NK cells, short for natural killer cells, are cells generated by our immune systems that provide early, rapid protection against viruses and cancer. They are a component of (CAR)-NK therapy, chimeric antigen receptor-natural killer cells, where researchers attach to an NK cell, a lab-created receptor (CAR), so it can spot a specific antigen (anything the body’s immune system identifies as foreign, hostile and targeted for destruction).

Sounds brilliant? But so far, this approach has proven difficult to scale (provide for the masses). Why? Because producing these lethal cancer-killing NK cells is difficult, costly, and time-consuming.

Now comes a breakthrough from Prof. Jinyong Wang, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He and his team found a way to make lab-generated NK cells and CAR-engineered NK cells, using stem cells from blood collected from the umbilical cord. Cord blood is a rich source of stem cells. 

The results were published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. (Hu, F., Li, J., Wang, Y., Lin, Y., Zhang, J., Xu, J., & Wang, J. (2025). Large-scale generation of iNK and CAR-iNK cells from CD34+ haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells for adoptive immunotherapy. Nature biomedical engineering, 1-20.)

In other words, chimeric antigen receptor CAR T cells are a patient’s own T cells that express a special receptor (CAR) that in turn recognizes and kills cancer cells. These cells are a kind of living drug to fight specific blood cancers. But, they are super hard to make! The Chinese researchers may have found a breakthrough approach to scaling up this treatment for cancer patients by finding a faster, better way using umbilical cord blood.

Sadly, the Cold War has returned, with the US and China increasingly hostile and combative. Geopolitics has become toxic. But science?

If US and Chinese scientists continue to publish research, and even tacitly share and coordinate their research, science can be a life-giving bridge between the two peoples, even if the two political leaders are self-destructively aggressive.

Imagine a widely used cure for blood cancers, jointly developed by US and Chinese scholars, that saves millions of lives. And if it works for science, why not for trade, economics, and even geopolitics?

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)