Posted on 01/20/2020 2:42:05 PM PST by Red Badger
A newly-discovered part of our immune system could be harnessed to treat all cancers, say scientists.
The Cardiff University team discovered a method of killing prostate, breast, lung and other cancers in lab tests.
The findings, published in Nature Immunology, have not been tested in patients, but the researchers say they have "enormous potential".
Experts said that although the work was still at an early stage, it was very exciting. What have they found?
Our immune system is our body's natural defence against infection, but it also attacks cancerous cells.
The scientists were looking for "unconventional" and previously undiscovered ways the immune system naturally attacks tumours.
What they found was a T-cell inside people's blood. This is an immune cell that can scan the body to assess whether there is a threat that needs to be eliminated.
The difference is this one could attack a wide range of cancers.
"There's a chance here to treat every patient," researcher Prof Andrew Sewell told the BBC.
He added: "Previously nobody believed this could be possible.
"It raises the prospect of a 'one-size-fits-all' cancer treatment, a single type of T-cell that could be capable of destroying many different types of cancers across the population." How does it work?
T-cells have "receptors" on their surface that allow them to "see" at a chemical level.
The Cardiff team discovered a T-cell and its receptor that could find and kill a wide range of cancerous cells in the lab including lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer cells.
Crucially, it left normal tissues untouched.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Who will meet an early fate for this discovery?
A few years later part of the Cardiff team were rich recluses or they died mysteriously while no results of their research yielded results.
They must be testing this on RBG
*ping*
She gets her infusions straight from Beelzebub.
We’ve all seen claims like this before and amazingly they just kinda disappear into the ether.
As a PCa survivor I have hope this may be the real deal.
Hold your cynicism! MY Super Secret Anonymous Source tells us that the cures all exist and will soon be revealed.
Cancer MUST have sugar (Glucose)
You can also starve it out (to a degree)
JMHO
Will Smith aka “I am Legend”.
And this is the first and last time anyone will ever hear of it.
Alternately the research was approved and all the patients were cured of cancer, but, after a long pain-filled hour of screaming their lungs out, died of a stoke hours later.
My doc wrote it “pCA” when I got it early this month. Good New Year present.
Treating cancer will always be an “arms race” against the cancerous cells. Whatever therapy is used it is never 100% effective and those cancer cells that survive are resistant to the latest drug. Also, the cost of autologous (patient donor) T cell therapies is in the millions making it too expensive for most insurance plans today. Allogeneic (stranger donor) therapies that use gene editing to knock out the graph vs. host disease (GVHD) gene and make it possible to create unlimited quantities of universal donor T cells would bring down the costs and time delay in treating cancers but are still years away.
Cancer cells also have evolved to turn off the ability of T cells to mark them for destruction using check point proteins. Recent advances like check point inhibitors have defeated this trick but this can also cause T cells to attack healthy cells leading to autoimmune responses which can be fatal.
Looking for a single silver bullet to defeat an evolving enemy like cancer is probably not going to work without addressing its complex lifecycle.
I’m curious as to what the receptor and the surface protein to which it binds (the ligand) are. One of the big problems in cancer treatment is that the surface of cancer cells is biologically almost identical to normal cells. For there to be a receptor and ligand pair that are unique to several types of cancer cells but not normal cells is amazing. Hopefully, this discovery will pan out.
These people need security, they will be targeted and murdered by those not wanting this to develop into a real treatment. Including every cancer charity in existence.
Lucia Mori and Gennaro De Libero, from University of Basel in Switzerland, said the research had "great potential" but was at too early a stage to say it would work in all cancers. snip...
Daniel Davis, a professor of immunology at the University of Manchester, said: "At the moment, this is very basic research and not close to actual medicines for patients.
I expect Big Pharma will see that this is swept under the rug quickly, with no fanfare. There’s a lot of money to be made by prolonging cancer.
How are you doing?
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