因此，本试验可提供健康人群或癌症患者的基础免疫数据，以及中药治疗对免疫应答的调节相关实证数据。本分析平台可为患者提供个体化的免疫应答增强药物选择服务，并可分析候选中药进行免疫调节后的免疫应答变化。因此，本试验可在临床中验证中药的免疫调节作用，同时分析不同中药对不同癌症的免疫调控效果。