New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations' - MSNBC

Since I work in this field of medicine, today I saw this article that gave me joy and gave me a second thought...about my job security. But let us talk about the science first.

Here is a link to an article that describes how an altered HIV DNA vaccine can influence White Blood Cells to attack cancer cells:

www.msnbc.msn.com...

I am optimistic that we have finally turned a new page in the fight against cancer (As disclosure: My Mother died of Brain Cancer) that started with the National Cancer Act of 1971.

If you have read the entirety of the article, you will see that there were some roadblocks along the way:

Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration.

Thankfully, the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy came through with the funding to get ultimately get these amazing results by chance.

www.acgtfoundation.org...

Leukemia and Multiple Myeloma patients are our repeat customers in my area of expertise. They keep me employed. But seeing novel therapies that bring great promise and less suffering to those affected, I'm willing to find a new job. Maybe I should expand my organic vegetable garden?....

Kratos40

So, it looks like they take a few of your white blood cells from your body. Next, they use harmless version of HIV to "encode" the white blood cell to not only attack the targeted cancerous cells, but also to multiply in the body to have large enough numbers to eradicate the threat. They grow copies of these cells in large quantities and inject them back into the body to get to work.

Wow, this sounds like an advanced form of inoculation using your own cells in a newly programmed state. My question is, do those cells get destroyed or do they simply become a part of the regular white blood cell count and therefore is a constant deterrence from the targeted cancer? Another question, do they have to have a sample of the cancer itself in order to program the white blood cells or do they already know the properties of the cancer and program the white blood cells to find and destroy cells with such properties?

This seems extremely effective and has already saved a few lives. Hopefully, this technique will become regularly used upon most well known cancers. If this technique does not require an actual sample of the cancer and only requires knowing its properties so as to destroy it we may soon see an end to most forms of cancer.

Awesome

I bet not only is this going to be used to cure cancers but I'm thinking it might be used to kill all viruses too.

Can this treatment receive a patent? If not, I bet that's why drug companies didn't fund the study.

reply to post by Elzon


Good question. And one I've been trying to get answered. I bet since the first vaccine only worked briefly, this one will probably work for a couple of weeks and just remain as the host's immune response repertoire. If you would like more details please try to contact Dr. June here:

www.med.upenn.edu...

I have tried, but I can guess there is too much traffic because of said article.

Kratos40

reply to post by Kratos40


Cancer is dead. Cures exist and they are suppressed because it's much more profitable to charge tons of money for addictive medications and treatments that people will keep coming back for. The amount of medication they need to purchase increases as their tolerance increases, as do the profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

Look here:

Methadone Breaks Resistance In Untreatable Forms Of Leukemia

Researchers in Germany have discovered that methadone, an agent used to break addiction to opioid drugs, has surprising killing power against leukemia cells, including treatment resistant forms of the cancer.

Their laboratory study, published in the August 1 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggests that methadone holds promise as a new therapy for leukemia, especially in patients whose cancer no longer responds to chemotherapy and radiation.

"Methadone kills sensitive leukemia cells and also breaks treatment resistance, but without any toxic effects on non-leukemic blood cells," said the study's senior author, Claudia Friesen, Ph.D., of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University Ulm. "We find this very exciting, because once conventional treatments have failed a patient, which occurs in old and also in young patients, they have no other options."

Source

But you can't compare Cancer with, hmmm, Leukemia!

Cart before the horse. The cancer has not been beaten, it has gone into remission. While it looks great, the tests must continue. Lets see how long they stay free of the disease.

Never count your chickens before they hatch.

I hope there is a lot of promise in this research.

To those who feel that there is some type of conspiracy between pharma companies to "hide" cures for cancer, I have to wholly disagree. While I disagree for many reasons, I think perhaps the most important is the fact that most people have lost a close loved one to cancer, and are likely to lose even more in the immediate future. Sure there are some rich shareholders/CEOs out there that would put greed and money ahead of themselves and their families, but I have to think that most would gladly give a small chunk of their wealth to cure themselves or their closest loved ones of some type of aggressive cancer, even if for solely selfish reasons.

I think this is wonderful news and brings hope to many who are suffering from this type of leukemia. I just want to say that any time a virus is reprogrammed to do something it's not supposed to, the true success of this treatment will take years to determine if there are no side effects. The premise of "I Am Legend" dramatized this very clearly, good intentions and miracle cures can backfire.

reply to post by jburg6


But i would say that ca. 80% of the World-Population do not have access
to the Western World Medicine!

Just think about India, Africa or the South of the Americas.

And now even in the US,
lately i read a Article here on ATS about the Generic Drugs,
there is Zero-Production of Generic Pharmaceutical Products
because of the low Win!

Dozo o kudasai, i found it:
Klick me