Re: Like I said, the cure for cancer is a health immune system.

Mark Goldberg wrote:
Wayne Dobson wrote:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1027578/Patient-fights-cancer-clones-immune-cells.html]
Like I've said: you're a dumbass.
This therapy and line of research has gone on for years and of course,
may yield results, however, it is neither cure-all, nor evidence that
you have a brain in your head.

So don't take credit except for being a derfus, and a dope....

Mark

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Doctors Kill Skin Cancer with Cloned Immune Cells

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 5:30 PM

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ATLANTA -- An Oregon man, given less than a year to live, had a
complete remission of advanced deadly skin cancer after an
experimental treatment that revved up his immune system to fight the
tumors.
The 52-year-old patient's dramatic turnaround was the only success in
a small study, leading doctors to be cautious in their enthusiasm.
However, the treatment reported in Thursday's issue of the New England
Journal of Medicine is being counted as the latest in a small series
of successes involving immune-priming treatments against deadly skin
cancers.
"Immunotherapy has become the most promising approach" to late-stage,
death-sentence skin cancers, said Dr. Darrell Rigel, a dermatology
researcher at the New York University Cancer Institute in New York who
had no role in the research.

Still, the immune-priming experiments have yet to yield a consistent
therapy. Even researchers who worked on the experiment involving nine
patients and just one success are quick to couch the result. "This is
only one patient," said study co-author Dr. Cassian Yee of the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

And two years after his remarkable recovery, the patient fell out of
contact with researchers and scientists do not know his current
condition. The man, who lives in a small town in Oregon, has declined
media interviews, Yee said.

I wonder if he now drives a shiny new car.

Melanoma is a cancer in the skin cells that make pigments and cause
skin to tan, as part of the body's attempt to protect itself from
ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. Cancer begins when radiation
overloads and damages the cells, causing mutations.

About 62,000 news cases are diagnosed in the United States each year,
and there are about 8,000 melanoma deaths.

When caught early, melanomas can be easily treated by surgically
removing the cancerous patch of skin. But "once it has spread,
basically nothing works," Rigel said.

Recently, however, scientists began thinking they might have another
option - helping the body's immune system.

I wonder how long it took them to come up with that.

Doctors had long thought that immune system cells, which so
effectively attack foreign threats like viruses, were giving a pass
to cancer cells. The theory was that because cancers cells are
generated by the body, the immune system perceived them as part of
the body.

And look how well that theory held up.

But about 20 years ago, some scientists discovered that immune cells
could latch onto and attack skin cancers.

You need to study 20 years to discover that, as it is such a complicated
concept.

"There's a long history behind all of this," said Dr. Steven Rosenberg
of the National Cancer Institute, a pioneer in that research.

In recent experiments, Rosenberg and other researchers have focused on
souping up a certain kind of immune system cell - the "killer T cells"
that envelop and kill foreign agents. Experiments have also involved
giving patients chemotherapy or other drugs that are toxic to patients
but can help the immune system's ability to fight cancer.

That's interesing, you poison the patient with cytotoxic drugs in order to
help the patient's immune system. Yes, that makes perfect sense.

The new research took a different approach. The Hutchinson center
scientists focused instead on specific helper T cells that are adept
at locking onto a cancer cell and guiding the killer cells to their
target.
The researchers drew blood from patients, located the special helper
cells and then grew more of them in the laboratory. They then infused
roughly 5 billion of the cells back into the patients - without
chemotherapy or the other harsh drugs.

You mean they stopped poisoning the patients, then saw an improvement? Why
should that happen?

"It's a simpler and less toxic approach to melanoma than had been
previously employed," said Dr. Louis Weiner, director of the cancer
center at Georgetown University.

It's less toxic not to poison the patient? Let me take a note.

The fourth patient they treated was the Oregon man, who had a melanoma
on his back before it had spread to his groin and right lung. He was
treated in July 2005. Two months after the treatment, advanced scans
of his body revealed no tumors. Two years after the treatment, he had
no symptoms.

More good news: There were no harmful side effects.

No harmful effects from not poisoning the patient? How is that?

What's more, an
analysis showed that his immune system had targeted not only one type
of protein target on cancer cells, but two others as well.

Three is a magic number.

It's possible the treatment spurred his immune system to expand its
cancer-fighting ability in new ways, Yee said.

New, as in acting like an immune system. We don't normally see that.

However, the case raised many unanswered questions. The man had been
treated earlier with other drugs. It's possible those treatments had
already weakened or altered the cancer.

Ok, back to the drugs. I wonder where this is headed.

****Also, none of the eight other patients in the study did as well.
It's not clear why****

Maybe they were cursed.

--
Wayne Dobson
AKA "Dobbie The House Elf"


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