Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Medicine

'Cancer Moonshot' Projects Funded Include Implant to Sense and Treat Cancer, Tumor-Targetting Bacteria (arpa-h.gov) 42

Posted by EditorDavid from the giant-leaps-for-mankind dept.
Researchers from several U.S. institutions are collaborating "to develop and test an implantable device able to sense signs of the kind of inflammation associated with cancer," reports CBS News, "and delivery therapy when needed." Northwestern said the implant could significantly improve outcomes for patients with ovarian, pancreatic and other difficult-to-treat cancers — potentially cutting cancer-related deaths in the U.S. in half. "Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we'll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time," said Rice University bioengineer Omid Veiseh. "This kind of 'closed-loop therapy' has been used for managing diabetes, where you have a glucose monitor that continuously talks to an insulin pump. But for cancer immunotherapy, it's revolutionary."
The project and team are named THOR, an acronym for "targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation..." explains an announcement from Johns Hopkins. "THOR's proposed implant, or 'hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator,' goes by the acronym HAMMR..."

The project will take five and a half years, and includes funding for a first-phase clinical trial treating recurrent ovarian cancer slated to begin in the fourth year. The research is funded by America's newly-established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), according to a statement from the agency, representing its "commitment to supporting Cancer Moonshot goals of decreasing cancer deaths and improving the quality of life for patients..."

And they're also funding two more projects: The Synthetic Programmable bacteria for Immune-directed Killing in tumor Environments (SPIKEs) project, led by a team at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, aims to develop an inexpensive and safe therapy using bacteria specifically selected for tumor-targeting. Through SPIKEs, researchers intend to engineer bacteria that can recruit and regulate tumor-targeting immune cells, boosting the body's ability to fight off cancer without side-effects from traditional medications. Up to $19 million is allocated towards SPIKEs.

An additional project, with up to $50 million in potential funding inclusive of options, seeks to map cancer cell biomarkers to drastically improve multi-cancer early detection (MCED) and streamline clinical intervention when tumors are still small. Led by the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, the Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas (CODA) project aims to understand the cellular profiles unique to diseased cancer cells. The CODA platform intends to develop a suite of biosensor tools that can reliably recognize a range of cancer-specific markers and, ultimately, produce a highly precise, accurate, and cost-effective MCED test that can identify common cancers when they are most treatable.
In a statement, ARPA-H's director said that "With these awards, we hope to see crucial advancements in patient-tailored therapies, better and earlier tumor detection methods, and cell therapies that can help the immune system target cancer cells for destruction."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

'Cancer Moonshot' Projects Funded Include Implant to Sense and Treat Cancer, Tumor-Targetting Bacteria More

'Cancer Moonshot' Projects Funded Include Implant to Sense and Treat Cancer, Tumor-Targetting Bacteria

Comments Filter:

  • should be part of the forced min heath package

  • Clearly aimed at very wealthy people entering the terminal parts of their lives. No mention of improving cancer treatment, only about making it special where cost is no object.

    Would like to see how "cancer immunotherapy" benefits from continuous feedback. Would seem like the immune system treatments would not be so responsive as to need continuous, closed-loop feedback, if it were possible.

    Want to provide a real benefit to an aging population? Develop non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. You know, for

    • The root of naked mole rat cancer resistance (and longevity) has recently been tracked down to a single gene and whatever its function in the body is. It's already been successfully transplanted to lab rats, with the recipients gaining both attributes to a significant degree.

      While it'd be nice to have your kids genetically engineered from scratch to have that, I imagine the researchers involved are already looking at creating drugs to replicate the effect in a fully grown human. Whatever drug manufacture

    • No mention of improving cancer treatment, only about making it special where cost is no object.

      Tell us you didn't read any of the articles without telling us you didn't read any of the articles.

      “Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we’ll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time,”

      If having your therapy adjusted in real time while you walk around compared to being tethered to a bed isn't improving cancer treatment, let us know what is.

      Develop non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. You know, for the plebs.

      Here ya go [nih.gov]. A recent study on where things stand, the type of technologies used, and the

    • Re:target audience (Score:4, Informative)

      by tempo36 ( 2382592 ) on Sunday October 01, 2023 @03:25PM (#63892323)

      I work in cancer therapy and have first hand experience with immunotherapy in treating various cancers. We already use several immunotherapies as first line therapy for some cancers in patients who have newly presented. These patients aren't at the "end of their lives" and they have real possibility of cure of significantly longer lifespan if immunotherapy works for them. Unfortunately, we also see unpredictable toxicity with some of our immunotherapy. Some immunotherapy can be given outside the hospital but has to be discontinued if the patient develops immune related toxicity; the immune system is activated too much. At that point, the patient needs to move to other, potentially less effective, agents. Theoretically, if the immune system was monitored and doses titrated in real time, that may improve the number of patients successfully treated with these immunotherapies.

      For other immunotherapy we need to administer in the hospital, and these therapies are given in the hospital because they can have rapid and fatal immune mediated toxicity. Toxicity like your neurotoxicity where you end up in a coma or systemic inflammation where your blood pressure drops below the level needed to support your organs. We react in real time by holding immunotherapies or shutting the immune system down with steroids and immunosuppressants. Without this continuous monitoring and adjustment by providers, patients die. Again, just like in outpatient regimens, there could be use there for real time monitoring that can adjust the immunogenicity of the therapy to prevent these kinds of toxicity. Our own immune systems do, in fact, operate by continuous closed-loop feedback. I'm not sure why you would imagine that immunotherapy would not require intensive monitoring.

      The goal here is to use more immunotherapy rather than cell-killing anti-cancer drugs. But we need to learn how to control the toxicity from immunotherapy as well. Yes, right now immunotherapy is pretty expensive but, hopefully, that changes as it becomes easier and more mainstream to administer and manufacture. A project like this is a big one and certainly isn't guaranteed to function as intended. But it's certainly worth a shot and not nearly as niche as you think it is.

      • You're probably aware then that there are around 200 forms of cancer and that we have cures for 5 of them. The medical system seems stuck in first gear and cannot seem to treat or cure jack shit. The last period of real innovation in medicine was in the 1950's or so (x-rays, working vaccines that cured shit, antibiotics, etc...). Folks in medicine seem more concerned with getting involved in authoritarian politics than actually helping or curing folks of disease.

        • We have cures for far more than 5 kinds of cancer, but you're probably going to argue about what "cure" means. In your mind, a cure is something that works 100% of the time and has no potential side effects, like turning a light switch on and off. By your definition, we hardly have cures for anything in medicine. Even the "vaccines that cured shit" you cite aren't 100% effective like you think they are, nor do they "cure shit" since they have to be given prior to infection, and the antibiotics you mention d

          • In your mind, a cure is something that works 100% of the time and has no potential side effects, like turning a light switch on and off.

            Eliminating disease with minimal side effects counts if it's one dose or a series of them in some kind of protocol. I didn't say anything about flipping a switch. Yes, I agree "cure" is a strong word; it's supposed to be. Yes, that means it's going to be difficult and you don't get to soften the standard because it's hard. The rest of the world doesn't get to, either. Like in Moore's law, for example, "doubling" means '2x' not 1.2x or 1.7x.... no, it means 2x, which has happened so often in under 24 months

            • We have cures for far more than 5 kinds of cancer

              Well, Google [letmegooglethat.com] disagrees with you, Dr. Horseshit. So, there's that. It restates WebMD [webmd.com] and says: "Prostate Cancer, Thyroid Cancer, Testicular Cancer. Melanoma, Breast Cancer -- Early Stage." So, even if we soften the word "cure" to "effective treatments" there is a helluva lot less than 200. If you happen to be able to get any serious medical care, I'd like to be the guy taking your customer-satisfaction survey on how great they are doing and how effective your treatment is.

              Oh please Dr Google... Read the link you regurgitated and actually make an attempt to understand medicine.

              "There are no guarantees when it comes to cancer recovery. But doctors have greater success finding and treating some types of the disease than others. Some are slowly starting to use another "C" word for cancer: "cure."

              Some experts don't use that word, noting that you can never be sure that cancer will go away for good after treatment. They prefer to say "remission," meaning there's a chance the disea

              • Read the link you regurgitated and actually make an attempt to understand medicine.

                I guess you missed the part where I quoted exactly what the link said and it didn't agree with you. Reading comprehension a problem, doc? Re-quoting a different part of the article isn't proving anything.

                We can cure MOST cancers

                Bullshit. You are lying and the internet disagrees with you. Please stop lying and get serious.

                I see you conveniently ignored some of the actual examples of cancer care

                Irrelevant. I was talking about cures, not "care". You're trying to lower the bar to 'treatment" or "care" rather than 'cure'. Even leeches and bloodletting count as "treatment". You're crawfishing because you'd

    • If we had your attitude, nobody would have computers because you idiots would have banned computers for being too expensive back in the 1960s. Same thing with telescopes. Anything really. Even ice cream and pineapples.

  • This morning the local news had a brief piece on them using AI to analyze slides of potentially cancerous tissues. I think they were still at a stage where trained lab techs were checking the work, but if this pans out it seems like a real game-changer for dramatically reducing the cost of diagnosis, and dramatically increasing the number of people we screen.

    Unfortunately you still have to biopsy tissue; but if there is anything in the blood or skin that AI can pick up on faster than humans it's a real win

  • The last cancer moonshot was in 1969 or thereabouts, when Richard M. Nixon announced his war on cancer. Things never change.

Slashdot Top Deals

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Close