Posted on 12/29/2016 11:03:02 AM PST by Red Badger
A man with deadly brain cancer that had spread to his spine saw his tumors shrink and, for a time, completely vanish after a novel treatment to help his immune system attack his disease — another first in this promising field.
The type of immunotherapy that 50-year-old Richard Grady received already has helped some people with blood cancers such as leukemia. But the way he was given it is new, and may allow its use not just for brain tumors but also other cancers that can spread, such as breast and lung.
Grady was the first person to get the treatment dripped through a tube into a space in the brain where spinal fluid is made, sending it down the path the cancer traveled to his spine.
He had "a remarkable response" that opens the door to wider testing, said Dr. Behnam Badie, neurosurgery chief at City of Hope, a cancer center in Duarte, California, where Grady was treated.
The case is reported in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.
Each year in the United States, about 20,000 people are diagnosed with a type of brain tumor called glioblastoma. Grady, who lives in Seattle, had the usual surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but the cancer came back.
He enrolled in a clinical trial at City of Hope and had some of his own blood cells, called T cells, removed and genetically modified in the lab to turn them into specialized soldiers to seek and destroy cancer.
The treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, has been used for blood cancers, but its value for solid tumors is unknown. City of Hope has been testing injecting the cells directly into the brain.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
A ping, just in case you had not seen this.
Thanks
Thabnk you my friend.
They had proscribed a similar treatment for me...but when a firend I know who has my same cancer tried it, and several other epople I knew of tried it...it almost killed them and made them very, very sick. Not exactly thst same as this, but along the same lines.
Mine is now inot my lver, my breast, several places in my skin, and several more of my vertebrae.
I have reached a point after the last major surgery and radiation treatment to allow God to let it take its course according to His will. I have reached a point where the treaqtments (and the people I have been workin with are VERY good, top of the line, cutting edge folks who I love dearly) but the treatment has became as bad and hutful as the disease in many ways.
So, they tell me its is terminal now and I have decided not to chase the trials and experiental treatments any more.
Thank you though for pointing this out. You never know, and I treat each thing like this as something to pray about and see if the spirit moves me to change.
Getting very very sick, sometimes to the point of dying, is a common side effect of treatment with CAR-T cell based immunotherapy. It means the treatment is working and is caused by toxins released into the bloodstream by the dying cancer cells - called 'cytokines'. The greater the tumor burden (number and size of tumors) when starting treatment, the greater the CRS (cytokine release syndrome). It's always temporary and in most cases reversible and can be managed with drugs.
Here is the case of Doug Olson, one of the earliest success stories of CAR-T. Doug had exhausted all options for his leukemia and was ready to face death when his doctor suggested participating in a clinical trial for CAR-T.
It's the hottest area in immuno oncology right now with hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital money being poured into it (including Rush Limbaugh's yearly radiothon ).
Correction- Rush’s radiothon isn’t venture capitalism. It’s good old philanthropy.
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