
Experimental Cancer Treatment That Terminates Rogue Cells Could Arrive in 2017 - DrScump
http://www.seeker.com/a-biologic-assassin-car-t-cell-turns-immune-system-against-cancer-2161950283.html
======
baldfat
As a dad who lost a son at 12 (2013) to bone cancer and as a brother who lost
a sister at 15 (1996) to brain cancer I pray we will finally start funding
pediatric cancer above the 4% rate of Federal Cancer Research and the 1% that
American Cancer Society give to pediatric cancer research.

There has been 4 whole new chemo treatments in the past 25 years for pediatric
cancer patients compared to the frequency adult community. The issue is that
every cell in children is growing. So in an older adult you can more easily
focus growing cells. What works for children will work better for adults with
the probability of less side effects.

Those interested int he history of childhood cancer here is a good short
history and why we are so helpful for immutheraphy.
[https://www.stbaldricks.org/blog/post/the-history-of-
childho...](https://www.stbaldricks.org/blog/post/the-history-of-childhood-
cancer-research/)

~~~
akiselev
Why is the funding so low relative to oncology research in general? Does the
FDA not allow pediatric cancer therapies to be developed as orphaned drugs or
is the growing nature of a child really make it that difficult to target
pediatric cancers? Is it because cancer is far more common in the elderly who
have much more political leverage?

~~~
baldfat
It is 100% about the numbers. 43 children in America are diagnosed with cancer
everyday. 5 children die everyday and it is the number one cause of death for
children. 40,000 children every year are being treated. BUT that pales to just
lung cancer with 610 diagnosis per day and 427 deaths per day.

I still say that is these are not a good reasons to keep the funding so low.

1) Treatments for Children are immediately beneficial to adults BUT treatments
for adults would take at least 7 years but the cast majority they would be
unlikely to be of any benefit to children.

2) Treatments for Children will also have less side effects and fewer long
term side effects.

3) Children are at the age of around 6 years old when diagnosed and have 60
years+ of a positive life. 2% of lung cancer patients are under 45 years old
and average age is 70 on the day of diagnosis.

4) Ethical: If you had a choice for your life to be saved or a child's life
but only one of you can have could live what would you chose? If you saw a
child about to get hit by a car but it was unclear if you intervene if you
would make it would you just stand to the side? I think most of us would hope
we would choose the kids. Why are we not doing this when we can actually sit
down and think about it?

~~~
aries1980
If it is all about the numbers, can anyone tell me the what is the threshold
that a government is willing to spend to save a human life? What is the base
threshold and multipliers for e.g. a US embassy-employee in Libya or a kid in
Wyoming? I am sure insurance companies have some figures.

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piyush_soni
Every once in a while we get to read similar news, that this 'selective'
cancer killer is just arriving. Can someone more knowledgeable in this field
comment whether this is just another clickbait article or not?

~~~
quickben
I am not a doctor, but from reading, there are many different cells and
cancers (ways for these cells to misbehave but still not being killed by the
body).

As such, there is no singular 'cancer' and no singular 'cancer cure'.

I may stand corrected by somebody more knowledgeable though.

~~~
danielbarla
I'm probably not more knowledgeable, but from my understanding, most (all?)
cancers are related in that they start as a single mutated cell which
replicates in an aggressive way which leads to problems / death.

Since it's a mutated cell, I can imagine extracting DNA from the cancerous
area, and doing a diff against your "normal" DNA from elsewhere in your body.
This would enable you to identify the difference / unique signature of the
cancerous cells, kind of how a software antivirus looks for binary patterns in
things that it scans. A mechanism like CRISPR could then be used to
effectively target all instances of the mutated DNA / cells in your body,
effectively wiping it out.

I suspect this is ridiculously hand-wavy and oversimplified, but something
like this might just be viable in our lifetimes.

~~~
Waterluvian
I thought that there's constantly countless cells in your body with genetic
mutations. Most just have benign effects.

I'd better research this a bit more.

~~~
isp
Interesting keyword to research: "p53".

Example (very readable):
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NB14L6Y](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NB14L6Y)

> If a cell makes a mistake in copying its DNA during the process of division,
> p53 stops it in its tracks, summoning a repair team before allowing the cell
> to carry on dividing. If the mistake is irreparable and the rogue cell
> threatens to grow out of control, p53 commands the cell to commit suicide.
> Cancer cannot develop unless p53 itself is damaged or prevented from
> functioning normally.

~~~
Waterluvian
Thank you! That's something I wouldn't have discovered so easily and makes my
learning about it much easier.

------
entee
CAR-T-cell therapy is very promising but the salient quote here is this:

 _" You need a good target, and that's probably the biggest obstacle to this
kind of therapy," Cohen said. "We found a good target in leukemias and
lymphomas. In solid tumors, it's been a bit more evasive."_

 _The target protein has to be exclusively associated with the type of cancer
cell that the treatment is designed to kill. If it occurs in other types of
cells, the results could be disastrous. Even successful immunotherapy
treatments can destroy healthy cells, and researchers concede that achieving
pinpoint accuracy remains a major challenge. Unfortunately, there have already
been cases in which CAR-T patients have died._

This is always the problem. It's always hard to have pinpoint accuracy in
biology, and hopefully we'll get better at it but it's a hard slog.

Also remember that while this is promising, remember that this approach is
only going to work with surface-available targets. They won't work looking at
cell-internal targets, which is obviously where a lot of cancer has gone
wrong.

~~~
digi_owl
That seems to be the basic problem when dealing with cancer. As it is a core
behavior of our body run amok, it is damn hard to stop it without also killing
the patient in the process.

------
cube00
"Researchers have seen promising results so far, but there have also been
tragic outcomes, with five patients dying while undergoing treatment during
clinical trials this past year."

It would be good if they could explain if that was caused by this new
treatment or if the cancer was just too far advanced when treated.

~~~
randcraw
In general, I suspect they know. If the death was caused by the drug the
patient should show signs of abnormal immune response, like those of a
cytokine storm:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm)

Also if the trial is allowed to continue, the study's monitors have decided
that the study protocol wasn't violated, thus the drug wasn't 'misbehaving' to
an unacceptable degree. Of course in late stage cancers with few/no further
approved treatments, the decision of go vs no go on any course of action is
often left to the patient and family, so 'unacceptable' can become a matter of
will.

From all I've read, administration of immunotherapies of all kinds is tricky
and often leads to treatment complications often due to improper administation
of the drug or inadequacies in monitoring the patients' response, since most
doctors (like oncologists) are inexperienced in recognizing early signs of
abnormal immune response.

~~~
ars
One research avenue would be using dialysis to remove cytokines. Ordinary
dialysis does not remove much, but apparently there are some new filters that
might work:

[https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/369155](https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/369155)

------
kleiba
"...or not."

I've kinda developed a thing against headlines that seem to announce something
great and wonderful, but in fact are purely speculative. One way to lure in
readers.

------
cowardlydragon
Are these the CRISPR based ones or a different flavor of TCell engineering?

------
perseusprime11
Maybe this problem is too hard for humans to solve. We've spent a long time
trying to crack this nut. I am more bullish on Machine learning solving this
problem quickly in the next 5 years.

~~~
aantix
Do you know of any specific efforts on that front?

~~~
perseusprime11
It is starting but most of them focus on predictions. Here is a paper that
links to others but should give you an idea.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25750696](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25750696)

------
philsnow
> Experimental Cancer Treatment That Terminates Rogue Cells Could Arrive in
> 2017

So, this gives cancer to members of terrorist cells? Or is that just a book
somebody should write?

------
grater
Plant based diet has been proven to slow and even reverse cancer, but there's
no money in it. It will take time but slowly doctors are beginning to
acknowledge that our biggest killers are the result of what you put in your
body.

edit: if anyone is interested, this is just one example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VX_oZBMSd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VX_oZBMSd4)

~~~
ohyoutravel
Please don't spread this absolute garbage.

~~~
leptoniscool
[http://news.usc.edu/103972/fasting-like-diet-turns-the-
immun...](http://news.usc.edu/103972/fasting-like-diet-turns-the-immune-
system-against-cancer/)

~~~
Ralfp
> according to a new USC-led study on mice

