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Cure for advanced skin cancer discovered
"Scientists claim they have cured advanced skin cancer for the first time using the patient's own cells cloned outside the body.
The 52-year-old man involved was free of melanoma two years after treatment.
US researchers, reports the New England Journal of Medicine, took cancer-fighting immune cells, made five billion copies, then put them all back.
Scientists in the UK warned that further trials would need to be done to prove how well the treatment worked.
The body's immune system plays a significant role in the battle against cancer, and doctors have been looking for ways to boost this tumour-killing response.
The 52-year-old man had advanced melanoma which had spread to the lungs and lymph nodes."
--BBC World News "Scientists claim they have cured advanced skin cancer for the first time using the patient's own cells cloned outside the body. ... more -
Cancer patient cured with his own immune system
A cure for cancer teems through our veins, but the trick is harnessing the immune system's tumour-destroying cells, say doctors.
Now, a US team has developed a new way to turn a patient's T-cells against a deadly, metastasised skin cancer. A 55-year old man who received the immune boost lives tumour-free, more than two years after treatment.
“He had a remarkable response,” says Cassian Yee, an immunologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, US, who developed the new treatment.
Yee’s team treated eight other melanoma patients, but he says it is too early to tell whether their tumours have vanished as well.
Other cancer experts say the results could pave the road for a cancer vaccine, but more proof with additional patients is needed.
Helper cells
“They really showed what can be done when you get all the conditions right,” says Louis Weiner, an oncologist at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study.
For a tumour to grow and spread, it must trick the immune system into thinking it is normal tissue. Immune cells that keep tumours in check remain oblivious to the malignancy or too low in number to make much of a difference.
But researchers have slowly learned how to unleash this response. The most common strategy is to collect a patient’s white blood cells, grow the tumour-killing T-cells in a laboratory incubator and inject them back into the patient.
This approach, while sometimes successful, often requires doctors to kill off a patient’s other T-cells and give them multiple cell treatments, as well as a toxic cocktail of immune chemicals.
In hopes of developing a simple regimen, Yee’s team focused on a special kind of T-cell, called helper CD4 cells.
Cancer cured
The researchers isolated a handful of these cells from the patient, whose melanoma had spread to his lung and groin. All the cells recognised a protein called NY-ESO-1 – this existed in his tumour, but not most healthy cells.
After the cells had been multiplying in the lab for two months, Yee’s team injected about five billion of them into the patient in one dose.
The treatment annihilated the tumours within two months, and nearly two years later, there are no signs that the patient’s cancer has crept back, Yee says.
The lab-grown cells remained at high levels for at least three months after treatment. However, Yee suspects that the injected CD4-cells also jolted other immune cells into action because tumour cells that didn’t make NY-ESO-1 also disappeared.
“This is a case that really teaches us a huge amount,” Weiner says. Ramping up CD4 cells that go after a tumour could be a goal for future cell therapies targeting other cancers and even a cell-free vaccine, he says.
And in the next five to 10 years, cancer immune therapy will expand from its status as a boutique treatment, he says. “What we see in front of us is no longer a mirage, but we still have a bit of distance to travel.”
Protein warning
Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, US, suspects that Yee’s treatment conscripted another kind of T-cell – called a CD8 – to help destroy the tumour.
Rosenberg’s team has developed a treatment that uses mostly this kind of cell to fight melanoma. At a recent conference, he reported a 72% success rate in a group of 93 patients.
Yet, while encouraging, the new treatment might work for only a fraction of melanoma patients, because many tumours do not contain NY-ESO-1 and not all patients have an immune system that recognises the protein, he says. A cure for cancer teems through our veins, but the trick is harnessing the immune system's tumour-destroying cells, say doctors. ... more -
Raising The Truth - DjB3 Mix
Raising The Truth - DjB3 Mix
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Are you Gonna go my way - Lenny Kravitz
Are you Gonna go my way - Lenny Kravitz
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Spiritual Love - Urban Species
Spiritual Love - Urban Species
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Just A Little More Love - David Guetta
Just A Little More Love!
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Cow urine could cure diabetes
CLICK ON LINK TO PLAY VIDEO
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More - The Sisters of Mercy
Oh Boy do I like this song! It has all the right ingredients of power,
Vocal, Thrill, lyrics, Sound Evolution, Background. I even think many are just children of their Gothic Art. Oh Boy do I like this song! It has all the right ingredients of power, ... more -
A homebuilt tumor-killer
When a man with no medical degree and a diagnosis of fatal leukemia builds a cancer-curing machine in his garage, you might think it merely the desperate attempt of a dying man to escape his fate. And you’d be right. The weird thing is, it just might work. When a man with no medical degree and a diagnosis of fatal leukemia builds a cancer-curing machine in his garage, you might think it m... more
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With You By My Side - Tab Benoit
Tab Benoit at the Blues festival Check out the "Night Train" Cool!
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Come Dig Me Out - Kelly Osbourne
Girls can Rock just fine, there is kelly to prove it!
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Miracle cancer curing herb in Churachandpur?
Appreciation has come from many quarters to Chawlien Hmar, 82, of Saikot village in Churachandpur district for discovering a herb which may prove to be a miracle cancer curing remedy.
The herb is traditionally known as Zanlung Damdei and found in Saikot village and its vicinity.
Hearing of his success, a team of scientists from the Institute of Bioresource and Sustainable Development in Takyelpat under the initiative of the project coordinator Mohindro Singh Khaidem of the Manipur Small Farmers and Agri Business Consortium, collected the Zanlung Damdei plant along with the potions made from the plant from the Chawlein Cancer Medicine Research Agency in Saikot yesterday for sceintific research to find out the chemical component of the plant.
The IBSD team including natural product scientist, Ch Brajakishore with the objective of tapping the potential of this bioresource to convert it into an asset for the state during a visit yesterday.
It was also a rare moment for the team to see the working of the open air laboratory at the Saikot research centre where the plant extracts are prepared with the traditional hand pounding method after the green leaves and tender shoots are obtained from the forest.
Depending on the quantity of leaves adequate water is mixed with it. Though the source of the water could not be ascertained so far there are no reports of patients suffering side effects or from water borne diseases.
The resource persons who visited the research agency commented that the open air laboratory was not that hygienic and there were chances of infection.
They also observed that there were chances of extinction of the life saving plant if the present trend of harvesting the plant continued without replanting and also there were possibilities of major side effects due to adulteration by undesirable toxic plants.
The resource persons further said that unless intellectual property rights are registered soon by the state the plant could be misused by unrightful owners. Therefore, the research and development institute working in the state should immediately intervene and conduct a detailed study of the plant and on the other hand the concerned department should take up measures for its sustainable growth and protection from exploitation.
Hundreds of patients today wait to get treatment given by Chawlein Hmar with his plant extract at the Chawlein Cancer Medicine Research Agency in Saikot village, about 6 kms from Churachandpur town. Most interestingly as the plant has become popular, small vendors and shops on the roadside have the green plants and extracts filled in plastic bottles with plant saplings displayed for sale at their stalls. Appreciation has come from many quarters to Chawlien Hmar, 82, of Saikot village in Churachandpur district for discovering a herb whic... more
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