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."
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
Progress is slow when new medicine is constantly under attack and being made...
illegal: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071900524.html [washingtonpost.com]
'sinful': http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7287071.stm [bbc.co.uk]
and unteachable: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080627-louisiana-passes-first-antievolution-academic-freedom-law.html [arstechnica.com]
Enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This might be a controversial POV... (Score:1, Insightful)
what a nutter
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are diagnosed with cancer today -- any kind of cancer, and remember the word "cancer" covers an enormous range of disease -- your chances of long-term survival are much, much better than they were five years ago. Five years ago, your chances were much better than ten years ago. Etc. The general public loses interest when a promising new treatment turns out not to be The! Cure! For! Cancer!, but yes, research does make its way from the lab to the bedside. Probably no new medicine or treatment technique will ever cure all cancer, but there's a good chance it will take care of a significant portion of a certain type of cancers -- which is, of course, of infinite interest to those diagnosed with that particular disease.
Re:This might be a controversial POV... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you've just described 90% of the human race. I guess we're all screwed.
Joking aside, it's an interesting hypothesis. I certainly wouldn't rule out someone's mental state in regard to survivability. Not so sure about it as a causal factor, though I suppose long-term stress could contribute to weaker systems. I'd love to see a proper study done.
Re:Cool! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oops. My reply was supposed to be to GPP. It is entirely true, of course, that religious objections slow scientific progress in this and many other medical and biological fields. But demand is high enough that in the long run, the research will get done and the medicines will be made available. No way of knowing how much unnecessary suffering and death people will endure in the meantime, of course, because some idiot priest or politician values their own chosen mythology over human life.
Re:Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
OK, sure. Have a look at the Kaplan-Meier curves for survival for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia in children. In the 60's your child's chance of long term cancer free survival was less than 10%. Today, your child's chance of long term cancer free survival is in the 90% range. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/support_cancer_research_now.php [scienceblogs.com] Orignial article: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/2/166 [nejm.org]
While big leaps and bounds are great. The progress in cancer treatment and research is made through slow and consistent work at the same problem. More power to these people. But each one of these 'we're headed to trials' announcements is one grain of sand - possibly a big one - working toward grinding the machine to a halt.
Re:This might be a controversial POV... (Score:4, Insightful)
Please keep in mind that while positive attitude certainly doesn't seem to hurt your chances with cancer, it also really doesn't seem to help at all. Source. [medicinenet.com]
And what the parent post is referring to seems very very far outside the pale as far as any info we have on the causes of cancer. It to me even seems to be a bit of blaming the victim for the disease.
Attitudes like that will not help in any way to actually progress our attempts to cure cancer. Science, like the topic of this thread, hopefully will. That is assuming that this turns out to work. Lets hope.
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that orthodox Jews have lightened up on the blood prohibition, there are probably a few sects there that wouldn't partake, Witnesses will not like it and a few other radical fringe cults. Of course when the whacko extremists are the only ones still dieing of cancers it'll be because of a gov conspiracy to kill them off.
Re:This might be a controversial POV... (Score:4, Insightful)
* Okay the GP is in a whole other league of irrationality, but you're being somewhat irrational at least.
Re:Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past 20 years, we saw a number of surgical and radiologic techniques reach clinical use. When I was doing cancer research, I worked on projects using Gleevec and Zolinza, both now FDA approved. However, both of these drugs currently have very narrow uses; Gleevec is only effective against CML, for example, and Zolinza [aka vorinostat or SAHA] is currently only approved for certain types of leukemia.
I am skeptical of anyone who says they have any 100% Cure For Cancer. As other posters have noted, cancer describes a single overall pathology, uncontrolled growth of cells, that breaks down into many subtypes based on tissue type and further based on the underlying genetic fault. Immunology, in particular, is guilty of following trends (so it's granulocytes this week, huh guys? Have you given up on Tregs, vaccines, etc.?) and pushing for the ultimate single cure.
While it's true that cancer is a disease of the old, and it's increasingly well known that the composition of immune cells changes as you age, I suspect that someone would have noticed by now if it was as simple as transplanting granulocytes. How about a retrospective study of blood transfusion recipients? Shouldn't this population, on average, have a lower incidence of cancer relative to a comparable control population?
Re:This might be a controversial POV... (Score:1, Insightful)
Depression is certainly associated with increased mortality. There have been studies linking psychological states to subsequent cancer incidence, but their findings have been mixed.
Good luck in your study. Please be very careful to separate correlation from causation. There are far too many "scientists" that don't and I find it pretty depressing. ;-)
In this case things like "bad genes" (sub-clinical genetic mutations), sub-clinical developmental abnormalities, sub-clinical poisoning (e.g. mercury) and sub-clinical viral infections could easily be a common cause or increased risk factor for many forms of depression and cancer. Also, when people are stressed by both obvious and sub-clinical effects the total "load" on a person could easily lead to increased loneliness due to lack of support when feeling mediocre/bad, even though loneliness may not be directly caused by these factors.
In other words if you discover a correlation between loneliness and increased mortality don't assume that loneliness is causing increased mortality.
Re:This might be a controversial POV... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lead does not cause cancer.
Well, the American Cancer Society says the evidence disagrees with your point of view. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_1_3X_Lead.asp?sitearea=PED [cancer.org]
Perhaps you should stop talking out of your ass - especially when you are responding to a guy who is expressing a reasonable response to an unreasonable suggestion: that people deserve the cancer's they get because they haven't been forgiving enough.
Moreover even if lead doesn't cause cancer, its still an extremely toxic agent. Saying 'well it doesn't cause cancer' is the equivalent of saying Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Mice have no cancer??? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?