Posted on 02/22/2024 12:29:49 AM PST by MoraBlack
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which selects Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics, last week awarded Wu its Sjöberg Prize in honor of “decisive contributions” to cancer research.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
In a different article, "Cancer vaccine from BioNTech, Roche shows potential in small study," this was said:
“Although a very small study, this trial demonstrates the ability of mRNA vaccines to elicit potent anti-tumor T cell responses that appear to create significant clinical benefit,” said Ira Mellman, vice president of cancer immunology at Roche’s Genentech division and an author on the paper, in an emailed statement. “That such benefit was seen in pancreatic cancer, a lethal disease that has thus far been refractory to any form of immunotherapy, makes the result all the more exciting.”
In concept, a vaccine properly targeted to an individual's unique DNA might activate the immune system to get at all the genetic variations of a tumor. This study suggests that might be true.
True. The mRNA technology makes it easy to tailor the immunogen that triggers the immune response against the offending tumor.
Immunotherapies have been developed along the same basic theory. Blood is drawn from the patient, infused with specific antigens that target the organ, and then reinfused to the body. This only works for cancers like breast, ovarian and prostate where the organ can be removed prior to treatment, to prevent an immune response attacking the whole organ and causing great inflammatory response. But in the case of say prostate cancer, if the prostate is removed, the treatment will then target remaining cells that may be in the blood stream or lymphatic system etc. Because it just target prostate cells, the antigens won’t damage other organs, cells, or lymph nodes but will prime the immune system to destroy any remaining circulating prostate cells - cancer or other - to prevent and eliminate metastases.
There was one for prostate cancer called Provenge, and it did get approved but it didn’t get wide adoption, and it was only approved for very advanced cases where primary treatments had failed. That made no sense to me, because the sooner you can treat the better the outcome and this was basically non toxic and well tolerated. And the data confirmed that it worked better when given early but the FDA and drug companies are bastards and made it difficult to obtain. It was very expensive. It still exists. Chinese ended up buying the rights.
^ and insurers (are bastards)
I would assume with the advent of Ai, there’s going to be quite a lot of breakthroughs in the next 10 to 20 years depending upon of course what happens in November. If we become a 3rd world nation, not much will get done.
And that’ll be the last we hear of that. as usual.
My 14 year-old son is receiving just this type of personalized neoantigen vaccine for a sarcoma - tailored to his specific tumor. We have to regularly go overseas (Germany) to have him get it. He remains clear of disease 2 years after diagnosis. This is the future of cancer therapy.
Read the entire thing.
Glad to hear your son is doing well.
I can easily imagine the ups and downs that you and your son experienced. Fortunately, we live in an era of medical advances.
I`m so happy for your son, you and your family.Unfortunately for us, like for so many people, this new treatment comes too late but it is comforting to know that it may actually be a gamechanger in the future.All the best for your boy.Hopefully there will come a day when he sees more form my country than just airports and hospital.
The next big thing in cancer treatment is going to be medbeds.
Provenge seems to have some rough side effects. That is the sort of thing that makes the FDA reluctant to approve early stage use.
It’s been a while, but as I recall the side effects were fairly minimal and transient. Certainly less than chemo, and roughly the same as hormonal treatments. A few days of flu like symptoms resulting from the immune system being supercharged with prostate specific antigens.
It’s expensive and an involved process. There is no practical reason it couldn’t be given earlier, except that with the label for late stage cancer, insurance won’t pay for it. But it stands to reason as a immunotherapy that it would work better if given earlier, and the evidence shows that it works better when given to patients with low Gleason scores.
FDA took a long time to approve it, which is the main reason I thought of it here, contrasting with how they rushed the Covid mRNA shots. I am not a fan of calling those “vaccines”. It seems they have changed the definition of vaccine and I wish they didn’t. Just call them therapies. It would be great if they could generate patient specific treatments. NantHealth, which is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong (biotech billionaire and owner of the LA Times and San Diego Tribune) has been developing genetic sequencing databases of cancer tumors with the idea that those specific sequences could be treated with targeted therapies. They may not need to be patient specific but rather gene sequence specific. I wonder if there is some connection there between NantHealth to these mRNA cancer gene therapies.
Unfortunately, the term "cancer vaccine" misdirects attention from important details that distinguishes immunotherapy from the classic meaning of vaccine as provoking a protective immune response by presenting an antigen that is unique to an infectious disease.
As I understand the NantHealth technology, their approach is to develop lines of universal natural killer cells that are combined with antigens aimed at tumor types and patient specific tumors. This seems to me not so much a vaccine as providing as therapy a key part of the immune response that a vaccine aims to generate. The use of mRNA is apparently part of the NantHealth production process.
I have to confess that I am far beyond my education. I have a clear memory of my college biology professor explaining in class in 1973 that as remarkable as the discovery of DNA was, he did not see how we would ever be able to read the secrets hidden in the massive length of its four letter code.
Only a decade later though, an odd, brilliant chemist named Kary Mullis figured out a practical way of how to do it using PCR amplification. He eventually got the Nobel Prize.
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