First Cancer Vaccine Produced 33
notestein writes "Scientists have produced a vaccine that is 100% effective against the virus that causes practically all forms of cervical cancer. In the US Pap smear tests have reduced the 13,000 new cases of cervical cancer each year to only 4,100 deaths. Still, worldwide, 258,000 women died from cervical cancer last year. The same article also mentions that a vaccine that is 75% effective in protecting women against herpes has been tested."
Ten years from now... (Score:4, Interesting)
I just read that the AD-36 virus and related variants have been shown to be a contributing factor in 30% of the obesity in the world. Now I see this article on Cancer.
Wild. How many of our daily problems are caused by these little rna splicing machines we call viruses?
Makes you think. I just hope that this is well tested enough for my daughter to use it in 10 or 15 years.
Cuchullain
Re:Ten years from now... (Score:3, Informative)
The funny thing is they have also been instrumental in our evolution. I recall reading an article about how many virus fragments are in human DNA. It was very interesting. But the long and short of it is many useful mutations have been caused by the critters.
Re:Ten years from now... (Score:2)
s/AD-36 virus/eating all the pies/g;
I don't mean to be sour -- this is great news (Score:5, Informative)
As an aside, one of the big mysteries about HIV has been why the immune system doesn't simple kill it. It can do so to a certain extent, but HIV has the sinister strategy of infecting the immune system iteself, hiding out in T-cell. Interesting and evil.
Re:I don't mean to be sour -- this is great news (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, I didn't think they'd conclusively figured out the cause of all cancers. (They haven't. They've made leaps forward in general oncology and they've figured out the multi-variate nature of the origins of most cancers.) Therefore, I think that you're being a bit heavy handed in your dismissal/minimization of this discovery. In point of fact, there was a time when people said that cervical cancer wasn't caused by a virus either
Re:I don't mean to be sour -- this is great news (Score:4, Informative)
All cancers? No. You're right that the viral theory for cervical cancer is fairly new, and I think most of the viral research goes back 20 years or so. But so far only a few cancers are known (retro)viral in origin, and it is abundantly clear cancer also results regularly from radiation (from gamma rays to UV), various chemicals (carconigens), smoking, genetic predisposition, and so on. Even the usually benign HPV does not technically cause cervical cancer, it is risk factor for it. The chances that all or most cancers are viral are small; I think the current estimate is something like 1/6, and don't believe the HPV researchers would suggest this is the holy grail -- outside of women concerned about cervical cancer.
So "cancer vaccine" sounds like more than it is. It is a vaccine aganst one kind of virus that in some women leads to cancer; someday hopefully soon we will have a vaccine against HIV; but these are far from a treatment for cancer or protection against cancer in general. This is a very significant finding if it pans out, but is also easily overstated. Don't stop donating to the Cancer Society it other words...
Its just speculation (Score:3, Informative)
The chances that all or most cancers are viral [is] small; I think the current estimate is something like 1/6
If I may, this is a bit of an odd stastic: "The chances that all or most are caused by a virus". I am curious as to how that would be determined, and as to whether you are mistaken.
Some quick reading reveals that quite a few famous cancers are virus related. Leukemia for example is caused by a virus.
Hepatitis B - liver
Hepatitis C - liver
HTLV-1 - leukimia
HPV - Uterine & cervix
Epstein-Barr - Burkitt's lymphoma, nasopharynx,
Hodgkin's disease
some googleing brings up some interesting pages
http://archive.mail-list.com/hbv_research/
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/jpitocch/ge
Re:I don't mean to be sour -- this is great news (Score:2)
Even the usually benign HPV does not technically cause cervical cancer, it is risk factor for it.
So, what then, is the cause of cervical cancer? There isn't a cause and that was what I was trying to get at. When discussing the "causes" of cancer, all you are left with, in even the best understood cases, are a series of mutations which led to (or allowed) unchecked growth of tissue within the body.
As for assigning causal responsibility, that's difficult. Was it the first in the requisite six (or three or ten) mutations that caused the cancer...or was it the last? In such a multi-layered causal system where one specific thing does not act as a sufficient anticedent for cancer development, what you're left with is essentially a cascade of problematic events, when taken together, lead to cancer developing but when looked at individually cannot be said to cause cancer.
So, my point is, when you said that viruses don't cause many cancers, you were, in a lot of ways making an unclear statement. There have been a number of cases where viruses have been clearly linked to an increased rate of cancer development...that's what you could call contributory-causality, if you like, but in all those cases (as you point out in the second post), the virus isn't required for the cancer to develop, and even if the virus is present, it doesn't mean that cancer is sure to follow. Does that mean that, in the cases where a virus is shown to contribute substantially to the chance of developing cancer, that the virus isn't the cause or a cause? I think, rather, it argues for the idea that the virus could be called a cause as much as anything else could be called a cause.
MacAndrew, you seem to know a bit about this kinda stuff, so please, if you could, what's the difference between a risk factor and a cause, when speaking about cancer? I think it's important to get the terms straight here so that we're making sense to eachother. (I'm honestly curious. My previous post was modded down as being flame-bait and I really didn't intend it to be viewed as such...same goes for this post.
-tcp
Re:I don't mean to be sour -- this is great news (Score:2)
Cancer is a kind of wastebasket term for genetic damage resulting from a variety of cause, some better understood than others. It might be that you need a specific combination of factors to set it off, or more likely that a sufficient number of insults causes the disorder. A variety of things inflict the insults.
Risk factor -- it is evident that viral infection is not enough, but is it essential? There must be other factors that act in concert to cause cancer, or reasons that some individuals might be more vulnerable. Maybe this works the other way around -- that radiation or carcinogens alone can't cause cancer until a certain virus is present, but I doubt it. For an over-the-top example, I don't think all the vaccines imagined would keep your genes together working unprotected in a nuclear reactor core.
Viruses as a factor -- I'm just skeptical, and that's based on semi-educated layman's knowledge, that viruses are an essential factor in all or even most cancers. They may be responsible for millions of cancers, which is a big deal, but even figuring out this linkage won't help us to address the millions more of cancers -- thus the note of caution.
There was for a while the idea that cancerous cells arose all the time and were dealt with efficiently by the immune system, so fixing the immune system might fix the cancer. This was disproved in part by the lack of additional cancers in immunocomprised individuals such as AIDS suffers, outside of some odd viral cancers like Karposi's sarcoma that rarely get traction in a healthy body.
But I will do some more reading, my information is dated. As with brain research, immunology has been developing at a meteoric pace. (In college I was interested in neurology and behavior; immunology was a side interest. I thought it was intrigued that the nervous system is highly centralized, while the immune system is distributed, with no governing authority; yet both act with a certain intelligence. Pretty cool example of parallel evolution -- different strategies for solving similar problems.)
Hold your horses... (Score:5, Insightful)
--trb
Exactly! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Exactly! (Score:2)
By that I don't mean that bacteria know more than us about viruses, but that we're better at dealing with bacteria than with viruses. Duh!
Terminology (Score:2)
By definition, a VACCINE is something you administer prior to exposure. A cure and a vaccine are two different things. You can get vaccinated against Hepatitis B, for instance, but there is still no *cure* for Hep-B. If you catch it, because you aren't immunized, you are still screwed.
The article, even the SUMMARY clearly said that this is a vaccine for the virus that causes 100% of all cervical cancer cases.... that's fairly accurate.
I think most of us know there is no single cause of cancer, and hence, no single cure (or vaccine)
Still, it's not a vaccine for "cancer" (Score:2, Interesting)
Virus anti-cancer "bots" (Score:2)
Cool -- get a cold, get rid of your tumor.
Cancer vaccine? Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cancer vaccine? Finally! (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway! *cracks whip* back to work, no futzing around, a cancer vaccine hasn't been found.
Relative degrees of research (Score:1, Interesting)
Once a year having a cold metal rod poked around inside your innermost regions while you lie flat on your back on an uncomfortable table is not fun. Now it's every 2-3 years instead.
Of course, I can't help but wonder how much money was put into vaccine research by the pharmecutical companies to stop women dying, versus the obscene amount of money and research put into new Viagra analogues.
Rhenium
Story Lead and Slashdot blurb both misleading (Score:4, Informative)
"Although there are more than 30 types of HPV that can infect human beings, one of them -- type 16 -- is responsible for about half of all cervical cancers. The experimental vaccine, made by Merck Research Laboratories, protected only against that one, although future formulations are likely to also protect against the less common HPV types that can cause cervical cancer" So although it is very good news, it does not protect against "the" virus that causes cervical cancer, it protects against the variant of that virus that causes 50% of virus derived cervical cancer. No small feat and better things to come, but not what it says in the Article lead.
Medical journal article? (Score:1)
Thanks.
Re:Medical journal article? (Score:3, Interesting)
~Phillip
Fix one bug, create 100 others (Score:1, Troll)
Western *Cough cough*FATSO-LIFESTYLE*cough*. This is the nature's way of telling us to STFU and RTFM!