Cancer Resistance Technique Moves To Human Trials 168
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."
Graft vs. Tumor effect (Score:5, Informative)
In "Graft vs. Host" [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:This might be a controversial POV... (Score:5, Informative)
Not to be rude but you, good sir, are talking out of your ass. My brother was 14 when he died of pancreatic cancer. He wasn't suffering from "psychological conditions," he wasn't "unwilling to forgive someone" for some imaginary event that caused his body to somehow psychosomatically create the cancer that killed him. You want to know what I think caused his cancer? I think it was Doe Run [wikipedia.org] and Dow Chemical polluting the crap [scorecard.org] out of the everything around them [sierraclub.org]. We lived in Herculaneum, MO for the first 10 years of his life, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that was the cause. Your touchy-feely approach on this smacks of New Age "science" with nothing to back it up. "Oh it was their own feelings that did it!" Right. I suppose next you're going to start telling people that Thetans are causing all the world's ills.
Re:Sign me up! (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't claim that it should be tested initially in people currently responding to conventional therapy. I was merely saying that I hope I am able to apply for inclusion in the trials should A) my condition change to make me eligible or B) the eligibility requirements of later trials change to include me should my condition not change.
As for it being potentially harmful or fatal in human trials, the likelihood is much smaller than other first-run clinical trials. Granulocyte therapy is already used in humans to treat other conditions. The only differences in this regard are the targeted conditions and an increased quantity of granulocytes infused into the recipient.
Given the nature of the treatment, the only likely adverse reaction would be an immune response. I doubt that the increased infusion amounts are going to cause more immune responses than already-established granulocyte protocols. They'll probably have a statistically indistinguishable amount of adverse reactions, but obviously establishing that conclusively is one of the points of the trial.
Re:Cool! (Score:2, Informative)
And did you know that there was absolutely NO Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research BEFORE Bush? You act as if he cut off funding that was already there! Bullshit.
Bush was right; you were wrong . . . . . again. :p
Re:Sign me up! (Score:3, Informative)
They used similar techniques for antibiotic resistant infection so the safety should be understood. Now its a matter of determining if the method's benefits out weight it's costs and risks.
Humans are not big mice (Score:5, Informative)
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 [rcn.com], 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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [nejm.org] 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
Good progress or poor progress? See for yourself. (Score:3, Informative)
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 [uwtv.org]
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 [uwtv.org]
Why learn about cancer from kibitzers on slashdot, when there are great resources for technical-minded folk to learn directly from scientists?
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
Be careful about using absolutes like "anything" or "nothing", "always", or "never". They frequently come back to bite you. Remember, all of this research is extremely nascent, most results are just getting to the human testing phases. Further, embryonic stem cell research receives far less funding (especially in the United States) and what research does occur here is very limited [eurekalert.org]. Even with one hand tied behind its back though:
Ok, I'm tired to cutting and pasting. The list is way too long. And as far as Bush not opposing embryonic stem cell research, your daft if you actually believe otherwise. He's stated as much on many occasions. 8 years ago, embryonic stem cell research was a glint in sciences eye. It's no wonder that funding didn't exist before then.
That we have received funding despite Bush's efforts is not a sign of his support. Simply compare the funding being provided within the U.S. to that being provided in other countries. It's no wonder the U.S. is lagging far behind [genengnews.com] the rest of the world. You know what happens when a societies backwards, ignorant beliefs prevent funding into cutting edge technology? The cutting edge sciencists leave [the-scientist.com].