Excitement at new cancer treatment

[longknife]

Billions of dollars spent on research and every time one turns around there's another report of a “major breakthrough” in eliminating cancer. Is this just another one of those?



A therapy that retrains the body's immune system to fight cancer has provoked excitement after more than 90% of terminally ill patients reportedly went into remission.



The full story is @ Excitement at new cancer treatment - BBC News



Is this the cure for cancer? Genetically modified blood turned into 'living drug' in stunning new therapy that hunts down and destroys diseased cells and prevents them from returning - possibly FOREVER. Read more: Stunning new therapy hunts down and destroys cancer cells

 

[Grandma]

Wonderful news!

 

[waltky]

Stress aggravates cancer...

Chronic Stress May Make Cancer Worse
March 02, 2016 - A cancer diagnosis, and the battle to fight the disease, can be extremely stressful. But feeling a great amount of stress, particularly over a long period of time, may make the disease worse.

Short bursts of stress, known as the fight or flight response, can be good, helping humans avoid or escape threatening or dangerous situations.But chronic stress, day after day, can harm health.

Chronic stress, harmful to health

Stress has been shown to play a role in the development of heart disease. Stress can also contribute to cancer progression, according to researcher Erica Sloan of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.loan said chronic stress causes release of the hormone adrenaline that promotes the spread of cancer. "It allows tumors to start making growth factors that support these new freeways out of the tumor.We are also able to show that stress can increase the speed limit on these freeways, and so it can allow tumor cells to move out of the tumors at a faster rate,” said Sloan.

Kyla Nagel stands next to her brain scan at her home in Springfield, Ore. Nagel was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer three years ago, Jan. 28, 2005. A cancer diagnosis, and the battle to fight the disease, can be extremely stressful. But feeling a great amount of stress, particularly over a long period of time, may make the disease worse.​

The freeways are lymphatic vessels near cancerous tumors that are part of the body’s immune system.The clear fluid in the vessels contains white blood cells that help detect and destroy viruses and bacteria. Sloan’s research has shown adrenaline primes lymphatic vessels, providing easy access to the circulatory system for malignant cells to escape and spread. In a study described in the journal Nature Communications, Sloan and colleagues showed cancer progressed more quickly in stressed mice than in unstressed rodents.

Calmness, meditation helpful

But an inexpensive drug used to lower blood pressure may calm the stress response and slow cancer spread. Sloan pointed to a study of women with breast cancer in Italy. "And we looked at those who have been diagnosed with breast cancer who were taking these anti-hypertensive drugs and those that were not. And what we found is that those who were taking beta-blockers showed evidence of less spread of cancer into the lymphatic system and into distant tissues," she explained. "And so we are quite optimistic that this will work in patients as well.”

A clinical trial is now underway in Australia to see whether beta-blockers make breast cancer less aggressive. “A diagnosis of cancer is going to be incredibly stressful. And so I guess what this suggests is that we have an opportunity not only to treat the cancer, but also by treating the patients’ well-being," she added. "We are not just making them feel good, but potentially we are also doing something to slow the spread of cancer.” It is possible that meditation could also be used to calm a patient, reducing the spread of cancer.

Chronic Stress May Make Cancer Worse

 

[JustAnotherNut]

The medical field has made great strides in successful cancer treatments in recent years. Let's hope this can be approved & on the market ASAP

 

[waltky]

Uncle Joe makin' `em crack down an' find a cure...

Scientists 'find cancer's Achilles heel'
Thu, 03 Mar 2016 - Scientists believe they have discovered a way to "steer" the immune system to kill cancers.

They have developed a method, reported in Science journal, for finding unique markings within a tumour - its "Achilles heel" - that the immune system can target. But the approach would be expensive, need designing for each individual and has not yet been tried in patients. Experts said the idea made sense but could be more complicated in reality. However, the researchers believe their discovery could form the backbone of new treatments and hope to test it in patients within two years.

People have tried to steer the immune system to kill tumours before, but cancer vaccines have largely flopped. One explanation is that they are training the body's own defences to go after the wrong target. The problem is cancers are not made up of identical cells - they are a heavily mutated, genetic mess and samples at different sites within a tumour can look and behave very differently.

'Exciting'

They grow a bit like a tree with core "trunk" mutations, but then mutations that branch off in all directions. It is known as cancer heterogeneity. The international study developed a way of discovering the "trunk" mutations that change antigens - the proteins that stick out from the surface of cancer cells.

Professor Charles Swanton, from the UCL Cancer Institute, added: "This is exciting. "Now we can prioritise and target tumour antigens that are present in every cell - the Achilles heel of these highly complex cancers. "This is really fascinating and takes personalised medicine to its absolute limit, where each patient would have a unique, bespoke treatment."

There are two approaches being suggested for targeting the trunk mutations. The first is to develop cancer vaccines for each patient that train the immune system to spot them. The second is to "fish" for immune cells that already target those mutations and swell their numbers in the lab, and then put them back into the body.

'Early days'

 

[waltky]

Cholesterol and diabetes drugs may fight cancer...

Cholesterol drug may fight prostate cancer, scientists say
April 14, 2016 - In mice with human prostate cells, a compound disrupting cholesterol use by cancer cells slowed tumor growth, researchers report.

A drug designed to lower cholesterol stops the progression of prostate cancer, according to researchers at the University of Missouri. The researchers say using the drug with or without chemotherapy treatments for prostate cancer could prove to be more effective while reducing the level of toxic chemicals needed to fight the disease. Cholesterol is used to solidify cell membrane structures, and is synthesized by cancer cells for survival as they grow.

Based on the potential for tumors to become resistant to chemotherapy treatments, the researchers looked toward reducing cholesterol in cancer cells as a method of attacking the disease. "Although tumor cells may initially respond to these therapies, most eventually develop resistance that causes prostate cancer cells to grow and spread," Dr. Salman Hyder, a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri, said in a press release. "Cholesterol also can contribute to the development of anti-hormone resistance because cholesterol is converted into hormones in tumor cells, therefore, these cholesterol-forming pathways are attractive therapeutic targets for the treatment of prostate cancer."

For the study, published in the journal OncoTargets and Therapy, the researchers tested the compound RO 48-8071 on human prostate cancer cells, finding it reduced cell growth and was shown in later studies to cause cancer cell death. When injected into mice with human prostate cells, the compound slowed tumor growth in the rodents, researchers report.

Further studies with the compound need to be conducted, but the researchers said its effects in the lab show potential for another, less toxic method of prostate cancer treatment. "Often, cancer patients are treated with toxic chemotherapies," Hyder said. "In our study, we focused on reducing the production of cholesterol in cancer cells, which could kill cancer cells and reduce the need for toxic chemotherapy."

Cholesterol drug may fight prostate cancer, scientists say

See also:


Widely used type 2 diabetes drug may reduce cancer death risk
April 15, 2016 -- Metformin, a commonly prescribed diabetes drug, may reduce the risk of dying from some cancers for postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes, a new study suggests.

The study found that for women with type 2 diabetes and cancer, the odds of dying from cancer appeared to be 45 percent higher compared to women with cancer who didn't have diabetes. But, in women with cancer who took metformin to treat their type 2 diabetes, the risk of dying from cancer seemed about the same as it was for women without diabetes. "Our findings from this large study may provide more evidence that postmenopausal women with diabetes and cancer may benefit from metformin therapy compared to other anti-diabetes therapy," said lead researcher Zhihong Gong. She's an assistant professor of oncology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, in Buffalo, N.Y.

Gong cautioned, however, that this study didn't prove that metformin prevents or reduces the risk of dying from cancer, only that an association was found. And, she added that more studies are necessary to figure out metformin's possible role in decreasing the risk of dying from cancer. The report was published in the April 15 print issue of the International Journal of Cancer. Metformin is a first-line drug in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) says. People with type 2 diabetes don't use the hormone insulin efficiently, which leads the pancreas to pump out more and more insulin until it eventually fails, the ADA explains. Insulin is a hormone that's necessary for the body to use the carbohydrates in food as fuel. Metformin makes the body more sensitive to insulin and reduces insulin resistance, the researchers said.

The study team reviewed data from nearly 146,000 postmenopausal women. They were between the ages of 50 and 79. The information was collected between 1993 and 1998 and came from the large Women's Health Initiative study. The researchers wanted to focus on women with type 2 in this study. So, in an effort to exclude women with type 1 diabetes, the researchers removed information on anyone who had been diagnosed with diabetes before age 21. Looking at specific cancers, the risk for postmenopausal women with diabetes appeared to be about 25 percent to 35 percent higher for developing colon and endometrial cancers and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The women's risk was more than doubled for liver and pancreatic cancers, the researchers found. "Our findings suggest that diabetes remains a risk factor for cancer and cancer-related death, and metformin therapy, compared to other diabetes medications, may have an important role in [managing] diabetes-associated cancer," Gong said. One diabetes expert who wasn't involved with the study was cautious about interpreting the results. Although the study found a slight risk reduction, it depended on taking the drug for a long time, said Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the Clinical Diabetes Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. More studies are in progress to determine the long-term effect of metformin in cancer risk, he added. "We still don't understand the exact mechanism of action of this old drug used in diabetes," Zonszein said. "It may have positive effects in decreasing cancer mortality and or increasing longevity as shown in this paper."

Widely used type 2 diabetes drug may reduce cancer death risk