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  • Visuals Unlimited, Inc./Anne Weston/Cancer Research UK via Getty Images

    Nano-sized discs teach your body to fight cancer

    by 
    Jon Fingas
    Jon Fingas
    12.27.2016

    In the future, getting customized cancer treatments might just be a matter of injecting virtually invisible discs into into your body. University of Michigan scientists have had early success testing 10nm "nanodiscs" that teach your body to kill cancer cells. Each disc is full of neoantigens, or tumor-specific mutations, that tell your immune system's T-cells to recognize those neoantigens and kill them. When you pair them up with immune checkpoint inhibitors (which boost the T-cells' responses), they can not only wipe out existing tumors, but prevent them from reemerging later.