Jennie&Tim on 1/7/2008 at 02:30
(
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/06/30/promising-cancer-treatment-ready-for-human-trial.html)
The human trials are about to start. They used a strain of mice that had granulocytes (a type of white blood cell) that are particularly good at attacking cancer cells, and transferred their cells into mice with advanced stages of aggressive cancers. They got a 100% cure rate. In vitro, human granulocytes work similarly well or better.
Now they're looking for 500 volunteers to donate some blood, they'll check how active their granulocytes are and pick the top fifth to use on people who actually have cancer which is not responding to other treatments.
Can you imagine it? Treating the most advanced and difficultly placed cancers by a simple blood transfusion? Sign me up in a minute as a donor. My uncle-by-marriage died of an inoperable brain tumor a decade ago, now others may not.
Thief13x on 1/7/2008 at 02:58
amen to that! I wonder how long it will take before this stuff hits the market?
heretic on 1/7/2008 at 03:44
Someone wake me when the dosed patients turn into raging photophobic pseudo-vamps so I can phone Will Smith.
Thief13x on 1/7/2008 at 04:08
edit - political joke removed
SubJeff on 1/7/2008 at 07:47
Quote Posted by Jennie&Tim
Can you imagine it? Treating the most advanced and difficultly placed cancers by a simple blood transfusion?
Best to wait and see. Too many questions here and there is no guarantee that it will work in humans or not cause other problems. If you're taking immune cells that attack cancers remember that these are cells that are attacking your cells. Now what happens if they lose their specificity?
Rogue Keeper on 1/7/2008 at 08:28
I see potential for technothriller in this :
In the future the rich elites with deadly cancer hire specialized bounty hunters to track down and abduct people with superb granulocytes.
Jennie&Tim on 1/7/2008 at 16:41
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Best to wait and see. Too many questions here and there is no guarantee that it will work in humans or not cause other problems. If you're taking immune cells that attack cancers remember that these are cells that are attacking your cells. Now what happens if they lose their specificity?
That's why we run the trials. I would guess that, while it's possible they could run amok, since they don't do it in the original donors it's unlikely. The most likely problem I would foresee is that the donee's body would destroy the donated cells as being foreign, so you might have to use immunosuppressant drugs, which are nasty nasty things. Still, we are talking about people who are dying, so even really bad side-effects may be something they'd be willing to put up with.
Both your hypothesis of running amok and mine that you'd need immunosuppression are time-limited problems. In your scenario, the granulocytes would eventually die off (I don't know their lifespan); so unless they killed a lot of your other cells you'd recover. In mine, the drugs should only be needed while the treatment was being used.
BR796164, nah, just pay people for their blood. They're already seriously talking about instituting paying for kidney donations, paying for blood donations is relatively trivial ethically to that.
(
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/editorials/13908676.html)
(
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/04/10/transplant-070410.html?ref=rss)
SubJeff on 1/7/2008 at 17:35
Quote Posted by Jennie&Tim
T I would guess that, while it's possible they could run amok, since they don't do it in the original donors it's unlikely.
You seem to be confused. This is immunology 101. Unless you have an auto-immune disease your own immune system will not attack self cells.
But the whole point of them is they attack non-self cells.
Therefore putting them into someone else will mean they automatically attack everything that isn't them e.i. every other cell they come in contact with, which, in this scenario, is the recipient. And vice versa.
I don't know much about mouse immunology as compared to humans but there must be some reasons why this isn't happening in the mouse recipients. And seeing as these are immune cells any immuno-suppressant better be targeted very well or the granulocyte function itself will be boshed and then what is the point?
Every few months a great new hope comes out. I've learnt to be reserved in my excitement. It'll be great if it works though. I far prefer the idea of targeted drugs since there a few that have worked on specific cancers (see Chronic myeloid leukemia and tyrosine kinase inhibitors).
also side effects of immuno-suppressants include cancer lol
Stitch on 1/7/2008 at 18:27
Cure cancer on this level and I'd be out of a job.
Jennie&Tim on 2/7/2008 at 00:00
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
You seem to be confused. This is immunology 101. Unless you have an auto-immune disease your own immune system will not attack self cells.
But the whole point of them is they attack non-self cells.
Therefore putting them into someone else will mean they automatically attack everything that isn't them e.i. every other cell they come in contact with, which, in this scenario, is the recipient. And vice versa.
I don't know much about mouse immunology as compared to humans but there must be some reasons why this isn't happening in the mouse recipients. And seeing as these are immune cells any immuno-suppressant better be targeted very well or the granulocyte function itself will be boshed and then what is the point?
Every few months a great new hope comes out. I've learnt to be reserved in my excitement. It'll be great if it works though. I far prefer the idea of targeted drugs since there a few that have worked on specific cancers (see Chronic myeloid leukemia and tyrosine kinase inhibitors).
also side effects of immuno-suppressants include cancer lol
Thank you for explaining further, I see your point now, and I should have before. I have just wandered off and tried to find out more about how these cells actually recognize what other cells to attack; and I am being baffled by the jargon I have to say. My thought was that some cells produce antibodies, which attatch to the foreign cell, and that the white cells recognize the clump of antibodies and engulf the cells. So, if it works that way; then it wouldn't matter that the white cells came from another host; just that the antibody produced came from the host. I could be completely wrong.
I thought most immune suppressing drugs acted by not allowing production of new cells, not by killing the cells that were already extant. Again, I'm a layperson, not a scientist or doctor so I could easily be wrong. I suppose you could go the really radical route of killing the host immune system, getting the cancer with the donated cells, then restarting their immune system with a stem-cell transplant or bone-marrow transplant. They've done something similar for type one diabetics:
(
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2007/04/diabetes.html)
Stitch, much as I appreciate you, I'd rather have the people live. Surely your skills would transfer to a new job? If not, then you'll just have to become the new George Carlin.
