A Newly-Discovered Part of Our Immune System Could Be Harnessed To Treat All Cancers, Say Scientists. (bbc.com) 68
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The Cardiff University team discovered a method of killing prostate, breast, lung and other cancers in lab tests. The findings, published in Nature Immunology, have not been tested in patients, but the researchers say they have "enormous potential." Our immune system is our body's natural defense against infection, but it also attacks cancerous cells. The scientists were looking for "unconventional" and previously undiscovered ways the immune system naturally attacks tumors. What they found was a T-cell inside people's blood. This is an immune cell that can scan the body to assess whether there is a threat that needs to be eliminated. The difference is this one could attack a wide range of cancers.
T-cells have "receptors" on their surface that allow them to "see" at a chemical level. The Cardiff team discovered a T-cell and its receptor that could find and kill a wide range of cancerous cells in the lab including lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer cells. Crucially, it left normal tissues untouched. Exactly how it does this is still being explored. This particular T-cell receptor interacts with a molecule called MR1, which is on the surface of every cell in the human body. It is thought MR1 is flagging the distorted metabolism going on inside a cancerous cell to the immune system. Treatment would include extracting T-cells from a blood sample of a cancer patient and then genetically modifying them so they were reprogrammed to make the cancer-finding receptor. The upgraded cells would be grown in vast quantities in the lab and then put back into the patient.
T-cells have "receptors" on their surface that allow them to "see" at a chemical level. The Cardiff team discovered a T-cell and its receptor that could find and kill a wide range of cancerous cells in the lab including lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer cells. Crucially, it left normal tissues untouched. Exactly how it does this is still being explored. This particular T-cell receptor interacts with a molecule called MR1, which is on the surface of every cell in the human body. It is thought MR1 is flagging the distorted metabolism going on inside a cancerous cell to the immune system. Treatment would include extracting T-cells from a blood sample of a cancer patient and then genetically modifying them so they were reprogrammed to make the cancer-finding receptor. The upgraded cells would be grown in vast quantities in the lab and then put back into the patient.
Beware the science news cycle (Score:2)
Could Our Own Immune System Treat All Cancers? (Score:4, Insightful)
is what that headline should ask.
Re:Could Our Own Immune System Treat All Cancers? (Score:5, Informative)
Excellent understanding: (Score:2)
Mod parent up to +5.
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Re:Could Our Own Immune System Treat All Cancers? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the immune system stops cancer numerous times every day. Cancer is the mutation of regular cells. The entire body is continuously replicating millions of cells daily. Every day there are cells that mutate and the immune system is there to remove them. Cancer happens when the immune system misses a cluster and they begin to replicate.
True, this has been known for quite a while. When things like CT scans became commonplace doctors began to notice tumors they had found disappearing in some patients before any treatment had been applied. Another phenomenon of a similar nature is injecting flu vaccine into skin cancer tumors which made them disappear in a certain percentage of patients. So it's been known for some time that firstly, the immune system can deal with cancer and, secondly, what seems to go wrong in cancer patients is a failure in the immune system's ability to detect some tumors but that if you can flag the tumor you can jump start the immune system in a certain proportion of people. This discovery might be the hitherto unknown mechanism by which the body is destroying the cancer cells so the other alternative is flooding the patient's blood with the cancer seeking T-cells now that it seem they seem to have been identified.
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>Every day there are cells that mutate and the immune system is there to remove them.
So, this is the first time we actually identified specifically the cell that removes them?
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About 6 years ago I attended a "symposium" and lab tour at a major cancer research center. The researchers were learning about and working on the chemical defense mechanism that many tumors form on their evil surfaces. The chemical mechanism masks / disguises the tumor as normal cells.
The research has produced many immunotherapies that work to chemically unlock (de-mask) the tumor so the "T" cells can do their job.
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Every day there are cells that mutate and the immune system is there to remove them.
This is also the source of the problem with these kinds of therapies. The immune system stopping a single cell or small group of cells promotes an immune response that is matched to the threat, so if the threat is only a few cells large, you barely notice anything. However, if an immune system response is triggered for a cancer that we can actually detect, then we're talking in the domain of tens of thousands and upward into millions of cancer cells. Thus, the immune response is much, much larger. This
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Why would that headline about that particular study ask that?
The question is very interesting, but, obviously, it's not what about this discovery. It's much broader and more philosophical at this point.
At this point what all are thinking is: "how should we verify it? when people are going to reproduce this? what is the plan for trials?"
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Because when a headline asks a question, the answer is always "No", is the joke I was making that nobody got. :)
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Is Big Pharma trying to shut down this discovery that would make your body make its own medicine to treat cancer?
Documents discovered in dumpster show Big Pharma hid discovery of body making its own medicine!
You would never believe what Big Pharma did when it found someone's body was making a patented medicine on its own naturally
Scientist made medicine by cloning his blood, patented it, and sued the man for patent violation!
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is what that headline should ask.
Until you find the cure for Greed, your question is utterly pointless.
Cancer is a multi-trillion dollar industry, so let's stop assuming that if a cure for cancer is ever found, it would be automatically be made public. We've seen Greed do far worse for a lot less money.
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Not every nation is a late-stage kleptocracy. Most places (including the UK where this story is from) have some form of universal healthcare, so finding a cure for cancer would very much be in their economic interest because it would save them money.
Invest in tobacco stocks (Score:2)
is what the headline should say.
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The naked mole-rat is extraordinarily long-lived for a rodent of its size (up to 32 years) and holds the record for the longest living rodent. Naked mole-rats are highly resistant to cancer and maintain healthy vascular function longer in their lifespan than shorter-living rats. [wikipedia.org]
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Humans younger than 32 years are also very resistant to cancer, and almost all maintain healthy vascular function considerably longer than that.
The naked mole rat is extraordinary in that it has adopted an evolutionary strategy of long life, rather than the live fast and breed strategy of most other animals its size.
Uhh - T Cell and virus? (Score:2)
Nobody clicks links (Score:4, Informative)
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Here's the real one:
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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Obligatory xkcd (Score:5, Insightful)
https://xkcd.com/1217/ [xkcd.com]
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"When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin 'kills cancer cells in a petridish', keep in mind: So does a handgun" https://xkcd.com/1217/ [xkcd.com]
Funny, XKCD usually is, but this is not a drug, it's mobilizing the immune system to clean up cancer which is something the immune system does already. Cancer patients just represent intermittent failures of that system to deal with certain types of cancer.
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Sure it's a drug.
Many modern drugs are antibodies or other substances naturally produced by the human body, sometimes modified, or sometimes not.
The OP's point is absolutely relevant. It's fairly easy to cause a person's immune system to attack. It's very tricky to get it to attack just the thing you want. This story is about a particular type of T cell that seems to attack based on a pre
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Dictionary: this is the definition.
Slashdotter: you're wrong.
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You are wrong, though.
The dictionary lists all known common definitions, stated in their broadest forms.
In a particular case, an actual usage, you have to look to the context to discover the correct definition. And here, you're just flatly wrong.
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Jeopardy answer: What is "items in Alex Trebeck's garage"
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Based on commnets from my buddy in the pharma industry, this is literally a real thing.
Compounds that show very early promising results in a test tube or petri dish are often/usually dead ends, because with more sophisticated testing they turn out to kill too many non-targeted things. But obviously you do have to start someone, and grind through all those promising compounds to find the nugget of gold in the pile of pyrite.
MAIT cells are a recent discovery (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it bonkers that MAIT cells (which interact with MR1) are such a recent discovery in the field of immunology. I think the discovery was made in the last decade, but they comprise (in some cases) over a quarter of the immune cells in our body!
Possible contributing factors to their lack of discovery are that their mouse equivalent are at quite low levels, and the T-cell repertoire is so variable in humans that it can be a challenge to find a pattern amongst the noise. Expect more discoveries on a similar level once we work out how to type the T-cell repertoire cheaply - it's currently on the order of $10k / person.
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> it's currently on the order of $10k / person
Millions of USA residents already have that money. or access to that kind of money via insurance.
1/3 of these millions will die from cancer during their life time.
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Millions of USA residents already have that money. or access to that kind of money via insurance.
That $10k is the "raw materials" / research cost - it currently requires single-cell sequencing of a targeted gene set at extremely high depth (e.g. hundreds of thousands to millions of cells). With US insurance markup I wouldn't be surprised if it were in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In any case, this is not a one-time cost. The T-cell population is changing all the time, every time there's a new infection or change in the biological environment: a cold, eating food that's a bit off, or g
Re:MAIT cells are a recent discovery (Score:4, Interesting)
their mouse equivalent are at quite low levels
I've noticed in the last year that the idea that if a "cure for cancer" were discovered but it didn't work in mice that we'd probably not know about it.
This guy has a Twitter handle dedicated to driving that point home:
https://twitter.com/justsaysin... [twitter.com]
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Also, medical research is slow and too hierarchical. They have missed really obvious things for decades or centuries in the past, because the respective authorities did say things worked differently and nobody dared to contradict them.
Pardon me ... (Score:2)
"What they found was a T-cell inside people's blood. "
Aren't they all in people's blood?
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That would seem to support the idea this one was as well
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They're also found in the lymph system.
general info in subject (crosspost) (Score:5, Informative)
https://old.reddit.com/r/scien... [reddit.com]
In other words... (Score:2)
... add this to the list of "enormous potential!" clickbait headlines that never actually result in a useful treatment. We've seen hundreds of such stories over the years. Maybe thousands.
Even if it works... (Score:2)
the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries make more money curing it than "treating" it. It'll never see widescale usage. Just out a price tag of a 10 million or so in it, it'll be forever off-limits to most of the planet.
Or at least the United States, since we seem to enjoy paying exorbitant healthcare costs.
Re: Even if it works... (Score:2)
Ahh, typo. I meant to say they make more treating it than curing it. Damnit.
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Even taking a strictly economical approach. Lets assume $100 of profit off every person that got cancer. Approximately 14 million people will get cancer this year that's 1.4 billion in annual profits. A pharmaceutical company is not going to shy away from that type
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Also, against consipiracy: All you need is one of those really wealthy cancer curing owners getting Cancer, or having a child get it, and deciding " I'd rather live ( or let my kid live) than protect my profits"
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The 'conspiracy theories' are very true for stomach ulcer.
Billions of dollars spent for useless medicals, until a guy spent 30 years - under life threatening threats - to publish the truth.
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The root cause may be alcohol or CO2 containing drinks.
When it is established it is a bacterial infection. Easy treated with antibiotics.
We know that since 30+ years.
The useless multi billion dollar products sold before that, are all no longer on the market.
Not forever off-limits (Score:1)
Just out a price tag of a 10 million or so in it, it'll be forever off-limits to most of the planet.
Not forever. Just until the patents expire.
If you are claiming it will never get into human studies until the patent expires and as a result the expensive human studies will never be done because anyone doing them would do so at a huge financial loss then I stand corrected. On the other hand, if there are no human studies, there won't be any price tag on it, 10 million or otherwise.
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I don't get it. (Score:2)
These particular T-cells detect cancerous cells, but don't kill them naturally, so we're going to somehow modify them so they kill the cancer? Or are they just not naturally produced in sufficient quantity to kill cancer?
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mark_reh inquired:
These particular T-cells detect cancerous cells, but don't kill them naturally, so we're going to somehow modify them so they kill the cancer? Or are they just not naturally produced in sufficient quantity to kill cancer?
There are two distinct, major types of T-cell, and each of those gives rise to separate sub-types [wikipedia.org] that have still-more-specialized functions.
TFS doesn't bother to explain which type of T-cell it's talking about, so your confusion is understandable ...
Treat? What about immunization? (Score:2)
Am I missing something here? This essentially amounts to a tailored vaccine. Take blood, extract T cells, amplify/multiply and then inject back in and you would have drastically increased the ability of that person's immune system to detect and eradicate cancer. Why would you limit this to treatment of people with cancer instead of vaccinating everyone?
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It's not a vaccine. Vaccines activate the adaptive immune system, which learns, and remembers previously seen antigens. T-cells are part of the innate immune system, which primarily responds to never before seen antigens.
There is almost certainly a reason why these particular T-cells aren't more abundant. It might be effective to artificially increase their numbers temporarily in a patient, but it's unlikely to be safe to do so permanently. Even if you wanted to, you'd have to get regular injections; the li
Is this really new? (Score:2)
We've known for decades that the immune system attacks cancer. The problem comes when certain cancer cells apparently look healthy to the immune system, so that it doesn't attack them.
Some newer, individualized treatments are specifically designed to get the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer cells. It seems likely that these treatments are doing precisely what TFA is proposing, just following a different route to the same end. But I'm just a layman, so what do I know...
Can anyone with experti
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Sorry Trump.... (Score:1)
Most cancers die if temps go up (Score:2)
Around 50% of all cancers die off during apotosis if the body temp goes up just 1 degree F.
All I'm going to say about this approach is beware using a secondary or tertiary biochemical pathway, as it probably comes from a time when we were fish or amphibians, and might have unintended consequences you will, in retrospect, realize were obvious.
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I, for one, welcome our new tetrapod overlords.
Hepatitis B Cure (Score:1)