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new cancer treatment can wipe out tumours in terminally ill head and neck cancer patients, scientists have discovered. In a landmark trial, a cocktail of immunotherapy medications harnessed patients’ immune systems to kill their own cancer cells and prompted “a positive trend in survival”, according to researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, and the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust. One patient, who was expected to die four years ago, told the Guardian of the “amazing” moment nurses called him weeks after he joined the study to say his tumour had “completely disappeared”. The 77-year-old grandfather is now...

..With cancer found in Ms Delaney's left lung, adrenal gland, bowel and lymph nodes, doctors expected she would have only eight to 12 months to live. ... With little success, Ms Delaney's oncologist recommended she be put forward to trial immunotherapy, a new treatment option for lung cancer , which boosts the body's natural immune defence to fight cancer. ... "Now, after being told I had a terminal illness and not long to live, I don't have any active cancer cells. "I'm alive, I'm extremely well, and it has been an absolute miracle drug — it's incredible.

India can help solve the accessibility problem of breakthrough cancer treatment CAR -T Cell therapy, according to American physician scientist Carl June. CAR-T therapies have been effective against certain types of blood cancer. However, the treatment remained inaccessible to most patients due to its cost. The CAR-T therapy costs about $1 million - $1.5 million, including administration and hospitalisation costs in US. Novartis charges Kymriah - its CAR-T therapy about $475,000 for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). ALL is type of childhood blood cancer. Novartis guarantees refund of money if the therapy doesn’t work after one month. It charges $373,000 for...

In late 2015, Bob Minetti started feeling stomach pains that mysteriously came and went and moved to his lower back. Extensive testing led to one of the most dire of diagnoses: pancreatic cancer. And the small tumor was lodged against a key blood vessel, so it couldn't be surgically removed. Minetti, a retired academic fundraiser from South Natick, Massachusetts, enrolled in a clinical trial at Massachusetts General Hospital that included a powerful newer chemotherapy, called FOLFIRINOX. The tumor, which he thought of as about the size of a hard candy, responded dramatically. "It's really shrunk like butter in the microwave,"...

Matt Richtel, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times Journalist, calls in to talk about his new book An Elegant Defense, and why modern society and culture is harming our immune system.

(FOX 26) - Scientists have taken a giant step towards curing cancer, according to a new study. Stanford university researchers have found a way to clear cancer in mice with immune-system stimulating injections. The report published in the Science Translational Medicine Journal last week shows promise in terms of destroying tumors. The new approach is a form of immunotherapy, which uses the body's own disease-fighting power to battle cancer. Scientists report using compound injections to effectively eradicate cancer tumors in mice. According to the study, their approach worked startlingly well -- even in mice who had lymphoma in two different...

Link Only https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/billions-of-fighting-cells-clear-woman-s-breast-cancer-in-study

Michael English, 72, was one of 258 men who took part in the trial. He was first diagnosed in 2005, but radiotherapy, chemotherapy and hormone-based therapies did not kill his cancer. Two years ago, he was given the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab. He said: "We were astonished when scans showed that the tumour had become undetectable. "Today I'm effectively cancer-free." He says he's now planning out the next 20 years of his life, not the next two. Researcher Prof Johann de Bono told the BBC: "This is the first evidence that a subset of prostate cancer patients do spectacularly well on...

... After receiving the treatment, Kat's most recent MRI scan showed no trace of the tumour. "DCVax has done what everyone said was impossible," her husband Jason says. "If not for this treatment, I would be without my wife and without a mother for our child." Kat continues to have regular injections of the vaccine. 'Major breakthrough' Keyoumars Ashkan, professor of neurosurgery at King's College Hospital in London, who was the trial's European chief investigator, said the results gave "new hope to the patients and clinicians battling with this terrible disease". "Although definitive judgement needs to be reserved until the...

Emily Dumler, 36, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2013 The mother-of three was given six months to live after multiple unsuccessful treatments Feeling hopeless, she entered a clinical trial for a treatment called CAR-T therapy In the trial doctors harness blood cells to seek and destroy cancer cells She wouldn't have qualified for this trial if the other treatments were successful Emily Dumler stopped planning the rest of her life - or even her year - after two failed cancer treatments left the mother-of-three, then just 34, with six months to live. But the failure of the second treatment...

Scientists devised a pinpointed immunotherapy regimen that eradicated tumors throughout the body in mice. Credit: Sagiv-Barfi et al., Science Translational Medicine (2018) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Nanjing government has released an article that states a patient suffering from recurrent Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (otherwise known as ALL) has been cured following CAR-T (Chimeric Antigen Receptors) therapy at the Jiangsu Provincial Hospital of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). Through genetic engineering, the patient’s T cells (the lymphoid stem cell, which is derived from bone marrow) were regenerated, “wiping out the tumour through the immune system”. The patient, a Mr. Zhang, had already endured two rounds of chemotherapy before, he says, the therapy “pulled me back from the jaws of death”. The 49 year old Zhang had caught a...

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)–modified T-cell therapies have already achieved great success in hematologic malignancies, with clinical trial data showing high complete response rates in leukemia and lymphoma. So far, however, there has been little success with this approach in solid tumors. Now a case report indicates dramatic remission in a patient with recurrent and rapidly progressing glioblastoma. The case is described in a brief report published December 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Treatment with CAR T-cell therapy led to a transient, complete response in a patient with recurrent multifocal glioblastoma, with dramatic improvements in quality of life,...

Engineering immune cells to attack cancer is a form of treatment that is showing great promise, but it is complex because it involves extracting and modifying T cells before injecting them back into the body. Scientists have now demonstrated a way to not just arm immune cells while still inside the body, but equip them with the ability to fight any kind of cancer, providing an early proof-of-concept for a cheap, universal vaccine for the deadly disease. ............Snip............ But German scientists are now reporting an immunotherapy breakthrough that is significant in more ways than one. Led by Professor Ugur Sahin...

At a press conference today, former President Jimmy Carter revealed the ways he is tackling the melanoma cancer that has spread to his brain and liver: He'll receive radiation, as well as another lesser-known treatment called immunotherapy. Up until now, most cancer patients only had a few options. They could get chemotherapy or radiation that kills cancerous cells and stops them from dividing, or surgery to cut out the disease. Yet the success rate of these options is far from perfect. Now a new kind of cancer treatment has come into play: immunotherapies. These treatments, which include Carter's infusion called...

Exclusive: Cancer - A cure just got closer thanks to a tiny British company - and the result could change lives of millions That's the complete title. Here's the link.

Drugs that unleash the power of the immune system on cancers are generating considerable optimism in industry, but still Andrew Baum thinks analysts are selling them short. In a 22 May report, Baum, the London-based head of global health-care research at the investment bank Citi, forecasts that in ten years the drugs will be treating 60% of cancers and earning US$35 billion a year. Three elements contribute to his bullishness: the drugs are showing signs of wider effectiveness; many patients will take them for years; and the prices are stratospheric (see ‘Stiff medicine’). One of the first such drugs to...

The virus used in the vaccine that helped eradicate smallpox is now working its magic on liver cancer. A genetically engineered version of the vaccinia virus has trebled the average survival time of people with a severe form of liver cancer, with only mild, flu-like side effects. Thirty people with hepatocellular carcinoma received three doses of the modified virus – code-named JX-594 – directly into their liver tumour over one month. Half the volunteers received a low dose of the virus, the other half a high dose. Members of the low and high-dose groups subsequently survived for, on average, 6.7...

A study led by Karolinska Institutet in Sweden reports for the first time the positive effects of an active vaccine against Alzheimer's disease. The new vaccine, CAD106, can prove a breakthrough in the search for a cure for this seriously debilitating dementia disease. The study is published in the scientific journal Lancet Neurology. Alzheimer's disease is a complex neurological dementia disease that is the cause of much human suffering and a great cost to society. According to the World Health Organisation, dementia is the fastest growing global health epidemic of our age. The prevailing hypothesis about its cause involves APP...

Why use drugs, when you can improve the body's own designs? Evolution has bestowed mammals with amazingly complex and robust immune systems capable of fighting off a variety of foreign invaders including fungi, bacteria, and viruses.  The immune system is also capable of detecting cancerous cells -- cells in which mutations have led to uncontrolled growth which threatens to engulf normal healthy tissues. The problem is that even nature sometimes falls short.  The immune system's T Cells, special cells used to fight extreme abnormalities such as AIDS and cancer (note, a special type of T cell fights HIV-infected T cells in AIDS), often...