Cancer-Fighting Cells

Associated Press - direct feed | September 19, 2002 | PAUL RECER

[NYer]

His group is now preparing to test it against breast, prostate and ovarian tumors.

This is very encouraging news. Please bump your lists.

[NYer]

In case you know someone who could benefit from this new technology.

[Darth Sidious]

Flooding the body with laboratory-engineered white blood cells...

Creating an over-abundance of white blood cells... isn't this something similar to leukemia?

I'm trusting someone with better brains than me in the medical department will clarify that terminology ;-) In any event, this is GREAT news!! I've lost four friends/relatives to cancer in the past two years. Any news like this becomes like a gift from God.

[Happygal]

Great news BUMP

[stanz]

Wonderful article. This is encouraging news. But how do keep those white cells under control?

[VOA]

bump

[HiTech RedNeck]

They eventually die themselves and are assimilated.

[KantianBurke]

insert Borg joke here

[Explorer89]

Bump for info....

[WindMinstrel]

``A young boy we treated two years ago had two pounds of tumor and he's now disease free,''
wow. Bump

[Neckbone]

Rosenberg emphasized that immune cell therapy against cancer is still ``highly experimental'' and at least two years away from being ready for general cancer patients.

That's the maddening part! Take a terminal cancer patient with 6 torturous months of chemo left to live, and withhold this treatment because it's experimental? Do you think they'd care that it's experimental?

That's almost as bad as withholding medical cannabis from a terminal patient because they might get "hooked". whoops, there I go again.....

[Wolfstar]

You're right in that this treatment does sound similar to leukemia, but only superficially. In all cancers, certain cells mutate and lose the ability to grow in a normal and controlled manner. Essentially, the genetic code of cancer cells is damaged so that the cells are unable to perform their normal function. Instead, they become invasive killers of healthy cells. Unlike the diseased white cells in leukemia, the white cells grown in the lab are healthy and are engineered to aggressively perform their normal function. The key seems to be that vastly more healthy white cells can be introduced into a person than a body typically would produce. To use a military analogy, it's kind of like using massively overwhelming force to defeat the bad guys.

[Wolfstar]

I wholeheartedly agree. Although the thalidimide catastrophe of the 1950's taught us to be cautious with new drugs, it is absolutely maddening that promising new treatments such as this take many years to even get to the point where terminal patients are offered a chance to try them. Terminal patients who agree to participate are the ideal experimental subjects.

[Neckbone]

Agreed. I can understand the hyperscrutiny of non-lifesaving drugs- dietary supplements, etc. But to have a technology proven to save lives, especially one whose worst side-effects are likely less gruesome than chemotherapy, and keep it bogged down in a beaurocratic mire for the "protection" of those who will succumb to the illness in the meanwhile is barbaric.

[spectre]

Wonderful news...let's keep it bumped, people!

sw

[MrConfettiMan]

Thanks for the ping, Exp89.

[andysandmikesmom]

I am no doctor, but my son had leukemia....and yes, leukemia is an over abundance of white blood cells, but they are not mature white cells, they are rather very immature white cells, that shoot out of the bone marrow, and really have no function at all, other than prevent the bone marrow from producing what the body really needs....fully matured white blood cells....

A mature white cell, is indeed on the front line of defense in fighting disease...but millions of immature white cells in the bone marrow, and in the blood, serve no purpose at all, and actually prevent the mature white cells from doing their job...

[hopespringseternal]

One of the problems of bureaucracy: It is hopelessly static. The logic of an FDA falls apart when you are talking about terminally ill patients.

I wonder how much further along cancer research would be if cancer patients were able to use their own cash (or insurance) more freely?

Sure, there are quack cures out there, but the medical community takes policing its own very seriously.

[luckodeirish]

This is great. Ya know, many years from now, people will talk about the "hidious" and "archaic" things we did to patients who had cancer; they will talk about how we had this treatment called "chemotherapy" where doctors would inject poison into the patient and hope the cancer died before the patient.

[Quix]

YEA! LORD GOD, HELP THEM bring it to market ASAP at reasonable prices!