Cancer researchers claim 'extroadinary results' using T-cell therapy...
 

Scientists are claiming “extraordinary” success with engineering immune cells to target a specific type of blood cancer in their first clinical trials.

Among several dozen patients who would typically have only had months to live, early experimental trials that used the immune system’s T-cells to target cancers had “extraordinary results”.

In one study, 94% of participants with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) saw symptoms vanish completely. Patients with other blood cancers had response rates greater than 80%, and more than half experienced complete remission.

Speaking at the annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS), researcher Stanley Riddell said: “This is unprecedented in medicine, to be honest, to get response rates in this range in these very advanced patients.”

To administer the T-cell therapy, doctors remove immune cells from patients, tagging them with “receptor” molecules that target a specific cancer, as other T-cells target the flu or infections. They then infuse the cells back in the body.

“There are reasons to be optimistic, there are reasons to be pessimistic,” said Riddell, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Washington state. He added that the researchers believe that lowering the dose of T-cells can reduce the risk of side-effects.

“These are in patients that have failed everything. Most of the patients in our trial would be projected to have two to five months to live.”

Even more hopeful was researcher Chiara Bonini, who said she has not seen remission rates like those of recent trials in over 15 years. “This is really a revolution,” she said.

“T-cells are a living drug, and in particular they have the potential to persist in our body for our whole lives.”

Bonini, a haematologist at San Raffaele University in Milan, said that in another study researchers had tracked the presence of “memory” T-cells between two to 14 years after they had been introduced into cancer patients for whom bone marrow transplants had failed to work. “T-cells are a living drug, and in particular they have the potential to persist in our body for our whole lives.”

“This is a living therapy,” Riddell said. When you put it in the cells will undergo expansion in vivo.”

Tests so far have only targeted certain blood cancers, and the researchers acknowledged they needed to work on tumors and track how long patients would remain in remission. Cancer cells can sometimes hide unnoticed by the body’s defenses, or simply overwhelm them and throw the immune system into overdrive.

T-cell therapy is often considered an option of last resort because reprogramming the immune system can come with dangerous side-effects, including cytokine release syndrome (sCRS) – and overload defense cells. Twenty patients suffered symptoms of fever, hypotension and neurotoxicity due to sCRS, and two died, but the researchers noted that chemotherapy had failed in all the patients who participated in the new trials.

Riddell hesitated to say when the work would move beyond limited trials, but Bonini said: “I think we’re very close to some cellular product.”

She also expressed hope that the modified memory T-cells could eventually provide a long-term defense against cancer, using cells that “remember it from 10 years earlier, and kill it so quickly you don’t even know you’re infected”.

In the most promising study, about 35 patients with ALL were treated with Cars-modified T-cells; 94% went into remission, though symptoms could reappear. More than 40 patients with lymphoma have also been treated, with remission rates of more than 50%. In a group with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, there was evidence of diminished cancer symptoms in more than 80% of cases.

“Much like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, it’s not going to be a save-all,” Riddell said of the new therapy, adding: ““I think immunotherapy has finally made it to a pillar of cancer therapy.”

A paper on the ALL research is currently under review and pending publication.


http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews...cid=spartandhp

Great news

Yes it appears to work well

wow brilliant news

One step closer :fc:

Amazing news

Great news.

Fantastic news Seems immunotherapy is the answer.

http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk....ating-science/

These T-cells are having amazing results. Well done cancer research.

Fantastic news! :huge smile:

:amazed: This is amazing and wonderful news!

I can only echo what all the above members have said, it is absolutely brilliant news. More reasons than ever now to increase those Cancer Research Charity donations.

The day that this evil disease is finally conquered will equal any other achievment in the history of Mankind.

..:love:..huge smile as well...

Of course will the NHS fund it once it becomes available?
Will there then be an NHS?

Fair warning, I'm going to raise something a bit controversial here, and just to preface it I personally am definitely NOT saying we "shouldn't cure cancer". However, for those who do get themselves tied in knots over deficits and debts...

If you think we have a pensions crisis right now, consider a world without cancer. I know that sounds awful, I really do, cancer is a horrendous disease and it takes so many young, healthy people too... but, it is right up there with the biggest "natural causes" deaths of the elderly. In a world without cancer, average life expectancy will take an absolutely massive jump upwards. Retirement age will probably end up being 75+ (or, most likely, NEVER without medical reasons, the elderly who can't work will be classed as disabled).

Ergh I know I sound really terrible.... but I do think it's a double-edged sword in certain ways. Taking emotion entirely out of the equation - it's simply not practical nor feasible for everyone to live into their 90's and beyond.

Yep you're right.....That sounded terrible :/

...survival of the fittest, eh...so really in agreement with the NHS/Jremy Hunt philosophy now.../controversial...


..actually is this the thread though, should the T-cell treatment be transferred over to the other thread and connected/discussed there..?..

No no no, I'm not in agreement at all Ammi, I think fundamental aspects of society are completely broken and backwards. I utterly despise the school/work/retire/die rat race "life cycle" that we're all beholden to. I think that much should be pretty evident from... well... everything I've ever posted.

Everyone has been affected by cancer in some way. I literally don't know anyone who hasn't lost a friend or a family member to cancer... most people, multiple. No one has a monopoly on that and on an individual / personal basis (which is actually where I do most of my computer-chair-philosophising) curing any disease is a major triumph.

However, I find myself coming back to the fact that I feel like longer lifespans across the board and Capitalism are generally incompatible... and we seem to be absolutely stuck with glue to that system. I feel like longer lives would require a radical shift towards socialism (younger working age people accepting a significant tax increase to support the elderly) in order to not have people simply living longer, but bleaker, lives.

Just morbidly musing I guess, maybe not the place for it!

If I had to choose between paying higher taxes/living a bleaker life or my son dying to cancer, I know which option I'd go for. It's a hideous disease that destroys families; cancer doesn't discriminate, it doesn't just victimise the old or infirm, it also picks on the young and innocent who deserve a chance at life.

:worship: It says it all.

..You need to be like the Swiss Toy Soldier Robinson family, I think...

..I totally agree with this, Lee...I haven't experienced what you have and the reality of the possibility of losing a child but I've know very many families who have and (as you've said before a few times..)..it's not just something that effects at the time you're all going through it, it has such a long term effect on families..(fortunately not so much with the child themselves as they move on from the treatment and are well again..)...I know a parent who had two of her children diagnosed with leukaemia, within weeks of each other, they're both well now and completely clear and their lives are like any other young life/filled with the things that they should be filled with...their mum does many fund raising things still and has also achieved personal 'spiritual' things through this/self-awareness and fulfilment things..like climbs/walks etc all over the world....fund raising for any break-through treatments is also a thing as well and something we can all do, whether personally touched by or not...and yeah, through the tax system of course, could be something for the Governments to consider../in many countries because cancer is worldwide obviously, it doesn't discriminate any geography...

I'm obviously aware that young people get cancer, although, it's not true to say that it doesn't discriminate. More than half of cancer deaths are in people aged over 75, and over 80% are in those over 65. Under 40 the rate drops dramatically. Anyway, that's not really the point: I'm not talking about what we would or wouldn't do for our children. I am (loosely) socialist in nature and totally agree that people SHOULD be willing to have their taxes ramped up in order to support an aging population. I'm also a realist, though, and I know that people gripe like crazy when taxes go up by a penny, let alone by the significant amount it would take to make this a reality.

Also when I say "bleaker lives" I'm not talking about higher taxes / less money - I'm talking about the fact that the vast majority of people would, in effect, have to "work themselves to death". I'm just looking at that from a personal perspective, I guess. I would rather retire at 60 and die at 75, than retire at 89 and drop at 90.

No one is disputing that young, vibrant people dying of cancer is an absolute tragedy. I just sometimes wonder, should there be an upper age limit (like 70?) when trying to help people to live forever becomes a bit more morally ambiguous.

My mum is 70! She is in no way the stereotypical granny.. She's a strong, healthy, fit woman.. If she was ever to be diagnosed with anything life threatening, I'd like to think that she would have the same right to treatment as somebody half her age!

Actually I've just realised she's not 79 until October.. She would NOT be happy if she thought I was spreading it around that sh was 70 :laugh: