Some heart-wrenching comments from the page:<p>"Husband and father of 3, age 31, high grade spindle cell sarcoma, stage 4 with mets- help! nuclearcouple@hotmail.com or find me (spouse) on fb, Heather Cimino in Fort Myers, Fl, willing to travel anywhere, just save my husband!"<p>"my wife has tumor that are killing her will you hurry up and get this sorted - is there anyway one can volunteer for a trial tim.parry@xtra.co.nz"<p>There has got to be a way to address this need.
It bothers me to continuously see articles with headlines like this. Just look at the comments—it gives false hope to patients and their families. As the author mentioned later in the article, there is a big difference between seeing cancer cells die in a petri dish or reduction in size of a transplanted tumor in mice and it being safe and effective in humans. I hope this succeeds, but it is a long way from a Phase 2/3 clinical trial.<p>Cancer research is too important to use misleading, link bait headlines to attract attention.
Here is a longer, more recent, (more obscure), article: <a href="http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2012summer/article7.html" rel="nofollow">http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2012summer/article7.html</a>
The article is from 26 March 2012, over a year ago. Would be great to hear on developments that happened over last year.<p>May this be another 'lost' case, appeared once and never again?
"Although macrophages also attacked blood cells expressing CD47 when mice were given the antibody, the researchers found that the decrease in blood cells was short-lived; the animals turned up production of new blood cells to replace those they lost from the treatment"<p>That's great -- does anyone know if any other cells in the body express CD47? Especially ones that can't be replaced so easily?
Cancer evolve. In this sense it is like a new species (and it can occasionally become one).<p>That's why fighting it is so difficult. I highly doubt there ever can be one chemical substance that reliably fights all sorts of cancer.<p>And you can't really cure cancer anyway.<p>Our only hope at this point is genetic engineering.
I would expect that human tissue put in mice would normally be rejected by the mouse's immune system, so this treatment would just allow that to happen in the special case of cancer tissue (which has mechanisms to prevent that). I'm worried that the human immune system wouldn't be as interested in attacking its own cells that became cancerous, even with this treatment.
White blood cell transplant is proven to shrink (cure) cancer. However you won't see it in the USA for the next XX years. Some doctors in China is already doing it though, so if you can travel, that is an option.<p>See <a href="http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2010/jul2010_Life-Extension-Funds-Study-of-Therapy-That-Cured-Cancer-in-Mice_01.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2010/jul2010_Life-Extension-F...</a><p>Also, I believe there is an organization that helps cancer victims by arranging travels outside of USA for innovative treatments, LEF can refer you to them.