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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."
What is so wonderful about this type of treatment is that it is not invasive. You could have a cancer that is very difficult to reach via surgery and this method would allow your body to bring the cure to the cancer.
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That is promising research. It seems to be the most promising other than future use of nano technology to deliver drugs directly.
It seems odd that you would use chemotherapy described in the article as being something that wipes out your immune system, and then try to use a treatment that relies entirely on your immune system being effective. Maybe thats part of the treatment, but it seems like you would want your immune system at 100% for this process to work.
These articles always make me wonder if the researchers had access to data processed by folding projects.
Although only 2 of 17 patients recovered, if this was an initial human trial, then all the scientists were looking for was toxicity effects in people who were otherwise pretty much beyond any other medical treatment. i.e. people with cancer so advanced, that a treatment like this probably wouldn't make them any worse.
Hopefully when this method of treating cancer is applied to people whose tumors are not so advanced, the results will be far more effective.
I went through chemo and radiation for a T-cell lymphoma about 2.5 years ago. I'm curious about what the possibilities for this type of treatment are when the T-cells themselves are the cancer.
High dose interferon has less than a 5% chance of remmisson. So if the 2/17 ratio is realistic this more than doubles the odds of recovering from advanced melanoma. High dose interferon is the leading (read: only) non-trial treatment for advanced melanoma.
My father had/has stage 4 Melanoma. He went into remmision from high dose interferon and dmx clinical and NIH. BTW the study found no statisical improvement over just high dose interferon.
quick wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma
With a simple confidence interval calculation we get that with a sample size of 17 from a population of 1000 we get that with 95% confidence the results are 2+-2.6 of 17. Obviously 0 is within the error margin, so it is quite possible the results are just by chance.
I have been trying to locate some information on what the motivation was for releasing such a weak result - in case I had missed something. I have failed to find any mention at all of a confidence interval or any statistical justification. At best the results are naive, at worst dishonest. Please correct me if I am wrong.