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Cancer Resistance Technique Moves To Human Trials
TaeKwonDood tips us to news that a new cancer resistance treatment is going into clinical trials after being quite successful at eradicating cancer in mice. Researchers discovered that certain white blood cells called granulocytes from cancer-immune mice were able to cure cancer in other mice. Now, doctors are putting out the call for healthy granulocyte donors in order to test how well it works on humans. The article quotes lead researcher Zheng Cui saying, "In mice, we've been able to eradicate even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors. Hopefully, we will see the same results in humans. Our laboratory studies indicate that this cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans."
Now that we've seen yet another way to fight against cancer, we'll just watch it fade into obscurity as if it were really just a post on /.'s frontpage.
Have any of these medical breakthroughs actually born fruit? Have any become tenable?
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
not to cure cancer in humans; just mice.
Seems like mice have the one-up.
This strikes me as a kind of fast-track immunization, i.e. getting the relevant antibodies into a person's immune system quickly before an infection can take hold. Rather than having to spend time developing the relevant treatment, simply borrow from another human who already has the necessary lymphocytes. Nice!
I'm aware of the correlation between infection and various cancers - I had Hodgkins Lymphoma a few years ago myself.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
How do I get tested for whether I've got the granulocyte cancer immunity? I've always wanted to take up smoking. If I could sell my granulocytes, I'd afford to buy a carton of cigarettes.
--
make install -not war
...young scientists, who discover that the real cure for cancer was inside of them all along!
Now that there is some good old fashioned incomprehensible net babble.
The new plasma. Pay $20 bucks per donation and winos everywhere will be happy to donate, so long as they have the right granulocytes.
Invenio via vel creo
Obviously
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
...but I think that cancer is likely to be triggered by some psychological conditions. The last time I was stating that the state of one's health reflects the state of one's mind, people were laughing at me, but I really observe that many people that I know / heard of, and who suffer/died from cancer, have had some certain problems. Mainly it were: unwillingness to forgive someone something they've done long time ago; unwillingness to accept the current state of something over a longer period of time; perceived loneliness.
Well, it might not be the *only* cause, but certainly the psychological aspect should never be underestimated when dealing with *any* illness.
Enough of this "We found a cure! We're headed to trials!" crap. We've seen this for the past 20 years, yet NONE of these 'cures' are actually used on a daily basis. Either put up, or shut up.
Emphysema is not lung cancer.
It's a slow suffocating death.
Have fun dying! (Darwin Evolution at work.)
People tend to simplify. There is not one "cancer", but a huge family of different types, so it can be doubted that all of them will become curable at once. I'm quite sure the researcher talked about a very specific type of cancer he/she (didn't RTFA) wants to cure.
Definitely glad to see this story. It's the first of a number of techniques to reach clinical trials that actually show real promise.
I don't qualify as a patient participant as I still respond to conventional therapy. Hopefully they'll still be conducting trials if that changes, or will have expanded them to include patients who are still being treated conventionally.
It'll definitely be interesting to see the results if they expand trials to include patients with aggressive tumors. The patient requirements, while not explicitly saying so, eliminate consideration of such patients. Once you no longer respond to therapy treating an aggressive cancer, the likelihood of having a > 6 month survival rating is basically nil (thus disqualifying you from the study). I can understand the rationale to not unnecessarily skew the initial trial results when they can get good data from patients with less aggressive cancers, but if/when the trials go after the fast killers it will definitely show the true potential of this particular cancer weapon.
Here's to hoping for positive results. The other nice thing about this therapy is that, since it is not drug-based, it is not locked up by one single pharmaceutical company. Hooray for open source medical therapies.
Side effects may include:
1) excessive hair growth
2) the irresistible urge to eat cheese
3) increased fertility
>eradicate cancer in mice
Why would I want to eradicate cancer in mice?
In "Graft vs. Host" there is a specific side-effect known as Graft-vs-Tumor. The effect has been known for some time, with the main problem being the lack of control over whether the transplanted immune cells attack both the tumor and/or the host, as GvH can result in serious or fatal reactions.
In this case, I see the info page for the study mentions that Granulocytes are known to attack tumors without causing GvH, which appears to be the novel part of this study. Let's hope they've got a really efficient method for depleting T-cells from the mix.
Why would I want to eradicate cancer in mice?
Because capricorn has already been eliminated and the mouse zodiac is completely out of balance, you insensitive clod.
Invenio via vel creo
I wonder if this treatment will go by the wayside in 100 years just like how redheads will be extinct in that time. Since more people are getting cancer than ever, I'd imagine the genes required for healthy granulocytes could be recessive.
If this works, I think it's great.
But also interesting is what would happen to the cancer fundraising industry if all of a sudden all the newspapers' front page headline was, "Cancer Cured". My wife works at the hospital, and she sees that the amount of money that comes into the hospital from charities that raise enormous amounts of money to "fight cancer" is unbelievable. Everyone in the cancer unit gets new computers every year, has all the best equipment, etc., while the units right next to them, also treating terminally ill patients are still running Windows 95 and have waiting lists months or years long.
If you look at cancer survival rates now (in most part because of all the money that's been pumped into fighting cancer), it's pretty close to a "cured" disease already. For instance, consider if someone came up with a treatment of Parkinson's that reversed the disease in 75% of the sufferers - wouldn't we call that a cure? But everyone in the cancer community (medically) are always very careful never to say that anyone is cured - rather they are in "remission". After all, if word got out that cancer wasn't the death sentence everyone thinks it is, all the money would dry up (and along with it the big budgets and high salaries).
So if this new treatment really does cure cancer, and sounds like it has none of the terrible side effects of current treatments, it might be a boon for other illnesses that desperately need funding too. I think it's pretty exciting.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
People who protest against using animals for testing new drugs or therapies would be well advised to take note of how this advance relied on years of animal research. While unnecessary cruelty to animals is to be abhorred (and yes there may be times when suffering is necessary) this shows that the rewards may be significant.
It's interesting that (much of) the scientific community and christian fundamentalists agree upon this point. It's due to the christian fundamentalists' view that God gave Man dominion over all the animals; not because of any appreciation or understanding on their part of the scientific method.
Sorry but that is such obvious junk "science" that it had to be said. You don't think that the thousands (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?) of cancer studies performed worldwide on people of every race, color, creed, history, age group, life circumstance etc. wouldn't have picked it up? Or what about the similarly numerous large controlled studies with millions with animals?
Anyway you must be an American (I am guilty by association), to have such a poor understanding of how medical science works.
Recently, several people, in clinical trials, have been cured!! from metastatic (widespread) malignant melanoma - which is usually a 1-2 year death sentence after it has metastasized.
Many childhood leukemias have a 80% survival rate, whereas 30 years ago it was a 80% death rate.
Osteogenic and Ewings sarcoma (primary bone cancers) now has an 80% 5 year survival rate, 20 years ago it was a 20% 5 year survival rate. Now, 90-95% of the kids I operate on now get to keep their arms and legs with artificial bones. 30 years ago, they mostly had amputations.
Much of the advances have been from improved detection (MRI/CT/PET scans), and newer chemotherapies - ALL which have been based on animal research (F U PETA!)
Many scientists and MDs feel that immuno-therapy (using the bodies own immune system to fight/kill the cancer) will be the most fruitful research, and probably the most successful in the long run.
..........FULL STOP.
Sounds more like porn to me.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A better title would probably be, "Scientists test to make sure that interesting cancer treatment idea doesn't kill human subjects." This appears to be a Stage I clinical trial of an interesting idea, that is at least somewhat biologically plausible. I haven't fully reviewed the pulished data, so I don't feel comfortable saying more than that. However, most of us who work in biology and medicine would agree that our understanding of the immune system is still relatively primitive, so there may be potential cures still lurking in plain site. However, Stage I trials are only the very initial trials in humans - and they evaluate safety as the primary outcome; i.e, trying to make sure we're not going to kill anyone. Stage II trials would attempt to evaluate appropriate dosing, and Stage III trials attempt to compare the new therapy to currently accepted standards. While this may be a breakthrough (and all of us in medicine are always looking for breakthroughs), there are also huge lists of ideas that worked really well in mice, moved on to Stage I, II, and III clinical trials, and failed utterly. This is extremely far from being any sort of cancer cure at this point - though perhaps 20 years from now we'll look back at this as a step towards that goal. I think it's always interesting to hear
"cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans"
If you have cancer, you are not healthy.
WTF? The test subjects have to pay $100,000 to get in on the study? This seems like a fairly promising treatment? Why isn't money pouring in to fund this?
I just spent 2 days reading a few articles about this general area of research in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, so let me try to explain this to my fellow /.r's who so generously explain to me about warez and the penguin.
Doctors now believe that cancer goes through several stages before it becomes a problem. Cells become cancerous all the time, but usually the immune systen destroys them. To simplify a bit, immune cells such as dendrocytes (which is the hot immune cell these days) recognize cancer proteins. Dendrocytes take a piece of the cancer protein to a T cell, and the T cell kills the cancer cells. There's a great explanation of the immune process on Kimball's Biology Pages http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/A/AntigenPresentation.html, and if you take a few minutes to figure it out you'll understand one of the most amazing discoveries of the last century.
The reason we get cancer is that sometimes that process doesn't work. All it takes is one time during your lifetime when a cancer cell "figures out" a way to evade the immune system, and the cancer takes off.
It obviously occurs to doctors that it would be cool (and probably win a Nobel prize) if they could figure out some way to goose the immune system into fighting cancer, just the way they goose it into fighting viruses with vaccines.
One guy who tried that was Steven Rosenberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rosenberg at the NIH. Rosenberg took melanoma cells from patients, and tried to stimulate the patient's immune system with a molecule called interleukin-2 that cells use to signal immune attacks. I remember reading about that around 1984, I think. The cancer slowed down but it came back. Rosenberg has been working on it ever since.
I remember seeing a cover headline in Fortune magazine back then about Rosenberg, to the effect, "Cure for cancer." (No question mark.) Do you suppose the media hype these things?
In order to understand cancer research, you have to understand that they can kill cancer cells in laboratory bottles, they can cure cancer in mice, but when they try to kill cancer cells in humans, time and again, it doesn't work. When it finally works in humans, that's news. The other thing you have to understand is that there are many treatments that make cancer tumors shrink or disappear for a while, but they usually come back. Cancer patients don't want the cancer to go away for 6 months -- they want it to go away forever. There are a few cancers that can sometimes be cured, like testicular cancer and childhood leukemia, and maybe some prostate cancers, but most of the time, for the big 3 (colon, breast, lung) oncologists are just trying to extend life. Of course, if you're 65 and your doctor can keep you alive for another 20 years with colon cancer or leukemia, that's not so bad. Most of the successful treatments for cancer extend the life of a cancer patient from, say, 20 months to 25 months, or 40 months to 45 months, but sometimes they get a really big jump, and for people with chronic myelogenic leukemia, imatinab (Gleevec) can extend their lives indefinitely.
Anyway, the really big news is that somebody actually managed to get a treatment like Rosenberg's to work on a real human with melanoma, who seems to be cured after 2 years. This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Treatment of metastatic melanoma with autologous CD4+ T cells against NY-ESO-1, Naomi Hunder et al., 358:2698 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/358/25/2698 In the past, they've gotten melanoma (and kidney cancer) to regress for a while, but it came back. This time it seems to be gone for good -- in one patient.
Basically, they had a patient with melanoma that had spread to his lungs. He had T cells that
In the early to mid 1900's, the global population started soaring. I believe this was due to the discovery and implementation of immunizations. We started treating all the nasties that have been doing us in for centuries, if not millennia.
I'm all for the curing of cancer -- lets all assume this really works, and it really eradicates cancer once and for all.
Just imagine the next population explosion.
"Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman
Are we making good progress on cancer? Why not look at some actual data and listen to some actual scientists? Here's a great show giving a historical overview of the trends in cancer:
Why Me, Doc? What Scientists Know - and Don't Know - About Cancer
And here's a somewhat discouraging outlook from the Nobel-winning head of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center here in Seattle:
Medical Research: The Agony and The Ecstasy
Why learn about cancer from kibitzers on slashdot, when there are great resources for technical-minded folk to learn directly from scientists?
A lot of immunizations stopped children from dying.
Cancer on the other hand tends to effect older people (post reproductive age) more than younger people.
That might cause populations to swell (and age) but it won't cause a population boom.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Thanks for the writeup. Very understandable without skimping on interesting details. A perfect example of why I read comments and not articles :)
they always have stories like this cancer can't be cured.
Hitechlotech.com is like the only place I trust to find moneymaking programs!
Pretty much most mice will die from cancer at around 2 years of age in the lab, they generally only live to about one year in nature before they are eaten.
Mice are used in immunology experiments because their immune system is extremely similar to humans.
As far as thinking I'm above nature - don't know much about that. But because humans are omnivores, I don't mind a tasty steak now and then. Don't criticize me on this, or do you also protest that wolves, lions and monkeys eat meat?
..........FULL STOP.
One interesting theory related to this is the Grandmother Hypothesis, which states that menopause was a trait that was selected through evolution because infant humans who had post-menopausal grandmothers to look after them had higher survival rates than those whose grandmothers were still reproducing, and therefore less available to help out with their grandchildren.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
I'm very happy with the advances in the cure for cancer, and I hope it helps many people lead much more fulfilling lives, if not at least longer lives.
But still I have to wonder... we're cutting darwinism out of the system here, and not only allowing weaknesses back into the system but almost making it a strength (amping up the immune systems). What's this going to do to humanity in the long term (5,000 year range) speaking from a strictly evolutionary standpoint?
Everlasting Lightbulb in 3... 2... 1...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Preservation of human life (any human life, not just our fellow Jews) is Orthodox Judaism's highest value.
It's reasons like this why people should support Israel and be very afraid of imperialist orthodox Islam. As Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah said, "We [ the Muslims ] are going to win, because they [ the Jews / Westerners ] love life and we [the Muslims ] love death"
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
Yay, we figured out a way to save ourselves from a deliberate design flaw in life created by God. Praise God!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We've already cured cancer IN MICE 1000 times over, too bad it is still a death sentence for humans.
I'll be impressed when people stop dropping like flies from cancer and being given a "choice" between dying from cancer or suffering with chemo (barfing and loosing hair) and then still dying of cancer.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Life imitates Battlestar Galactica
Simpletoneity, n. -- The phenomenon of many people all doing the same stupid thing at the same time.
In studying for my licensing exam for Psychology I was repeatedly exposed to the following information, which I believe to be true but I have no references handy to back it up: for a while, shortly after the successful linking of "type A personality" (actually just a few of the type A traits) to heart disease, researchers thought they were seeing a pattern emerge linking another personality type (or, again, a few traits) to cancer. The idea at the time was that there may be a set of traits that predispose people to cancer, or at least certain types of cancer. After several years more data collection, it looks like that isn't true. However, there does seem to be an enduring relationship between having certain traits (things like optimism and openness) and _prognosis_ for cancer. So the positive attitude won't help you avoid cancer, but might indeed help you survive it.