Cancer Cured By HIV

bluefoxlucid writes "Apparently cancer has been cured, by injecting people with HIV. From the article: 'As the white cells killed the cancer cells, the patients experienced the fevers and aches and pains that one would expect when the body is fighting off an infection, but beyond that the side effects have been minimal.' Nifty. Poorly edited run-on sentence, but nifty."

Comments

Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[eldavojohn]

Two fairly important adjectives that were for some reason omitted from the summary are listed in the article:

In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.

Emphasis mine. The summary almost makes it sound like the researchers just used HIV as we know it ... it's almost humorous to think that a doctor might say "The treatment was a success, you no longer have cancer ... but ..." "BUT WHAT?" "Well, we sorta had to inject you with the HIV in order to take care of it." Obviously this is not the case.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[rockclimber]

most people with pancreatic cancer would gladly make that trade!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a modified, harmless version of HIV

Yeah, that's probably something that should be repeated pretty heavily. Given what I've seen in some alternative therapy books over the years, people don't need to be *more* confused by HIV.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Even if it were the case where HIV was the cure of cancer it seems like given our current ability to keep people alive with HIV that might be the better option. Now this sounds even better as you don't end up with what is a disease that is treatable but still not curable.

Now if I only hadn't already used my remaining mod points.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[characterZer0]

Furthermore, they did not inject the HIV, they injected previously removed white blood cells modified by HIV.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[arkhan_jg]

It wasn't even denatured HIV that treated them; they used it as gene therapy to modify white blood cells to make them specifically target the lukemia cancer, and added a gene to make the white blood cells multiply like crazy. It was these 'killer' reprogrammed white blood cells that were injected, and went onto multiply heavily and attack the cancerous cells.

Gene therapies like this, using white blood cells to attack cancer have been tried before, but they only killed a small amount of cancerous cells before dying off. The new approach here is using modified HIV as the carrier, and also including a replicator gene to make the white blood cells much more effective.

That said; this is only 3 patients. We don't know how scalable this approach will be to other patients, whether it will be generally effective, and whether it actually kills the cancer or only slows it down. Presumably the same approach could be used to target other cancers, but even if it only hits this common form of leukemia, it's still a massive step forward IFF it's scalable and effective, compared to other treatments such as radiation and chemo.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[DrgnDancer]

I am not an expert on this, by any means, but from reading the article and a bit of deduction I *think* the answers are straightforward:

1) The use of the modified HIV strain is outside of the body. It's used to "train" the white blood cells that have already been removed, so it's not likely to have much, if any, capability to harm the patient.

2) The new "specialized" white blood cells are just that. Once their "target" is gone, they will likely die off. There's nothing for them to fight.

3) Even if the treatment has a similar mortality rate to flu, that would be a huge and unimaginable improvement over the mortality rate for most types of aggressive cancer. The mortality rate for flu, especially if the patient is already in the hospital and everyone is prepared for it, is extremely low. The mortality rate for some of the more aggressive cancers is well over 50% even with treatment.

Honestly, there exist several forms of highly aggressive, highly lethal cancers that people would look at a 20% base mortality rate for the cure and consider it a good deal. Not that this seems to be a problem in this case.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[gstoddart]

most people with pancreatic cancer would gladly make that trade!

Well, there's some cancers associated with HIV/AIDS which themselves are pretty nasty.

As I recall, HIV was identified because there was a cluster of people with Kaposi's Sarcoma, which was supposed to have a much lower incidence than what they were finding.

If you've been going through cancer treatment, and already have a diminished immune system from the treatment, I'm not sure that's really a trade you'd want to be eager to make.

I'm always glad to hear about potential advances in medicine, but I wouldn't rush right out to try to use this as a cure just yet. They're likely a ways off from that.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[TheRaven64]

I'm expecting now that if I actually read TFA, I will discover that it was using a modified form of the common cold to treat headaches. In mice.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If I understand it correctly what they did was engineer a gene-tweaking organic machine by assembling the subsystems from HIV that enter the target immune system cells and reverse-transcribe an RNA payload with an unrelated payload to do what they want. The subsystems don't have to be purified from live virus, risking contamination with functional HIV: Instead they can be separately produced by such techniques as inserting the each of the desired HIV genes into another lifeform, such as E. coli, producing just one "working part".

If so this is not a "modified HIV strain, nor any lifeform at all. It's some pieces of a virus with a completely unrelated (except for the "insert me" tags) hunk of nucleic acid "data tape". No program from the virus is left at all, just its cellular machinery.

Given the target and the desired transformation, HIV was the logical virus to reverse-engineer for the moving parts.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I am an expert on this. The HIV was used as a transport mechanism to modify the DNA of the white blood cells. It's identical to using a computer virus to deliver a kernel patch instead of self-replicating code. Retroviral engineering is extremely common in biology. The critical point is that the virus has had all of its self-replicating machinery removed in advance. No HIV genes were transferred into the white blood cells; only a payload designed by the researchers.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell all your friends. Especially if you're friends with Taco. The amount of ignorance on Slashdot about biological concepts that are directly analogous to computer concepts is staggering.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

Biological viruses are very much like old-school computer viruses in that they have two parts:

1. inject code (genes) into programs (cells)
2. get executed by system (cells) and create copy of self that can infect more programs/cells.

In genetic engineering, using viruses as a transport mechanism is extremely common, because they're often easier to alter than affecting cells directly. They have far simpler internal states. In the case of this experiment, HIV was just used as a carrier for a genetic construct (a bunch of code) designed by the researchers. Absolutely no HIV DNA was transferred, and so there's absolutely no risk of HIV infection: after the viral DNA is inserted into the cell, you just get an empty, lifeless capsule made out of inert protein polymers. Using HIV happened to be desirable because its machinery is very good at infecting.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[ekgringo]

It's not really that simple. There are many strains of HIV and it is generally advisable to avoid exposure to other strains if you are already HIV+. Treating one strain may be manageable, but when you have multiple strains, there are fewer treatment options and the ones that exist are less effective.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

That's actually a misrepresentation in the MSNBC article. I've pored over the original paper a little bit more now, and actually the researchers didn't add anything specific to trigger multiplication. Also, they weren't macrophages, which is what most people think of when they hear 'white blood cells'—they were T cells. T cells target one specific molecule, and if they find that molecule, then the body tells that T cell to reproduce. The thousand-fold growth was actually the body's way of saying "hey, I found an infection!" and dealing with it normally. The levels subsided on their own after the cancer was gone, as with any manageable disease.

T cell receptors (the things that stick out of T cells which allow them to detect their prey) are incredible biologically because the body makes them up at semi-random when generating new T cells; it does the same for antibodies. However, we only have so many building blocks to choose from when making them, and the receptors we need to target leukaemia aren't possible. It's conceivable that a random mutation could allow someone to develop a resistance to cancer naturally, but that could potentially come at the cost of effective protection against many other diseases.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

Here's part of your answer. There are only about twenty-five million possible naturally-occurring receptors. The other part of your answer lies squarely in the journal article's abstract: the antigen targeted naturally occurs in a subset of the body's B cells, and they ended up killing those off in the process of defeating the cancer.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I was going to write an excited post about this, but further reading of the article has made me a little more sceptical. What the researchers did was create a kind of autoimmune disease, where their engineered T cells targeted and destroyed a subset of the patients' B cells. It's important to note that all of these cells were circulating in the blood, where the cancerous cells were easy to access; this technique probably would not work well against tumours, especially since it appears to wipe out the subset of non-cancerous B cells from which the cancer line had originated. If this technique were applied directly to, say, lung cancer, it would destroy all of whatever lung tissue had become cancerous. It's also left the patients with an immune deficiency.

That being said, the leukaemia they treated is extremely common amongst cancer patients, and, in this case, it would be possible to fix the immune deficiency by adding a self-destruct switch to the T cells, and reintroducing healthy B cells, so the body can be put back to normal once the cancer is definitely defeated.

Prior to this, we had no good way of treating blood leukaemia. Traditional chemotherapy relies on poisoning all fast-reproducing cells, which does huge damage to the immune system, intestinal lining, and hair follicles. Further, bone marrow transplants are often required to restore blood cell production afterwards. It looks like this technique was tried previously, but abandoned due to failures. So things are looking up—but other forms of cancer are still likely to be a part of life for a long time yet!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I get to post this link again, hooray! The randomness comes from chopping up a very long segment of DNA in a couple of arbitrarily-chosen places. There are only about 25 million possible combinations... and the body also has a bunch of mechanisms for detecting and protecting native molecules, like this thing.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

That's the idea. As it so happens, I dug up more of the article, and it looks like their custom receptor targets the kind of B cell that mutates into a diseased state in this particular form of leukaemia. In essence, they're skipping the check against the whitelist that's supposed to prevent these receptors from reaching maturity. The patients actually lost all of those B cells as a result, but by programming their custom T cells with a means of triggering self-destruction, they could easily reintroduce a healthy population. Et voilà—everything back to normal.

Could the title and summary be more exaggerated?

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you got from that article is "cancer has been cured by injecting people with HIV", please abstain from posting any more summaries.

Still a better prognosis?

[Nidi62]

Even if it did use real HIV, in many cases the life-span for HIV is around 24 years after infection in the US. This is compared to what, 6 months-5 years for some of the worst forms of cancer? I think in many cases, people would very willingly make that trade. IN many cases it would allow people to live to almost a full average lifespan anyway.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Zaatxe]

Your point is compelling, but some people might think that lifeSpan != life.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[geekoid]

So, 'slowly' dying in 6 months, mostly alone with a small group of friends is 'life' and living for the rest of your natural life capable of doing everything you can now isn't life?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[LWATCDR]

"Even if it did use real HIV" They don't and if they would never try that because it wouldn't pass the medical ethics board for human testing if for no other reason than the risk of retransmission to a healthy person.
All the rest of this discussion of if HIV or cancer is useless since it has no valid application to this discussion.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

No. But slowly dying in 6 months with a steady stream of hookers and whiskey paid for by the Make a Wish foundation and various charities? That's life baby!

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Nidi62]

You are just as bad a homeopathic advocates. You know damn well there is nothing related to nerves or anything similar when it comes to cancer. It is a problem with the genes inside the cells. You aren't just giving people false hope spewing lies and propaganda like this, you are killing them.

It'll never make it through FDA trials

[DarthBart]

FTA: Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research.

Of course they did. If you cure cancer with one shot, the cash cow of chemo drugs dries up for Big Pharma and the cash cow of donations dries up for the American Cancer Society and other 'non-profit' organization.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[characterZer0]

The eradication of polio did not mean the end of the March of Dimes. The NCI would simply need a name change and slight focus adjustment.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[BKX]

This argument is bullshit. Pure bullshit. If any "Big Pharma" company invented a cure for cancer tomorrow, you can bet your ass that they'd be all over it in a heartbeat. Why? Because, then that company would forever be known as the company that cured cancer. Every new product they make would be a pot of gold. Every ad they put out would be "Muhdikard, a new treatment for erectile dysfunction, from Drugco. We cured cancer.". Every drug company on the face of the planet would kill for that kind of marketing, not to mention the money from selling the cancer cure.

Now, of course, "cure for cancer" is a worthless phrase as well, since cancer is a type of disease, and not a single disease, and therefore, it's extremely unlikely that one cure will work for more than one cancer let alone all of them.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Samantha Wright]

The amount of money that goes into cancer research, and pet projects pork-barrelled as cancer research, greatly overshadows all other medical and biological research budgets. I used to work on a lab that did neurodevelopmental studies in itty-bitty worms called C. elegans. It was, in large part, funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute. The end of cancer research funding would utterly destroy fundamental research in molecular biology and biochemistry.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[tibit]

Someone going by radagast posted the below in the msnbc.com comment section on TFA. It's very well said, so I'll just cite it to preserve it in case msnbc ever wipes their old comments (that wouldn't be the first time):

Nowhere in the health care bill does the government "takeover" healthcare. They simply mandate that everyone be covered. The health care you would buy under the plan will still be administered by private, competing companies. Our system will not be a "socialized" version of Canada, nor will there be government employees administering your plan.

Holy @!$%#, holy @!$%#. It's been two years and still this misinformed tripe continues to bubble up as "knowledge." Why don't some of you who hate progressives do something to better America? The only ones who seem willing to try are the progressives. Slandering what they do only defeats your own self interest.

Drug companies do not develop cell therapies, they develop small molecule drugs. You might as well blame Ford Motor Co. when the crops fail. Cancer is a collection of thousands of different diseases which present differently in nearly all patients. It is one of the most intellectually and technically challenging problems in human history. Millions of people are working on it. Many cancers are curable right now. Many drugs are effective (despite your widely held belief that there are no cures). Other forms can be managed, while still other forms remain a death sentence.

If you want cures - THEN ALLOW THE GOVERNMENT TO SPEND MONEY ON BASIC RESEARCH. Cutting government funding cuts basic science, which keeps scientists from advancing in a great many fields - cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, the list is exceptionally long. Putting academic scientists (the average scientist in academia makes ~ $30-40,000) out of work seems to be what some of you want. These men and women who have sacrificed much of their lives and money to solving these problems are starving for funding. There will be only one result. The quality of research will deteriorate. People will be forced to cut corners and make mistakes as they claw for the scraps from Congress.

Even so, drug companies play their part because they have some of the best private funding and funding derived from their profits. The notion that they won't research cures or that they don't want cures because they will lose money is personally insulting to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who perform some of the most advanced research in these fields. Research that would put your simple minds to shame by its depth and breadth of ingenuity and know-how. When there is a cure it is gotten to market as fast as possible and gotten into the hands of doctors as fast as possible. There are endless examples of this.

Do you really think that these private sector workers don't have family members who have died? Do you think that they don't read the same headlines? They know the challenge better than any of you and they know the face of the disease better than you. If there really was any validity to the notion that drug companies are standing in the way of cures, then the people who would be complaining the loudest would be those who work in them. They would be complaining very loudly that their work is not getting out because of the company's supposed policies. How many of those people do we hear from?

NONE.

You people who traffic in nonsense and politically motivated tripe are the reason our Congress is the way it is. Look at yourselves and the ignorance you spread as fact. Shame. Nothing but rumor mongers, denialists, and idiots. Our Congress is a reflection of the American people and the American people continue to prove they are shamelessly and willfully ignorant, belligerant, and infantile. If you can't handle the internet like adults maybe we should take it away from you.

Grow the @!$%# up and get a clue. All of you.

Re:Proof of God

[Issarlk]

I'm sorry but such a level of irony - treating cancer with HIV - is the proof that God is a woman and named Eris.
Nowhere in the Bible did I see a lot of "Ahah, just kidding" coming from the christian God.

Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[kvvbassboy]

And for one of them, it only removed 70% of the cancerous tissues. This is hardly a significant number to confirm the efficacy of the treatment. Also from TFA:

"Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration."

Both the guesses as BS, considering the impact that this treatment could result in. I get the feeling that the article is hiding certain aspects of the treatment that may put it in a negative light.

Come on /. - read and understand before commenting

[PHCOSci]

HIV is being used here in a way similar to how lentiviruses are used to routinely introduce synthetic DNA constructs to human cell cultures. In summation it is a version of HIV where the actual viral DNA has been gutted and replaced with the chimeric construct providing these white blood cells with the ability to both rapidly divide and DETECT CANCER inside LIVING PATIENTS. The individuals citing their low patient count as "statistically insignificant" do not have a firm grasp on the field of oncology. The results published in the PRIMARY RESEARCH ARTICLE are astounding. The volume of highly specific cell death observed therein is unprecedented. Chemotherapy, radiation, and all other cancer treatments are non-specific. They kill healthy cells and tumorgenic cells alike. This is the first SUCCESSFUL application of an innate immune system targeting strategy for sustained destruction of cancer cells. It's revolutionary. It was a gutsy, bold move by the researchers. Their executed project combined some of the most advanced approaches in virology, cell biology, and biochemistry. I mean, give credit where credit is due. These guys just hit the nail on the head and you're all blabbering about nonsense.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, if you read the article, it's pretty clear that while this particular experiment was leukemia based the theory should work on nearly any cancer. Basically, they used a modified HIV virus as a carrier to modify the DNA of some of the patients white blood cells (outside of the body). The modified cells are made to specifically target the cancer in question (and replicate, a lot). If trials continue to be successful, there is no reason to think that the "signature" of any cancer couldn't be substituted for the leukemia.

Incorrect. It may work on a significant fraction of some cancers (especially leukemias, cancers of the blood) but it is unlikely to be a generic cure of most or all cancers. (TL;DR of the link which is annoying technical - it's a cool new twist on a general class of cancer fighting strategies that up until now have had limited success. It may well prove to be useful, but it is in the very, very early stages of research and there are some reasons why this general class of treatment would be expected not to work on many different cancers.)

And kudos to MSNBC for actually providing a link to the original literature.

Research related to this has been covered.

[What'sInAName]

From 2005:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/05/02/14/1519212/The-Cure-for-Cancer-Might-be-HIV

I thought the subject of this story sounded familiar. Seems like they've made progress! Let's hope it stands up to further studies. Many, many promising treatments turn out to be fools' gold.