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

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."

should be part of the forced min heath package

[Joe_Dragon]

should be part of the forced min heath package

Re:

[quonset]

First we force you to take a bunch of potentionally cancer causing mRNA shots.

That's lie number one.

If it's good, people will line up voluntarily.

That's lie number two. As we saw with the various covid shots, their efficacy was well documented in preventing or significantly minizing covid, but those who "did their research" knew better and dropped like flies. In fact, the state of Florida had 43 times more covid deaths [imgur.com] than the entire country of Australia. For reference, Florida's population is 22.6 mill

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[jacks smirking reven]

Florida had 43 times more covid deaths

Nate Silver had an interesting writeup this week looking at some historical data of the pandemic and one data point is counting the deaths-per-1,000,000 in each state both before and after Feb 1, 2021 as a general date for vaccine availability. Florida before that date is right in the middle of the pack but after the date of vaccine availability it shot up to 4th place.

In general before vaccine availability the spread amongst Red/Blue states is pretty even but after that date the red states settle out with

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[jacks smirking reven]

That's a fine theory but it doesn't really track as age difference between states exist but they aren't that drastic to make all that difference. It's not as if NY, CA and NJ don't also have large elderly populations. He addresses this idea in a follow-up article:

The differences in state death rates are very likely because of differences in vaccine uptake. Just to be clear, I don’t mean to imply that COVID is intrinsically more likely to target Republicans or anything like that. Rather, my claim is [natesilver.net]

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[Shakrai]

Nate's analysis would be better if he just presented the numbers and left the political dings out of it. New Mexico is 6th on his post vaccine death rate list but 13th out of 50 on the source [beckershos...review.com] I found for vaccine uptake rate. I would speculate this has to do with the fact that New Mexico has a large Native American population and that community absolutely got decimated by the pandemic. If the Navajo Nation was a State they'd be #1 for per capita COVID-19 death rate, pre and post vaccine.

Nate is also glos

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Sure, that's why like i said, this isn't the authoritative analysis on everything but it's a clear trend on the idea that "vaccines prevent death" no matter who you are or what your comorbidities are.

Worth reading his follow up and he addresses some of this, primarily the age factor but he acknowledges comorbidities are also a factor not addressed. I personally appreciate Silver has gotten snarkier now that he got fired, he doesn't work for ABC anymore.

Fine, I'll run a regression analysis. But it won't mak [natesilver.net]

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[Shakrai]

I would take issue with it being called a distraction when heart disease is the leading cause of death in our country and continued to outpace COVID deaths even during the worst of the pandemic.

I'm not anti vaccine, I got it as soon as I could despite being low risk, ditto the boosters. I’ve religiously gotten the flu vaccine every year of my adult life, decades before COVID was a thing. I'm just over it being used as Yet Another Excuse for one group of Americans to feel smug and superior towards a

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[jacks smirking reven]

It could be considered a distraction from the topic of vaccine uptake though. It's also the difference between "years long sometimes drastic changes to lifestyle and diet" and "30 minutes at your local pharmacy".

I agree a mandate is not really politically viable even if i think it's the smartest thing to do when facing a pandemic. But for those who don't agree they should feel good for the fact there is no national mandate or state mandates despite all the fearmongering over it.

My worry with that is the ne

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[Shakrai]

maybe it has a clear mortality rate of say 10% instead of the 5-7% COVID has

That's an overstatement of COVID morality unless you cherry pick the very beginning of the pandemic and make the huge assumption that all cases were reported. These guys [ourworldindata.org] have it peaking at 6.1% in May 2020, tapering down to 1.8% by the end of that year, and currently hovering at 1.09%. It's impossible to know the real rate, because a non-zero number of cases went unreported in the beginning of the pandemic, and these days the overwhelming majority are unreported.

I didn't report my Sept 2022 experience.

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[MIPSPro]

He's cherry picking to try and augment the argument that safety-cult assholes need more control. It's transparent as hell. We all saw the kind of world these assholes wanted in 2021. No thanks.

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[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, the state of Florida had 43 times more covid deaths than the entire country of Australia.

OMG. Who's lying? YOU. Your little IMGUR link is a wildly inaccurate source. Florida [worldometers.info] currently only has 4 times more COVID deaths than Australia [worldometers.info].

Is 4x more deaths a cause for concern? Maybe. But considering Florida's [usafacts.org] age demographics consists of largely old retired folks and Australia's [statista.com] age demographics are slanted the opposite way towards younger, healthier folks, I think the 4x COVID deaths is actually probably not so significant.

But hey, if you want to die, have it. One less moron we have to hear from.

Thanks for granting me the freedom to choose. That was all I'm asking for.

I'

Re:

[quonset]

OMG. Who's lying? YOU. Your little IMGUR link is a wildly inaccurate source. Florida [worldometers.info] currently only has 4 times more COVID deaths than Australia [worldometers.info].

Oh, is that all? For an entire country, with a larger population, to have 4 times less covid deaths than one state shows the effectiveness of vaccines, wearing masks, and social distancing. The link may be wrong numerically, but the point stil stands. Telling people not to get vaccinated or wear masks killed people who didn

Re:

[Shakrai]

For reference, Florida's population is 22.6 million whereas Australia is 26.8 million. In fact in fact, the governor of Florida told people NOT to get a covid shot and instead wait until they were on death's door to then get a monoclonal antibody infusion from a company which donated millions to his campaigns and in which he had a financial interest.

But hey, if you want to die, have it. One less moron we have to hear from. Just like Herman Cain.

Umm boss, I largely agree with you, I suspect there's not much daylight between us, but this point is total BS. There's no comparison between Florida and Australia. Here's just one of many reasons why: Australia population density 3/sq km, Florida 160/sq km.

A more accurate comparison would be to look at per capita death rates [cdc.gov] compared to the other 49 States, in that respect, Florida is 18th out of 50. This doesn't tell you the whole story in a vacuum though, on vaccine rates [beckershos...review.com] Florida is again middling, 2

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[quonset]

I did vaccine outreach during my time in Louisiana. Do you know who the hardest sell was with? It wasn't White Republicans. It was African Americans that predominately lean Democratic. If you know your history [wikipedia.org] you can imagine the reasons for their skepticism towards the healthcare establishment. Point being, there are reasons other than "MAGA Republican doing 'research' on the toilet" for slow vaccine uptake rates.

Yes, I saw that episode of House M.D. [youtube.com] where the black guy was highly skeptical

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[Shakrai]

that still doesn't account for the huge disparity in deaths between red and blue states. As we saw, there were many high profile MAGAs who kicked over because they weren't going to get vaccinated

Way to ignore everything I said about obesity boss.

Vaccine refusal is obviously an issue. I don't pretend it isn't. I'm just smart enough to realize it's not the only problem. At this point, with the currently circulating strains being less fatal, it may not even be the biggest problem.

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[Shakrai]

New Mexico isn't a Red State. Utah is as red as they come and is third from the bottom of Nate's post vaccine list despite being squarely in the middle (25th) on vaccine uptake rate. Utah is also at the bottom (12th or 13th) of the obesity ranking and has lower than average rates of heart disease.

The vaccine is an unqualified good, people should get it, but they should also get some fucking time in at the gym and not eat themselves to death.

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[MIPSPro]

The vaccine is an unqualified good

Really? Is that why about half of the original lineup got withdrawn from the market and the government needed to give blanket immunity to the bitchmade drug companies?

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[MIPSPro]

The jury is still out on what COVID vaccines cause or don't cause and folks are trying furiously to cover up any negative impact. Fact: several vaccines were withdrawn from the market for safety concerns. Fact: the government gave drug companies blanket immunity from lawsuits for vaccine-related injuries they may have caused. Fact: Florida is full of old retirees and you are a fucking cherry picking idiot. However, feel free to drop dead at 30 after getting your 9th booster shot.

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[MIPSPro]

I wonder what breeds that level of self pride in ignorance

Let's see... first, lie your ass off and tell people not to get masks, then 180' mid-air and go insane and demand they wear 3 of them. Second, tell everyone the vaccines are safe then withdraw half of them due to injuries and side-effects (hide and crawfish on those results, too) while simultaneously giving drug companies blanket immunity from legal repercussions of their chicanery. Ignore any voices urging restraint on your authoritarian rules or urges.Then, spend years closing businesses, churches, fuckin

target audience

[dfghjk]

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

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

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

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[quonset]

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

[tempo36]

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.

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[MIPSPro]

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.

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[tempo36]

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

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[MIPSPro]

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

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[tempo36]

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

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[MIPSPro]

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

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[backslashdot]

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.

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[matmos]

There is literally nothing called "turbo cancer" and it is not on the rise. Cancer rate is fairly steady to be honest.

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[tempo36]

Agree...I don't know what the heck a "turbo cancer" is.

But early onset cancer is on the rise for reasons not yet fully understood.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16... [cnn.com].

Other more interesting project

[istartedi]

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

Haha. Nixon.

[groobly]

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