Injecting the Flu Vaccine Into a Tumor Gets the Immune System To Attack It (arstechnica.com) 30
"Injecting the flu vaccine into a tumor gets the immune system to attack it," reports Ars Technica.
Joe_NoOne (Slashdot reader #48,818) shared their report: This is one of those ideas that seems nuts but had so many earlier results pointing toward it working that it was really just a matter of time before someone tried it. To understand it, you have to overcome the idea that the immune system is always diffuse, composed of cells that wander the blood stream. Instead, immune cells organize at the sites of infections (or tumors), where they communicate with each other to both organize an attack and limit that attack so that healthy tissue isn't also targeted.
From this perspective, the immune system's inability to eliminate tumor cells isn't only the product of their similarities to healthy cells. It's also the product of the signaling networks that help restrain the immune system to prevent it from attacking normal cells... A number of recently developed drugs help release this self-imposed limit, winning their developers Nobel Prizes in the process. These drugs convert a "cold" immune response, dominated by signaling that shuts things down, into a "hot" one that is able to attack a tumor...
[More recently] researchers identified over 30,000 people being treated for lung cancer and found those who also received an influenza diagnosis. You might expect that the combination of the flu and cancer would be very difficult for those patients, but instead, they had lower mortality than the patients who didn't get the flu. For more detailed tests, the researchers moved to mice, using melanoma cells that can form tumors when transplanted into the lungs of the mice... Having an active influenza virus infection reduced the ability of the melanoma cells to establish themselves in the lung. The effect isn't limited to the location of the infection, though, as tumors in the lung that wasn't infected were also inhibited. The effects were similar when breast cancer cells were placed into the lung, as well. All of this is consistent with the immune stimulation provided by a pathogen. The stimulation causes a general activation of the immune system that releases it from limits on its activity that prevent it from attacking tumor cells....
[T]he researchers obtained this year's flu vaccine and injected it into the sites of tumors. Not only was tumor growth slowed, but the mice ended up immune to the flu virus.... [T]he story does fit in well with the general consensus that the immune system can be a powerful tool against cancer, provided it can be mobilized properly. And, in at least some cases, a flu vaccine just might do the trick.
Joe_NoOne (Slashdot reader #48,818) shared their report: This is one of those ideas that seems nuts but had so many earlier results pointing toward it working that it was really just a matter of time before someone tried it. To understand it, you have to overcome the idea that the immune system is always diffuse, composed of cells that wander the blood stream. Instead, immune cells organize at the sites of infections (or tumors), where they communicate with each other to both organize an attack and limit that attack so that healthy tissue isn't also targeted.
From this perspective, the immune system's inability to eliminate tumor cells isn't only the product of their similarities to healthy cells. It's also the product of the signaling networks that help restrain the immune system to prevent it from attacking normal cells... A number of recently developed drugs help release this self-imposed limit, winning their developers Nobel Prizes in the process. These drugs convert a "cold" immune response, dominated by signaling that shuts things down, into a "hot" one that is able to attack a tumor...
[More recently] researchers identified over 30,000 people being treated for lung cancer and found those who also received an influenza diagnosis. You might expect that the combination of the flu and cancer would be very difficult for those patients, but instead, they had lower mortality than the patients who didn't get the flu. For more detailed tests, the researchers moved to mice, using melanoma cells that can form tumors when transplanted into the lungs of the mice... Having an active influenza virus infection reduced the ability of the melanoma cells to establish themselves in the lung. The effect isn't limited to the location of the infection, though, as tumors in the lung that wasn't infected were also inhibited. The effects were similar when breast cancer cells were placed into the lung, as well. All of this is consistent with the immune stimulation provided by a pathogen. The stimulation causes a general activation of the immune system that releases it from limits on its activity that prevent it from attacking tumor cells....
[T]he researchers obtained this year's flu vaccine and injected it into the sites of tumors. Not only was tumor growth slowed, but the mice ended up immune to the flu virus.... [T]he story does fit in well with the general consensus that the immune system can be a powerful tool against cancer, provided it can be mobilized properly. And, in at least some cases, a flu vaccine just might do the trick.
Hold up! (Score:5, Funny)
But what if this gives my tumor autism?
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But what if this gives my tumor autism?
You can relax -- you already have it.
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It's not at all interesting that you think no one believes such a link is possible. Of course it's possible, it's just never been demonstrated. The one guy who claimed to have evidence was found to have falsified all of it for profit.
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nobody is willing to accept that a link between vaccines and autism is even possible
No, it's just that there isn't a shred
of evidence that there is any such connection.
Of course, you can't prove that no such
connection exists, but you can't prove that
Santa doesn't exist, either.
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...nobody is willing to accept that a link between vaccines and autism is even possible.
Umm... no... Too many people are willing to accept a link between vaccines and autism, despite the overwhelming majority doctors and scientists stating otherwise. That's the problem.
win win (Score:3)
"tumor growth slowed, but the mice ended up immune to the flu virus."
And the health insurance paid for the flu shot.
Nuts? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure why you think this is nuts, this makes complete sense if you think about it logically, in fact I would go as far as to say you could inject just about anything into the tumor that would invoke a strong immune response and the immune system will attack the tumor too as a byproduct. The body is extremely capable of kill cancers all by itself, you just have to find a way such as this to engage the immune system to attack the bad cells.
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It's a thought experiment. You know, what Einstein used in developing the theory of Relativity.
Also, it's sarcasm, pointing out the stupidity of rejecting modern medical practice.
Flowchart, Baby (Score:2)
Today, the doctors have complicated systems to work under (insurances, regulations, etc.) and tight "specialties"/areas of practice. And they have a limited time to deal with each patient. There are multiple medical staff involved no
Re: Nuts? (Score:2)
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"Not sure why you think this is nuts, this makes complete sense if you think about it logically"
What, that if you inject a flu vaccine into a body it gets immunity from the flu virus like the article claims?
It's like saying if you eat a 5 pound anti-cancer cake your hunger goes away as well.
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Not sure why you think this is nuts, this makes complete sense if you think about it logically, in fact I would go as far as to say you could inject just about anything into the tumor that would invoke a strong immune response and the immune system will attack the tumor too as a byproduct. The body is extremely capable of kill cancers all by itself, you just have to find a way such as this to engage the immune system to attack the bad cells.
This. There is also another example of the body doing this. Several treatments of prostate cancer target the individual tumors and not the entire gland. There is evidence that the treatments causes the body's immune system to have a strong response in the prostate gland and to eliminate any remaining cancer cells in the prostate area.
Is getting the flu better than we thought? (Score:1)
Re: Is getting the flu better than we thought? (Score:2)
Kurzgesagt (Score:1)
For anyone with only a basic understanding of the immune system, you may find the biology videos from this channel informative.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q [youtube.com]
not really new, but (Score:2)
Nuts, maybe not (Score:3)
>"This is one of those ideas that seems nuts[...]immune cells organize at the sites[...]"
This is also going to sound nuts- but it seems to not be so nuts. I occasionally get these small, annoying, sub-surface warts on my fingers. Apparently, they are pretty common among humans, and typically caused by a virus. I discovered that, without treatment, they can last for several weeks or longer.
But if I sterilize a pin and intentionally wound myself at the site of the wart (stick it into that exact location a few times), then treat it with a topical antibiotic and bandage it, it will disappear in just a few days. My theory is that the wound is somehow noticed by my immune system and rushes defenses to the site. It then discovers the wart, perhaps due to the number and variety of defenses sent, and attacks and destroys it far more quickly than if there was no wound.
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One more reason ... (Score:2)
So what... (Score:2)
Reovirus has been used since year 2000 to kill tumors via injection.
I've always felt we need a medical wiki (Score:2)
I've always felt we need some sort of Medical journal that is something like an expert system with a wiki.
All public know medical test are cataloged, full explanation, testing method and footnoted to the respective peer review.
Add source validation from others that have tried it and can confirm it failed or works ( failure reports are extremely important because validation of a failure means you don't have to test a mistake again )
Really well detailed on the steps and measurements.
The look up system is what