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New wonder drug matches and kills all kinds of cancer — human testing starts 2014 By MICHAEL BLAUSTEIN Last Updated: 2:03 PM, July 11, 2013 Posted: 12:55 PM, July 11, 2013 Stanford researchers are on track to begin human trials of a potentially potent new weapon against cancer, and would-be participants are flooding in following the Post’s initial report on the discovery. The progress comes just two months after the groundbreaking study by Dr Irv Weissman, who developed an antibody that breaks down a cancer's defense mechanisms in the body. A protein called CD47 tells the body not to "eat"...

Enlarge Image Double whammy. Combining a SIRPa protein (CV1 mono) and the cancer drug rituximab virtually wiped out tumors in mice after 29 days. Credit: Adapted From K. Weiskopf et al., Science (2013) To avoid being destroyed by our immune systems, cancer cells engage in a bit of trickery. As they divide to form tumors, they fly under the radar of macrophages, immune cells whose job it is to ingest dead cells and dangerous invaders. Today, many cancer patients are treated with antibody drugs that work in part by marking tumor cells for destruction by macrophages. Although these drugs...

Enlarge Image Survivor. When mice with human tumors received doses of anti-CD47, which sets the immune system against tumor cells, the cancers shrank and disappeared. Credit: Fotosearch A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a "do not eat" signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells. A decade ago, biologist Irving Weissman of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, discovered that leukemia cells...

Enlarge Image Bypassing the guard. To avoid destruction by a wary immune system, nanoparticles must get past macrophages like the one shown here. Credit: Hemera/Thinkstock It's a popular goal in nanotechnology these days: using tiny particles as containers to ferry drugs to tumors, among other targets. But immune sentries called macrophages quickly spot foreign invaders and gobble them up. Now, a team of Pennsylvania researchers has found a way to give particles a molecular "passport" that gets them past the sentries in mice, where the particles then deliver their lethal cargo to tumors and help destroy them. That success...

The stench of Washington permeates the West Coast. California’s most hotly contested House race, the contest between seven-term incumbent Democrat Loretta Sanchez and California Republican Assemblyman Van Tran, remains too close to call. The Orange County race made headlines last month when Congresswoman Sanchez claimed on Spanish-only Univision that “the Vietnamese (were) coming” for her seat. You can read my Pajamas Media article on the race as well as an interview with Van Tran here.Now something smells as bad as trash-truck juice on a Death Valley summer day in California’s 47th. In search of the olfactory offense, I point the...