It looks pretty bad, as it has spread to her bones. 52 years old. Too young.
Yep. No hope. I have been through this twice with two relatives who were in denial. Or maybe they just couldn’t give up that sliver of hope.
Hopefully bone marrow therapy can bring recovery. This is where an intensive use of chemicals is used to destroy the cancer in the bones. Then, bone marrow from a family member or someone who is genetically the same is harvested and used to replace the dead cancer ridden bone marrow. Engineered bone marrow is the latest of this kind of therapy.
I’ll be glad that mRNA technology comes up with the ultimate cure. Currently there is research into the targeting of cancer bone metastasis using mRNA engineered stem cells.
For more than a decade, cancer researchers have been developing a type of treatment known as a personalized cancer vaccine using various technologies, including mRNA and protein fragments, or peptides.
The investigational mRNA vaccines are manufactured for individuals based on the specific molecular features of their tumors. It takes 1 to 2 months to produce a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine after tissue samples have been collected from a patient.
With this approach, researchers try to elicit an immune response against abnormal proteins, or neoantigens, produced by cancer cells. Because these proteins are not found on normal cells, they are promising targets for vaccine-induced immune responses. Julie Bauman, M.D., deputy director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, is co-leading a clinical trial testing a personalized mRNA vaccine in combination with an immune checkpoint inhibitor in patients with advanced head and neck cancer.
The promise of personalized immunotherapy with mRNA vaccines is “being able to activate T cells that will specifically recognize individual cancer cells based on their abnormal molecular features,” said Dr. Bauman.