Billions, maybe trillions, to cure a disease that will affect 40% of humans in their lifetime. We’ve heard all sorts of stuff about amazing “cures” and procedures, but most of them involve cutting or excruciating pain from drug treatments.
Could this truly be a breakthrough?
How immunotherapy helps recognise and destroy cancer
Approach one: CTLA-4 = Dendritic cells are antigens that the T-cell protein CTLA-4 would normally recognise as a threat. Cancer overstimulates the CTLA-4 which acts as a circuit breaker on this immune response
Jim Allison’s lab developed an antibody which blocked CTLA-4 allowing the T-cell attack on cancer to take place
Approach two: PD-1 = Cancer cells produce a molecule, PD-1, which prevents T-cells from recognising them as a threat. The inhibitor drug blocks the cancer’s ability to hide, allowing T-cells to destroy it
And then there’s another called T-Cell Transfer that I won’t try to summarize here. But, it too appears to be promising.
Is there a problem about this?
Of course. Scientific and medical types tend to do what they know and have used. They look at new breakthrough with askance and thus those procedures may not find their way into the use they should. Immunotherapy, according to this article, was first approached in 1994 but it has only been recently that it has been recognized as a usable form of cancer treatment.
This is a very lengthy article and can be read @ A cure for cancer: how to kill a killer
Could this truly be a breakthrough?
How immunotherapy helps recognise and destroy cancer
Approach one: CTLA-4 = Dendritic cells are antigens that the T-cell protein CTLA-4 would normally recognise as a threat. Cancer overstimulates the CTLA-4 which acts as a circuit breaker on this immune response
Jim Allison’s lab developed an antibody which blocked CTLA-4 allowing the T-cell attack on cancer to take place
Approach two: PD-1 = Cancer cells produce a molecule, PD-1, which prevents T-cells from recognising them as a threat. The inhibitor drug blocks the cancer’s ability to hide, allowing T-cells to destroy it
And then there’s another called T-Cell Transfer that I won’t try to summarize here. But, it too appears to be promising.
Is there a problem about this?
Of course. Scientific and medical types tend to do what they know and have used. They look at new breakthrough with askance and thus those procedures may not find their way into the use they should. Immunotherapy, according to this article, was first approached in 1994 but it has only been recently that it has been recognized as a usable form of cancer treatment.
This is a very lengthy article and can be read @ A cure for cancer: how to kill a killer
