

Cell therapy shows remarkable ability to eradicate cancer in clinical study - signa11
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140219142556.htm

======
Gatsky
As has been said by the Carl June who did the pioneering work at UPen, this is
like a targeted, safer version of a bone marrow transplant.

The problem is generalising this to every type of cancer. You need a target
that is widely expressed on the cancer cell, and that isn't found on other
important tissues. This is the case (sort of - it still destroys all the
healthy B-cells, which as it turns out, doesn't cause TOO many problems) for
CD19 which the T-cells are aimed at in this study. For solid tumours like lung
cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer etc it will probably be much harder to
find a similarly useful target. But they are trying:

[http://cancerimmunolres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2013/...](http://cancerimmunolres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/19/2326-6066.CIR-13-0170.abstract)

~~~
kenrikm
After reading this, this is what came to mind: (from I am legend).
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRctxZT-a1A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRctxZT-a1A)
Though, I don't think we'll be needing to worry about mutated zombies it's
still an interesting comparison.

------
tokenadult
ScienceDaily is just a press release recycling service, nothing more. Many,
many submissions to HN are based at bottom on press releases, and press
releases are well known for spinning preliminary research findings beyond all
recognition. This has been commented on in the PhD comic "The Science News
Cycle,"[1] which only exaggerates the process a very little. More serious
commentary in the edited group blog post "Related by coincidence only?
University and medical journal press releases versus journal articles"[2]
points to the same danger of taking press releases (and news aggregator
website articles based solely on press releases) too seriously. Press releases
are usually misleading.

[1]
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174)

[2] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by-
coi...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by-coincidence-
only-journal-press-releases-versus-journal-articles/)

Participants on Hacker News have been commenting for years that there are much
better sources for stories than ScienceDaily.

Comments about ScienceDaily:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206)

"Blogspam.

"Original article (to which ScienceDaily has added precisely nothing):

[http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-
dn...](http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dna-changes-
following-population-explosion-may-hold-common-disease-clues)

"Underlying paper in Science (paywalled):

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1219240)

"Brief writeup from Nature discussing this paper and a couple of others on
similar topics:

[http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-
genetic-...](http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-
variants-1.10655)

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603)

"Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from
ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from
nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly
worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening
pictures, etc.

" . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty
much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit
that instead of ScienceDaily."

------
rollthehard6
See also treatment with low doses of Naltrexone, opiod growth factor -
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890982](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890982)
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110519101242.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110519101242.htm)
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8620464](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8620464)

There's a lot to be said for using the body's own immune system rather than
suppressing it.

------
Pitarou
My god! Is this as good as it looks? Because it looks like my chances of
living to be 100 have just gone up significantly.

~~~
aquadrop
Yeah, looks sensational to me, not sure why nobody comments on this. Also, I
think that's the right path - improving our own immune system.

~~~
neverminder
It doesn't improve your immune system per se, injected cells are programmed to
target cells with specific markers and there can be collateral damage (see top
comment). Also if I understand it correctly your immune system will not
reproduce these programmed cells, so it's temporary.

------
iskander
I just started working on a project related to immuno-oncology and I think
this field is (1) really fucking fascinating and (2) rapidly heating up. Two
decades ago, the centrality of our immune systems in the prevention and/or
evolution of cancers was barely appreciated. Now, immune evasion and immune
editing are understood to be central aspects of 'cancerness' and cancer immune
therapies are being rapidly dreamed up and evaluated. We suddenly (on the
timescale of medical research) have chimeric antigen receptors (this post),
immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD1, anti-CTLA4), dendritic cell vaccines,
adoptive T-cell therapies, growing databases of tumor-associated antigens, and
a lot of momentum around tumor sequencing (which can help make immune
treatments fully personalized).

------
chaotic_good
I have recently lost a good friend in her 40s to multiple myeloma. It isn't
named in this article, but would this treatment work for that cancer as well?
Both seem to target B cells.

~~~
iskander
CAR therapy requires identifying a broadly expressed target; it looks like
there are a few candidate antigens being evaluated for MM but I don't know if
any of the studies have published significant results yet.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24411699](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24411699)
[http://www.myelomabeacon.com/resources/mtgs/ash2013/abs/14/](http://www.myelomabeacon.com/resources/mtgs/ash2013/abs/14/)

