Posts

New Frontier in Cancer Care: Turning Blood Into Living Drugs

/0 Comments/in , /by

Ken Shefveland’s body was swollen with cancer, treatment after treatment failing until doctors gambled on a radical approach: They removed some of his immune cells, engineered them into cancer assassins and unleashed them into his bloodstream.

Immune therapy is the hottest trend in cancer care and this is its next frontier — creating “living drugs” that grow inside the body into an army that seeks and destroys tumors.

Looking in the mirror, Shefveland saw “the cancer was just melting away.” A month later doctors at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center couldn’t find any signs of lymphoma in the Vancouver, Washington, man’s body. (Read more from “New Frontier in Cancer Care: Turning Blood Into Living Drugs” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

AI System as Good as Experts at Recognising Skin Cancers, Say Researchers

/0 Comments/in , /by

Computers can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts, according to the latest research attempting to apply artificial intelligence to health.

The US-based researchers say the new system, which is based on image recognition, could be developed for smartphones, increasing access to screening and providing a low-cost way to check whether skin lesions are cause for concern.

“We hope that this is a first step towards early detection,” said Andre Esteva, an electrical engineering PhD student from Stanford University and co-author of the research.

According to the World Health Organisation, skin cancer accounts for one in every three cancers diagnosed worldwide, with global incidence on the rise.

In the UK alone, 131,772 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer were recorded in 2014. In the same year there were 15,419 new cases of the deadliest skin cancer, melanoma, making it the fifth most common cancer, according to Cancer Research UK. (Read more from “AI System as Good as Experts at Recognising Skin Cancers, Say Researchers” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

FDA Fast-Tracks Treatment That Uses Polio Virus to Fight Brain Cancer

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Food and Drug Administration has given so-called “breakthrough” status to a treatment that uses the once-feared polio virus to target aggressive forms of brain cancer, in the hope of speeding it to market.

The therapy, developed at Duke University, hopes to use the virus’ debilitating properties to help fight cancer instead of harming its host, CBS News reported Thursday.

The experimental treatment was the brainchild of molecular biologist Matthias Gromeier. By removing a certain genetic sequence and replacing it with material from the common cold virus, the polio would not be able to cause the incapacitating symptoms that once afflicted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and numerous others because it would be unable to reproduce in normal cells.

However, the altered version of polio could still reproduce in cancer cells—therefore making the cancer susceptible to Lipscomb’s and other patients’ immune systems.

“All human cancers … develop a shield of protective measures that make them invisible to this immune system,” Gromeier told CBS. “By infecting the tumor, we are actually removing this protective shield and enabling the immune system to attack.” (Read more from “FDA Fast-Tracks Treatment That Uses Polio Virus to Fight Brain Cancer” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Revolutionary Project to ‘Solve’ Cancer

/2 Comments/in , /by

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABillionaire Sean Parker, famous for his founding roles at Napster and Facebook, is backing an unconventional $250 million effort to attack cancer that involves persuading hundreds of the country’s top scientists — who often are in competition with each other — to join forces and unify their research targets.

The consortium, which will be formally announced Wednesday, focuses on immunotherapy, a relatively new area of research that seeks to mobilize the body’s own defense systems to fight mutant cancer cells. Many believe it represents the future of cancer therapy.

More than 300 scientists working at 40 labs in six institutions — Stanford, the University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — have already signed on . . .

He describes the effort as a way to remove obstacles related to bureaucracy and personality that will allow scientists to borrow from each other’s labs unencumbered. The researchers will continue to be based at their home institutions but will receive additional funding and access to other resources, including specialized data scientists and genetic engineering equipment set to become part of the nonprofit Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. (Read more from “The Revolutionary Project to ‘Solve’ Cancer” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Doctors Battling to Stop Cancer Hail Revolutionary Treatment

/2 Comments/in , /by

Doctors battling to combat cancer have hailed a revolutionary ­treatment that teaches the body how to kill the disease itself.

Trials of immunotherapy showed remarkable results with 94% of terminal leukaemia patients told they had just months to live going into remission.

And more than half of 40 suffering other blood cancers were left disease-free, according to US researchers.

The treatment could reduce the ­reliance on chemotherapy, which has debilitating toxic side-effects.

In a second major breakthrough, an Italian study found the therapy could be used to develop a vaccine-style drug that stops the disease coming back after it has been successfully treated. (Read more from “Doctors Battling to Stop Cancer Hail Revolutionary Treatment” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

This Fruit May Help Detect, Cure Skin Cancer

/0 Comments/in , /by

The black spots on old banana peels may unlock a faster, easier diagnosis of human skin cancer, boosting survival chances, scientists said Monday.

When bananas ripen, their skin is covered in small, round black spots caused by an enzyme known as tyrosinase.

The same enzyme is present in human skin, and in greater quantities in people suffering from melanoma — a potentially deadly form of skin cancer.

A team of scientists used this observed commonality to build a cancer scanner, which they then refined and tested at length on banana peels before moving on to human tissue.

First, researchers at the Laboratory of Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry in Switzerland concluded that the enzyme is a reliable marker of melanoma growth. (Read more from “This Fruit May Help Detect, Cure Skin Cancer” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Blood Test to Spot Five Deadly Cancers Could Prevent Thousands of Deaths

/0 Comments/in , /by

A simple blood test which detects five of the most deadly types of cancer is being developed by scientists.

Researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute in the US have discovered that when breast, bowel, lung, womb or stomach cancer is present in the body, one particular gene changes its chemical signature.

The scientists think that change occurs when the body starts to lose the fight against the disease.

British charities said it could work like a ‘warning klaxon,’ sounding the alarm that cancer is present, at a time when treatments are likely to be most effective.

The crucial signature was linked to a gene called ZNF154. Researchers found that when a tumour was present, the gene showed increased signs of ‘methylation’ – a biological process which tells genes to switch to the ‘off’ position. (Read more from “Blood Test to Spot Five Deadly Cancers Could Prevent Thousands of Deaths” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Seattle Woman Who Raised $400G as Cancer Survivor Reportedly Never Had the Disease

/0 Comments/in , /by

A prominent Seattle cancer advocate and fundraiser has been accused of lying about her breast cancer diagnoses while she raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, KOMO News reported.

Tracy Dart, who has raised more than $400,000 over the past decade for the Komen Foundation, is under fire for reportedly lying about her three cancer spells.

A Washington state car dealer who helped Dart raise thousands to fight the disease said a member of Dart’s “Team Tracy” contacted him to reveal that Dart had never been ill.

“She doesn’t have cancer—she never had cancer,” the representative said, according to Auburn Volkswagen owner Matthew Welch. (Read more from “Seattle Woman Who Raised $400G as Cancer Survivor Reportedly Never Had the Disease” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Alabama Scientist Breaks Ground in Cancer Research

/0 Comments/in , /by

When Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green receives invitations to be a guest speaker for professional groups, schools and nonprofit organizations, she almost never turns them down.

“Usually if there is an invitation to speak at a forum like that, I accept it because I feel like it’s a responsibility,” she said. “There are so few of us (black women in STEM fields) I don’t feel like I have the luxury to say I’m too busy.”

By many measures, Green has been extremely busy. One of fewer than 100 black female physicists in the country, she recently won a $1.1 million grant to further develop her patent-pending technology for using laser-activated nanoparticles to treat cancer.

A tomboy as a child, Green was crowned Homecoming Queen at Alabama A&M University (by a landslide vote), earned her master’s and Ph.D degrees at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is now is an assistant professor in the physics department at Tuskegee University.

It’s tempting to see Green for all the ways that she is unusual – not the least for winning a large grant at a relatively young age, and for being black and female in a field dominated by white men – but it’s not something she said she thinks about in her day-to-day life. (Read more from “Alabama Scientist Breaks Ground in Cancer Research” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

New Kind of ‘Designer’ Immune Cells Clear Baby’s Leukemia

/0 Comments/in , /by

A baby whom doctors thought almost certain to die has been cleared of a previously incurable leukemia in the first human use of an “off-the-shelf” cell therapy from Cellectis that creates designer immune cells.

One-year-old Layla had run out of all other treatment options when doctors at Britain’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) gave her the highly experimental, genetically edited cells in a tiny 1-milliliter intravenous infusion.

Two months later, she was cancer-free and she is now home from hospital, the doctors said at a briefing about her case in London on Wednesday . . .

The gene-edited cell treatment was prepared by scientists at GOSH and University College London (UCL) together with the French biotech firm Cellectis, which is now funding full clinical trials of the therapy due to start next year . . .

Using a gene-editing technology called TALEN, which acts as “molecular scissors,” specific genes are then cut to make the T-cells behave in two specific ways: Firstly, they are rendered invisible to a powerful leukemia drug that would usually kill them and secondly they are reprogrammed to only target and fight against leukemia cells. (Read more from “New Kind of ‘Designer’ Immune Cells Clear Baby’s Leukemia” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.