Tag Archives: Brain Cancer

Cancer Research

Brain Cancer: the Link Between High Blood Sugar and Glioma

New Advances Are Being Made in Cancer Treatment
New Advances Are Being Made in Cancer Treatment

High blood sugar levels are not associated with many positive health outcomes. In fact, people with diabetes carry a higher than average risk for many forms of cancer. However, some kinds of brain tumors are apparently more common in people with normal blood sugar.

In a study on the link between diabetes and brain tumors, researchers at Ohio State University found that people with high blood sugar are less likely to develop gliomas. Although gliomas are relatively rare, this research indicates that doctors should perhaps be vigilant about testing for gliomas in patients with healthy glucose levels.

Do Brain Tumors Affect Blood Sugar?

It’s odd to think that healthy glucose levels may pose a cancer risk, but the findings will help us understand more about how glioma brain tumors function.

The lead researcher on the study, Judith Schwartzbaum, wanted to find out if glioma tumors consume excessive amounts of glucose or if some other action in the tumor cells has an effect on blood sugar. It could simply be that non-diabetic patients have more growth factors available for the glioma to feed upon.

Immunotherapy for Cancer

The unexpected link between blood sugar and gliomas shows that each form of cancer — and each particular patient — displays a complex range of causes. Understanding cancer cells helps us develop better and more specific treatment options.

The Issels® Immunotherapy for Cancer treatment program uses the patient’s own immune cells to attack tumor cells such as gliomas with cancer vaccines and therapies that are highly personalized and non-toxic.

For more information about our Immunotherapy for Cancer treatment system, please contact us today.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Brain Tumor’s Greed for Cholesterol May Create a Treatment Opportunity

A Unique Perspective
Fight Brain Cancer With Cholesterol

When it comes to fitness and nutrition, cholesterol has become a bad word. But a team of researchers has discovered that the substance may turn out to be a surprising hero in the fight against cancer.

Brain Cancer Treatment Hits a Dead End

Details of the study, conducted jointly by Ludwig Cancer Research San Diego and Scripps, were published last fall in Cancer Cell. The project involved glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive and incurable form of brain cancer.

The scientific community had reached an impasse in the treatment of GBM. Although the cancer cells had been extensively studied, targeted therapies based on these analyses proved ineffective and served only to increase the tumor’s drug resistance.

Hope Comes from an Unlikely Source

The research team found clues in the way brain cells process cholesterol. The brain actually manufactures its own cholesterol, and when the cells have enough a receptor is activated that starts releasing the excess.

In contrast, GBM cells crave large amounts of cholesterol but do not manufacture it. Their shut-off receptor remains inactive, allowing them to “steal” cholesterol from normal cells and use it to grow.

Researchers implanted GBM tumors from humans into mice and treated them with a drug that triggers the shut-off receptor. As a result, many of the cancer cells were destroyed, causing significant shrinkage in the tumors and extending the lives of the affected mice.

Immunotherapy for Cancer: Treatment for All Forms of Tumors

Our non-toxic, personally developed immunotherapy for cancer programs at Issels® have helped patients with all forms of cancer, from melanoma and lymphoma to breast and lung cancer. Contact us for more information.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research, Immunotherapy

Brain Cancer Immunotherapy Boosted by Tetanus Vaccine

Doctor
Brain Cancer Discoveries

Cancer vaccines train the body’s immune system to target and kill cancer cells, often requiring a boost to the patient’s immune power. A recent study has found a surprising teammate for brain cancer vaccines: the tetanus shot.

The same tetanus vaccine used to prevent bacterial infections associated with rusted metal has a powerful effect of activating and alerting the body’s immune system overall. Because of this, the boost from a tetanus shot may be an extremely effective tool in increasing the success of immunotherapy treatments.

Doctors at Duke University Medical Center recently administered a cancer vaccine trial to patients with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain tumor. In patients who first received the tetanus shot to awaken their immune response, survival rates increased significantly.

Here’s what the 12-patient trial study found:

  • Patients given tetanus and cancer vaccines survived 4 to 8 more years, with one patient still surviving. Patients without the tetanus vaccine survived up to 11 months.
  • The tetanus vaccine sounds a warning call to the body’s immune system. This increases the chances that the cancer vaccine will be successfully received by the lymph nodes — where the cancer vaccine must go to train the immune system.
  • The cytomegalovirus — present in most people but inactive — becomes reactivated in brain cancer cells. The dendritic cells cancer vaccine can identify brain cancer cells by looking for active cytomegalovirus.

Researchers hope that the tetanus vaccine can not only be a successful tool to fight glioblastoma brain cancer, but also teach us how to boost other kinds of cancer immunotherapy.

Contact us at Issels® Integrative Immuno-Oncology to find out about cancer vaccines and other innovative forms of immunotherapy.