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Genetic Engineers Working to Reverse Cancer
An anonymous reader writes "Using a patient's own modified white blood cells, a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute has reversed advanced melanoma in a study of 17 patients. The researchers tweaked the blood to recognize and attack cancer cells, and the head of the National Institutes of Health, Elias Zerhounibut, says there's big hope now that other common cancers, like breast and lung cancer, can be similarly treated. Though only 2 of the 17 patients responded successfully to the treatment, researchers are optimistic that future improvements on the technique will improve that rate of success." From the article: "In the study, Rosenberg and his colleagues took lymphocytes from the blood and inserted into them genes for a receptor capable of 'recognizing' a protein on melanoma cells called MART-1. This would allow the lymphocyte to attach to a tumor cell and kill it. The patients, all of whom had previously undergone surgery and immune-based treatments, got chemotherapy to temporarily wipe out their immune systems. The engineered cells were then reinjected, with the hope they would proliferate as the immune system recovered."
These days, it seems that some of the more promising cancer treatments involve using the body's own defenses against cancer. The antiangiogenesis stuff didn't pan out as well as hoped (blocking blood vessel growth in tumors). Some of the treatments that fix a particular genetic defect in certain types of cancer are great, but extremely cancer-specific.
This approch does require a lot of work (tailoring a particular patient's T-cells to a particular cancer), so it's not a cheap fix. It also requires the patient's immune system to cooperate and do it's thing, something that only happened in 2 of the 17 patients. Still, to get complete remission where there was no hope is extremely promising. My guess is that we'll see more of this.
Basically if the human race can do two things: 1) Regrow organs that have worn out and 2) cure cancer, we'll live for a very long time.
Scientists have been working on this for years and it's exciting to see that it's finally showing some promise. However, training a patient's immune system to recognize cancer related proteins can be dangerous. The cancer related proteins are often mutated forms of proteins on normal cells and sometimes just normal proteins that are much more prevalent on cancer cells. A mistake could lead to autoimmunity.
The description of the patients is very dry, so I wanted to say something on behalf of the people receiving this treatment. What's happened is that each one started getting symptoms, probably a growth on the skin. They went to a doctor and were told that they had the most malignant of the three forms of skin cancer. Treatment options were presented to them, and they chose to undergo surgery. Either a few days after the surgery they were told that the margins weren't clean, or immediately after the surgery they were told that portions of cancer were inoperable, or some weeks later they were told that the cancer had returned. Then they underwent immune therapy. I don't know anything about that. Finally, they were told that they were terminal patients and to get their affairs in order, but that there was a new therapy the surgeons wanted to try. The chances of success were unknown. I don't know how much chemotherapy was necessary to destroy their immune systems, but a very good friend of mine, now dead, described it as getting flu one day a week for weeks on end. I count at least six events that had to be completely emotionally devastating to the patients and their families.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
This is the interesting part, I thought: "The researchers also have isolated TCRs that recognize common cancers other than melanoma."
Having watched my mother die of Leukemia after a two year struggle, my cousin loose his stomach to cancer, and another relative (by marriage) currently facing a rare brain cancer with essentially no hope of survival (with a wife and two kids just a little older than mine), I'd say, let these guys play whatever cards they have.
I'm going to be trying to get better contact info for the people doing this research and forward it to my cousin and the family facing brain cancer.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
So you fifteen unknown others... thanks for volunteering.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
On ABC World News yesterday, they interviewed the lead scientist behind all of this. He said that since they set up the original protocol, they've found genes that are more than 100 times more effective on the cancers. Even though only a percentage of the patients will probably respond to these new anti-cancer genes, this method has enormous potential to improve greatly with more clinical trials and more research. This treatment is still cancer-specific, but it's much easier to find a gene to target a cancer than it is to come up with a new synthetic anti-cancer medication. In 10 years, I would bet that this stuff will have had amazing results.
Here's it in geek terms:
Just think of it as a hard reboot for your immune system. Then the newly developed anti-badthingys can go after what has infested your system
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
You are right the 2 in 17 figure the news media picked up on is not important. But the real news here is that 17 in 17 did not die of the treatment which very well could have happened. Also I'm not sure of your method. In the cases studied it is very well known that all of them would have died. I'm not sure if 17 is the correct sample size. There are _many_ more known cases of cancer and these might be conciderd part of a control group.