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Cancer Research, Cancer Treatment, Immuno-Oncology, Immunotherapy, Immunotherapy for Cancer, Uncategorized

Seed Money from Give Hope Will Help to Fund Pancreatic Cancer Research

New Cancer Research Is Improving Treatment
New Cancer Research Is Improving Treatment

Nearly everyone in America has been touched by cancer, whether it’s through personal experience or that of a friend or family member. One woman literally turned her loss into hope for continued research in immunotherapy for cancer and other treatments.

Sorrow Gives Rise to Hope

Susan Hunt’s experience came when her best friend Beth was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Hunt mourned the time they lost together, but she challenged her grief into Give Hope, the all-volunteer group she founded to raise seed money for continued research into new treatments and possible cures.

When it comes to cancer research, scientists are faced with a catch-22: they need data to present to the big cancer foundations in order to secure research grants, but they require money to generate the data in the first place. Give Hope has provided major funding for pancreatic cancer studies at the University of Cincinnati.

“Bench to Bedside”

Dr. Syed Ahmad of UC’s Cancer Institute used the term “bench to bedside” to sum up the research process. Every idea begins on a laboratory bench, where it’s nurtured with time and resources until it ends up at a patient’s bedside.

According to Hunt, the seed money raised by Give Hope has generated nearly $2 million in pancreatic cancer research funding for UC. University officials explained that after three years, the Cancer Institute receives $35 for every one dollar in seed money.

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Cancer Research, Cancer Treatment, Immuno-Oncology, Immunotherapy, Immunotherapy for Cancer, Uncategorized

Using Viruses to Boost the Immune Response in Immunotherapy

Medical Research Has Validated that Immunotherapy Works to Fight Cancer
Medical Research Has Validated that Immunotherapy Works to Fight Cancer

When it comes to your health, viruses are usually thought of as something to avoid. New studies have shown that infecting tumors with viruses can actually boost the beneficial effects of immunotherapy for cancer.

Helping the Immune System Target Tumors

Your body’s immune system is the primary line of defense against invading cells. One of the barriers to successful cancer treatment has been the ability of cancer cells to evade detection, leaving them free to grow unchecked.

On the other hand, the immune system has an excellent ability to recognize viruses. Two separate studies show evidence that cancer-targeting viruses might be able to trigger an immune attack on tumors.

– A team in England injected nine brain tumor patients with a cancer-seeking virus. After the tumors were surgically removed, researchers discovered that the viruses had indeed reached their target, and there were signs that the viral infection caused an immune response.

– Researchers in Canada performed similar tests on mice with breast cancer. The virus was injected directly into the tumors, and while it had little effect on survival rates, the infected mice had fewer instances of tumors spreading.

Viruses and Immunotherapy for Cancer

Professor John Bell, senior author of the latter study, explained that the virus “raises a big red flag” to alert the immune system. He went on to say that the addition of a checkpoint inhibitor enables a full-force immune attack.

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Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research, Cancer Treatment, Cancer Vaccine, Immuno-Oncology, Immunotherapy, Immunotherapy for Cancer, Uncategorized

Properties of Breast Tissue May Play a Role in Cancer Progression

There is New Hope for Breast Cancer Treatment
There is New Hope for Breast Cancer Treatment

Doctors have found some success with immunotherapy for cancer during the late stages of the disease, but the mystery of what causes certain tumors to spread has remained unsolved. Scientists are now turning to a surprising source for information about breast cancer progression.

A Matter of Engineering?

Ovijit Chaudhuri, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been working with researchers across campus exploring the mechanical properties of breast tissue and their role in cancer progression. According to Chaudhuri, evidence supporting this relationship has been accumulating over the last 20 years.

Questions being studied by the teams include:

– How does stiffness of breast tissue encourage the growth and spread of tumors? Chaudhuri’s group is culturing mammary cells inside a hydrogel and tuning its stiffness to determine how it affects the development of cancer cells.

– How do cancer cells find their way past the membrane surrounding breast tissue that is seemingly too dense to allow passage? Currently, the scientists theorize that the cells use a combination of enzymes and force to “cut” their way through.

– As surrounding tissue grows in stiffness over time, how do tumors find space to expand?

Mechanobiology: A Complementary Approach

This isn’t the first time that scientists have sought biological information from the field of engineering. The result is the hybrid science of mechanobiology, which studies the interactions of mechanical properties and biological processes.

Immunotherapy for Cancer: Treating Resistant Tumors

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Cancer Survivors, Living with Cancer, Uncategorized

New Research Shows Alcohol Use Increases Cancer Risks

Doctors have long cautioned against poor lifestyle choices, such as smoking, that increase the risk of cancer. In a study that may hold implications related to immunotherapy for cancer, scientists have discovered how alcohol use causes DNA damage in cells.

Harmful Effects of Alcohol on DNA

Cancer Research UK partially funded a study conducted by a research team at Cambridge. After mice were given diluted alcohol, also known as ethanol, they experienced genetic damage as a result of acetaldehyde that forms when the body processes alcohol.

Using chromosome analysis and DNA sequencing, the researchers found that acetaldehyde causes DNA within blood stem cells to break. Once the chromosomes rearrange, the DNA sequences are permanently changed.

According to Professor Ketan Patel, lead author of the study, DNA-damaged stem cells can lead to the development of cancer. This damage is sometimes random, but consumption of alcohol increases the risk.

Can Alcohol-Related DNA Damage Be Prevented?

The body uses enzymes called ALDH as well as DNA repair systems to protect against alcohol-related damage. In the study, mice who lacked essential ALDH suffered four times the amount of DNA damage as mice with the enzyme, indicating that faulty defense mechanisms increase the risk.

Professor Patel warned that even intact alcohol defenses are no guarantee against developing cancer. In addition, Professor Linda Bauld of Cancer Research UK pointed out that alcohol contributes to more than 12,000 cancer cases in the UK each year.

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Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Treatment, Uncategorized

One Important Step to Improving Treatment for Therapy-Resistant Cancers

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Cancer Therapies at the Molecular Level in Intracellular Proteins
Cancer Therapies at the Molecular Level in Experimental Antibodies

The use of immunotherapy for cancer has helped many patients with cancers that are difficult to treat or cancers that have spread. However, there have been certain limits on how this treatment works. In some cases, tumors have become resistant to this form of treatment. Researchers have been working on a combination therapeutic approach that shows more promise in effectively fighting cancer.

Experimental Antibody

Researchers at Stanford and Yale developed an experimental antibody that is able to target more immune cells that are involved with the growth of tumors. Current immunotherapy approaches focus on a smaller number of these immune cells, which limits their ability to eliminate cancerous tumors. While these approaches have stopped cancer from spreading in some cases, they have been unable to successfully deal with tumor growth in other cases.

The experimental antibody is able to prevent another type of immune cell, known as a myeloid cell, from contributing to tumor growth and immunotherapy drug resistance.

Combination Immunotherapy

The use of this experimental antibody along with immunotherapy drugs is showing the potential for effectively fighting cancer. Researchers have used it on cell culture models and mouse models that contain human cell membrane proteins. This combination immunotherapy approach limits the growth of tumor cells, making it harder for them to thrive and spread. Researchers still need to do more studies on this experimental antibody in order to determine if it can be used to treat cancer cases that are metastatic or more advanced.

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Alternative Cancer Treatment, Immunotherapy for Cancer, Uncategorized

Immunotherapy Advances May Now Help Patients with Reoccurring Multiple Myeloma

Immunotherapy Can Expand Options for Those With Limited Cancer Treatment Options
Immunotherapy Can Expand Options for Those With Limited Cancer Treatment Options

One of the benefits of immunotherapy for cancer is that these treatments often have positive results where others have failed. Results of two recent studies show that immunotherapy has real possibilities for treating multiple myeloma.

What Is Multiple Myeloma?

Multiple myeloma is the second-most diagnosed form of blood cancer, just behind non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In patients with multiple myeloma, infection-fighting plasma cells grow out of control, causing bone tumors and chronic infections.

Immunotherapy for Cancer: A Promising Treatment for Multiple Myeloma?

In 2017, a research team from Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted two separate studies involving patients with multiple myeloma that had proven resistant to other therapies.

Patients in the first study received a single dose of chemotherapy before being infused with CART-BCMA, a specific form of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy developed by Penn researchers in collaboration with Novartis. Results indicated that 64 percent of the group had a positive response.

In the second study, sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, patients received an experimental monoclonal antibody known as GSK2857916. The drug specifically targets delivery of a chemotherapy drug directly to cancer cells. Overall response rate was 60 percent, with more than half the responding patients experiencing a greater than 90 percent reduction in myeloma protein levels.

Both treatments target BCMA, which is a protein expressed by multiple myeloma cells.

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