'Living Drug' That Fights Cancer By Harnessing The Immune System Clears Key Hurdle (npr.org) 73
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: A new kind of cancer treatment that uses genetically engineered cells from a patient's immune system to attack their cancer easily cleared a crucial hurdle Wednesday. A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee unanimously recommended that the agency approve this "living drug" approach for children and young adults who are fighting a common form of leukemia. The agency doesn't have to follow the committee's recommendation but usually does. The treatment takes cells from a patient's body, modifies the genes, and then reinfuses those modified cells back into the person who has cancer. If the agency approves, it would mark the first time the FDA has approved anything considered to be a "gene therapy product." The treatment is part of one of the most important developments in cancer research in decades -- finding ways to harness the body's own immune system to fight cancer. And while it has generated much hope, there are some concerns about its safety over the long term -- and its cost.
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Yes: The Hunt for Red October.
The book went on FOREVER. The movie shortened it to a reasonable length.
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The book went on FOREVER.
Funny, I thought it was rather short. Compared to, say, Debt of Honor or The Sum of All Fears.
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Carrie?
Re: Sounds Awesome (Score:2)
The Road.
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Jurassic Park.
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Watch The Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price, even better.
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Focus group meddling (Score:2)
Liked the book way better, incidentally.
Then watch the director's cut.
Executives decided to completely re-do the ending for the theatrical cut after some focus group tests.
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"But just wondering if this was the premise for 'I Am Legend' with Will Smith. Liked the book way better, incidentally."
Small wonder, the book didn't have Will Smith in it.
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The bridge on the river Kwai
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Replying to myself to correct mistake: above reply was meant to the below "Is there any movie that can hold a candle to a book?", of course.
what about the non-scientists? (Score:3)
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If you don't listen to them, how do you know whether they're trying to make things better or worse?
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There are scientists at the FDA, tasked with reviewing applications. I knew one.
prior art (Score:4, Funny)
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yes there has been previous similar therapies that had pervasive side effects like brain swelling that resulted in death
And (according to TFA) this one sometimes does that, too. But, in the (closely watched) experimental group, they were able to catch it and treat it in the patients where it occurred.
It turned out to be transient. So nobody died, and the effect went away once the cancer cells were cleared and the immune cells settled down to just guarding against recurrence.
It was a "cytokine storm", wher
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And (according to TFA) this one sometimes does that, too.
Yes that's correct. 48% of the time, so effectively a 50-50 shot. Which that's a big improvement over previous attempts.
But, in the (closely watched) experimental group, they were able to catch it and treat it in the patients where it occurred.
Right again, and this is the thing about this treatment. You have to have a trained team of bio-engineers close by for these types of things. Right now, there's two paths to treatment with any Cytokine Release Syndrome (CRS). One, shut it all down. That's a mixture of blunt action drugs such as anti-histamines and corticosteroids. This basically shuts the T-cells down and allows the
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Some of the T cells that were injected are likely still alive - or at least, there are likely some modified cells still circulating. They're often detectable long after the cancer is gone, and probably are still around as non-circulating memory cells even when we can't detect them. The body certainly can't do what the modified cells do in the same way they're doing it - the chimeric ant
New kind of therabpy, equivelent to Anti-biotics (Score:2)
This has the potential to be as life changing as anti-biotics were. Just hope we do a better job with gene therap than with anti-biotics. (Can't believe we let shmucks put it animal feed and soap. Just asking for resistant bacteria.)
Hopefully we don't end up doing stupid things like letting people add human genes to non-human life forms.
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What is the difference between Antibiotic and Antibacterial?
Antibiotics are used against both bacteria and fungi, but antibacterial compounds are used against bacteria only.
Antibiotics is a larger class of drugs of which antibacterial substances is a major subclass.
Source of quote [differencebetween.com]
Antibacterials are a kind of antibiotics. There are antibiotics in soap.
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“substance produced by a microorganism that is antagonistic to another microorganism’s growth in high dilution”.
A bar of soap is a pure lump of alkali fatty acid salts so that throws the high dilution thing right out the window. Soap is not an antibiotic. It is a surfactant that causes the cell wall of bacteria to rupture.
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I do read what I link to and you interrupted a conversation without knowing jack shit about what we are talking about.
Specifically we were not talking about pure soap, nor did anyone claim that pure soap is an antibiotic.
We made the claim that corporations were selling soap that had been adulterated with triclosan and similar substances. One side claimed they were antibiotics, using a definition found on the internet, the other side claimed that they were antibacterial, not antibiotics, using a medical de
Re:New kind of therabpy, equivelent to Anti-biotic (Score:5, Informative)
They're wrong. Antibiotics are, according to the generally accepted definition, medicine. By definition, medicine is something that, when consumed, cures some illness. If you cannot consume it to kill bacteria in vivo, then it is not an antibiotic.
For example, chlorine bleach is an antibacterial agent. It is not an antibiotic. (If you drink it, you will die, but the bacteria will not.)
In fact, in the modern use of the terms, their answer is exactly backwards. Antibiotics are generally considered to be a subset of antibacterial agents. When we talk about substances that kill other microorganisms, we call them antifungals or antiparasitics, not antibiotics. We commonly say things like "antibiotics will make a yeast infection worse", which would be blatantly untrue if you included antifungals under antibiotics. I don't think I have ever (in my lifetime) heard someone call an antifungal or antiparasitic agent an antibiotic. It just isn't done. They're entirely different classes of medication that should not be confused (because doing so could be a life-threatening mistake).
And people don't typically use the word antibacterial when we talk about antibiotics because that term is too overloaded by other things that aren't medicinal. See also: bleach.
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My views are correct according to the Oxford English Dictionary [oxforddictionaries.com] and many others, and are also consistent with the way that the words are commonly used, both by civilians and by doctors, at least in the United States (and, I suspect, elsewhere). Language changes, and old definitions become wrong. It happens.
FYI, dermatological treatment is still considered "in vivo". So no, ignoring the sloppiness of my use of the word "consumed", my definition is not wrong in any meaningful sense, nor is my example; if
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I agree that calling antibacterial soap an "antibiotic" doesn't fit how that word is used - but trying to suggest that's because it isn't "medicine" doesn't make sense.
In your own linked dictionary, the relevant definition for medicine is: "A drug or other preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease." That definition would obviously include antibacterial soaps which are preparations used to prevent a disease. I can imagine being prescribed an antibacterial soap and calling it medicine (but, aga
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The word "prevention" in that definition is somewhat problematic, in that it you could stretch that to cover all sorts of things that most people wouldn't think of as medicine, e.g. citrus fruits. (If you don't eat at least a bit of citrus, you'll likely get gout.)
In general, medicine treats disease. When medicine is used prophylactically (e.g. giving Cipro to someone who you think might have been exposed to airborne anthrax), its actual purpose is still treating disease, just treating it before it becom
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Yeah, see I think fruit fails as "medicine" not because it's preventative, but rather because I wouldn't call it a "drug or preparation". If you, say, ground up tree bark and snorted it to prevent a cold, I would have no problem calling that a medicine. I mean, there's foggy areas if you want there to be (oh, this "baked potato" is medicine because it's a "baked preparation" that I use to prevent the disease of "starvation"), but I think that definition is actually pretty solid in terms of matching how pe
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Okay, how about orange juice, then. :-)
The point is that medicine is a bit like pornography. I don't know how to define it, but I'll know it when I see it. :-D
I guess you c
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This does work (Score:4, Interesting)
He had been told by his doctor, just before he was accepted into the trial, that he should start putting his affairs in order.
If I recall correctly, he is 7 years cancer free now.
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GMOs entirely different. They are something that you're letting out into the environment. They aren't something you're injecting into a single person. Like all blood cells, these things have a very short lifetime. Then they die. They don't replicate themselves. They're not even designed to (like GMOs).
GMOs are like Dick Cheney deciding he owns your house because his out of control dog shat on your lawn.
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GMOs are like Dick Cheney deciding he owns your house because his out of control dog shat on your lawn.
Correction, the companies that own "some" GMOs are like that. GMO's in themselves are not responsible for the company that made them's reckless behavior. GMOs in of themselves are a useful tool, how a company chooses to abuse them is a totally different topic.
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They are something that you're letting out into the environment. They aren't something you're injecting into a single person.
Not to worry, things you inject into a person cannot possibly get into the environment. Nope, can't happen. Never, no way, no how.
GMOs are like Dick Cheney deciding he owns your house because his out of control dog shat on your lawn.
I think you are confusing "GMOs" and "GMO patents". It's fair to dislike GMO patents. Disliking GMOs because you dislike GMO patents is like disliking literature because you don't like copyright law.
It sounds like you're trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance between "GMOs bad" and "cancer treatment (with GMOs) good". I submit that a better solution would be to look at w
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And nobody's been able to find me a case supporting that. Monsanto has apparently only sued farmers who deliberately attempted to violate Monsanto patents.
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I remember the original GE video on this (Score:5, Informative)
GE did a story on it that they posted to youtube years ago. [youtube.com]
Probably my favorite part of this story hitting the news is that the spokesperson for this treatment is the girl from the above video. She's 12 now and still completely cancer free. [chicagotribune.com] I'm very glad to see she's doing well.
cost equation (Score:2)
... there are some concerns about its safety over the long term -- and its cost.
I figure the cost will be X in the developed world other than the US and 10X in the US because the FDA protects pharma profits (and it's own jobs) first.
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I figure the cost will be X in the developed world other than the US and 10X in the US because the FDA protects pharma profits (and it's own jobs) first.
That's a completely ridiculous statement. The cost is going to be astronomical because this therapy is developed on a "per person" basis. Additionally, there's not a really finely tuned way to control the altered T-cells, that's something they're still working on for the next generation of these types of drugs. So that said, these T-cells can attack cancer and healthy cells and which ones they do attack depends on what tissue they land on while in your blood stream. Long hospital stays are going to be a
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What method? (Score:2)
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"This treatment is a gene therapy that provides a single new genetic blueprint to cells that gives those cells the ability to recognize the cancer as 'different' and distinct from the rest of the body."
Ok, but these cells have a lifetime of 12 to 20 days and they do not replicate. Does that mean you have to do that every 2 weeks or does the cancer get cured in a week or 2?
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The Next Generation of Immunotherapy Works (Score:5, Informative)
I'm living proof these sorts of immunotherapy treatments work: five years and still cancer-free. It's wonderful that the FDA may be on the brink of approving their use outside of trials.
I sought out and was admitted into a trial at NIH in 2012 to use a similar treatment for Stage IV melanoma.
In my trial, the researchers harvested my existing white blood cells and selected those that were able to recognize and attack the mutations present in my melanoma. Those cells were expanded to 130 billion in the lab and then re-infused into my body after my own immune system was killed off. In essence, my immune system was rebooted with white blood cells that could recognize and fight the cancer cells.
In theory, my body has been effectively immunized against the some of the cancerous mutations that my melanoma exhibited. I won't need any further treatment for my previous melanoma EVER.
I know fellow melanoma patients who were in related trials at NIH in which their harvested white cells were genetically engineered to express different proteins (like, IL-12 or IL-15 or NY/ESO) with similar success.
These novel cancer-fighting approaches are working. I'm happy that the FDA may actually be slowing adapting to the changing medical technology.
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Re:The Next Generation of Immunotherapy Works (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a good question, and I'm not certain that the researchers could definitively say yes or no.
I should note that the white blood cells (lymphocytes) that were grown in the lab were those selected to attack the cancerous cells. Some of those T lymphocytes may also have the "memory" for identifying the other foreign items from which I've already acquired immunity. In addition, as part of the treatment, twenty-four hours after receiving the new white blood cells that were grown in the lab, I was given a pint of the blood stem cells that were extracted before treatment, mostly to counteract the effects of the total body radiation on the stem cells in my bone marrow for the trial. (The researchers were trying to determine if they got better survival results with this treatment by giving 12 Grays of radiation versus no radiation. Ultimately, they determined from the trial that the radiation showed little improvement in overall survival.)
I do know that my allergies have changed since my treatment. In fact, they've moderated a bit. My first month or so after treatment, it seemed like I had seasonal allergies to everything, but that has pretty much faded away and ragweed and cottonwood seasons don't seem to affect me much anymore.
Also, my doctors had me on an antibiotic (Bactrim) for at least six months post-treatment, because of the increased risk of contracting a certain type of pneumonia (PCP) because of my suppressed immune system.
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Sincerely,
Just N. Case...
Its a no win situation. (Score:3)
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The genes are patented by the drug company.
There aren't genes patented because the therapy is developed on a per person basis. Last I checked, everyone had slightly different genes. What the drug company is selling is the process, not a drug.
The patients body making additional copies of the gene would be violating the patent and copyright of the drug maker.
That's not how any of that works. That's not even a correct statement about anything in medicine. That would be like saying a flu vaccine maker could sue you for your body's ability to mass reproduce an antigen. That's never been the case, no one thinks that should be the case, and thinking that one day tha
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Key hurdle? Umm... (Score:1)
Pardon my cynicism, but I'm hoping the real key hurdle here, wasn't whether humans would allow something to proceed. But more importantly, medically, the specified interaction going on between all metabolic, immunologic and chemical processes, produced the expected or beneficial results to proceed further with study or implementation.
The idea that the allowance of discovery, and our implementation of it, is the hurdle to progress, is rather disturbing.
For this type of progress, it's one thing whether the st