I've commented on this around here before. You read lots of junk about cancer "cures" in the popular press. They are almost always in mice or something and I or someone else with a similar background always feels compelled to weigh in and remind folks that it's a long way from curing lab rats to curing people.<p>This however, is the real deal. It's quite remarkable and there's likely more stories like this for other diseases on the way.<p>I went to a gene therapy session this fall at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in Boston and was blown away by some of the success people are having. I quipped to colleagues that I felt like I was in a science fiction movie. The most remarkable one was where they used an approach similar to the one here to cure a fatal metabolic disorder (relaying this from memory, so some of my recollection may be off). Kids with the disorder have a busted enzyme that causes slow degeneration of neurons. They don't live past 6 or 7 if I recall. The team showed how modifying a certain kind of stem cell found in the body normally to have the correct copy of the enzyme cured several patients. The corrected cells naturally move to the brain where they differentiate into glial cells and produce the correct copy of the enzyme. It turns out that because the neurons in the brain are starved for this enzyme, they express receptors that allow them to take it up from the environment. So the repaired glial cells supply enzyme to the entire brain (i.e. it's not necessary to modify every neuron in the brain to have a correct copy of the enzyme). They can completely cure kids with this approach. All of their muscular and neurological tests are 100% normal.<p>They had videos of these kids running around and playing just as if nothing was wrong. In one case, a younger brother lived but his older sister (who was too old when the therapy came out) had died. It was hard not to get choked up looking at their smiling, happy faces as they ran around, thinking that if this therapy hadn't existed, they would be in a nearly vegetative state.<p>Gene therapy had a rough start with the early setbacks, but I'm getting the sense that the tide is rapidly turing.
Does anyone know if this can be applied to other cancers too? I think they only mentioned leukemia, but they seemed to imply that it would be applicable to other cancers. But would the therapy have to be for each cancer or broadly for all cancers? And I am guessing they would have to choose between this and chemo, since I think chemo hurts your immune system. And that would be a difficult choice, no?
I've read about this before. I'm excited and cautiously optimistic about it moving forward. One hopes that it can save other people in the future. Even some is better than 0. Personalised immunotherapy is cool :)
My mom had cancer surgery at Sloane Kettering in NYC. After surgery, which removed <i>most</i> of the cancer, she was put on a treatment regimen that involves a certain type of medicine (which she'll be on for the rest of her life.)<p>Because she matched a gene, she's able to take a medicine called Tarceva. In essence, this medicine makes her lung cancer a chronic illness -- it's present, but doesn't spread or metastasize. It's a similar strategy to the one now employed with people who are HIV positive.<p>Mom is still kicking, so this stuff is working.
Here's the Penn webpage about their T-Cell Immunotherapy for Leukemia:<p><a href="http://www.penncancer.org/tcelltherapy/" rel="nofollow">http://www.penncancer.org/tcelltherapy/</a>
This approach seems roughly similar to what Sangamo Genetics has been trying for HIV - with some recent success - <a href="http://www.aidsmeds.com/articles/Sangamo_genetics_1667_24579.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.aidsmeds.com/articles/Sangamo_genetics_1667_24579...</a>
There will never be a cure for cancer.<p>My wife was diagnosed in September with stage 1 breast cancer. She has triple negative breast cancer which is the most aggressive kind to get. She is on week 6 of a 16 week Chemotherapy regimen. Then she has 8 weeks of radiation.<p>Insurance has already spent over 100k on her lumpectomy and chemo drugs and doctor appointments since September.<p>Every week when we go to her oncologist office, the waiting room is always full with patients we have never seen before. More than half of them are new patients filling out their new patient paperwork. And they are getting younger and younger in age. We have seen teenagers in his office with breast cancer.<p>There is just too much money (doctors, surgery, drugs) to be made from treating this disease. What are all of these trained oncologist surgeons/doctors going to do if cancer gets cured? What are the drug companies that make these expensive chemo drugs going to do if cancer gets cured?<p>There is no way they are going to cure this horrible disease. There is no money to be made in the cure.
I vaguely recall this being posted before a few months back, but in a long-form journalism writeup in a local Philly paper...I can't recall exactly where but I remember it was well written.
Here's how you deal with cancer:<p><a href="http://m.vice.com/weediquette-show/stoned-kids" rel="nofollow">http://m.vice.com/weediquette-show/stoned-kids</a>
If/when the cure makes it through the final tests to the market, the sad thing is that they are probably going to rip off everyone who needs it, no matter what are the real costs.<p>But anyway, a life is worth everything(?)