Tag Archives: cancer care

Alternative Cancer Treatment, News

Should Age Play a Role in Cancer Treatment?

Age And Cancer
Age And Cancer

Doctors and patients are rethinking their approach to cancer treatments for people in their 70s, 80s and 90s. According to the National Cancer Institute, the average age of cancer diagnosis in the U.S. is 66; yet the average life expectancy is 81 for U.S. women and 76 for men, according to National Geographic’s U.S. life expectancy map. With the average American living well past 65 and a growing number of people living into their 90s, cancer advocates say it’s time to take age out of the cancer treatment equation.

“What really matters is not chronological age, but functional age,” Dr. Ewa Mrozek, an oncologist at the Ohio State University Stefanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Center, told the Columbus Dispatch. With plans to begin a clinic devoted to serving the needs of older cancer patients, the center is riding the leading edge of a national sea change in America’s approach to treating older cancer patients.

A growing number of people are arguing that age should no longer be the primary basis for deciding whether a person will be unable to withstand the rigors of traditional cancer treatment — surgery, chemotherapy and radiation — and its usually traumatic side effects. Of more importance in determining how aggressively to fight cancer should be the individual’s general health – physical, cognitive and emotional — and the impact any other medical conditions or chronic illnesses might have on his ability to benefit from cancer treatment.

Older cancer patients may want to consider the important options offered by alternative cancer treatment centers. Issels Integrative Oncology’s individualized immunotherapy provides cancer patients with a personalized, non-toxic alternative to harsh chemicals and radiation without the strenuous side effects.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Gene Therapy Shows ‘Unprecedented Success’ Against Blood Cancers

Gene Therapy
Gene Therapy

Advanced genetically-targeted treatments are proving to be remarkably successful against leukemia and other blood cancers. Here’s what the Associated Press had to say:

“In one of the biggest advances against leukemia and other blood cancers in many years, doctors are reporting unprecedented success by using gene therapy to transform patients’ blood cells into soldiers that seek and destroy cancer.”

In tests by six different research groups, blood cancer patients who received gene therapy showed survival rates that researchers called “stunning.” In one study, all but three of the 27 patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia achieved complete remission with targeted genetic therapy. While a few of those patients have since relapsed, the therapy success rate remains impressive.

Before undergoing genetic immunotherapy, these leukemia patients had undergone chemotherapy and stem cell or bone-marrow transplants without success. If additional tests achieve similar results, researchers believe eventual approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration may be possible.

The gene therapy that has the U.S. research community cheering involves a blood filtering process that removes T-cells from the patient’s blood, adds a targeting gene and returns the cells to the patient by transfusion. Called “a living drug” by researchers, the altered T-cells multiply in patient’s body, strengthening the patient’s immune response and ability to fight cancer.

While being heralded by traditional Western medical practitioners as “new,” Issels , an alternative cancer treatment center, has been using similar advanced genetically-targeted cancer therapies as part of our individualized integrative immunotherapy program for years. Our non-toxic autologous vaccine program employs a similar blood transfusion mechanism to boost the body’s immune system response.

Cancer Research, Immunotherapy

Immune Cells May Hold Key to Brain Cancer Treatment

Immune Cells
Immune Cells

The immune system is your body’s natural protective force. When cancer cells develop or when foreign substances invade your body, your immune system goes on the attack, sending specialized cells to target these “foreign” invaders.

Highly specialized immune system cells called microglia protect the brain. While examining brain cancer tumors in diseased mice, Canadian researchers found deactivated microglia. When these cells were reactivated, the mice lived two to three times longer than untreated mice with the same type of brain tumor.

A joint effort by research teams at the University of Calgary Hotchkiss Brain Institute and Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute, the discovery may eventually lead to new immunotherapy treatments for brain cancer, although researchers say additional research is needed before clinical trials can be contemplated. The Canadian study focused on glioblastoma tumors, the deadliest form of brain cancer. Fifteen months is the median survival rate for glioblastoma patients. Even with currently available treatments, fewer than one in 20 pass the five-year survival mark.

In Medical News Today (MNT), study author V. Wee Yong, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Neuroimmunology, explained that inactivated microglia are a normal result of the battle between immune cells and cancer cells. Over time, aggressive tumor cells can overwhelm the brain’s immune system, deactivating its defender cells. Reactivating these cells can “tip the battle in favor of the brain to suppress the tumor,” Yong said.

The Canadians used a highly caustic drug to restore function to the brain’s immune cells. Issels cancer treatments strengthen and enhance immune system function using non-toxic integrated immunotherapy to avoid the destructive side effects of harsh drugs.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

How Do T-Cells Help Fight Cancer?

T Cells
T Cells

Cancer cells appear to a well-functioning immune system as “foreign” cells. When cancer cells develop the immune system swings into action, using a dual action force to knock them out just as it does with foreign invaders. First your immune system launches innate responders like Natural Killer Cells to seek out and attack these cells (see our previous post). Your body’s first line of defense against cancer cells, viruses, bacteria and other harmful substances, Natural Killer Cells are the equivalent of the immune system’s Seal Team 6.

Adaptive responders like T-cells provide the immune system’s second wave of defense. Like an army’s occupying force, T-cells support Natural Killer Cells and other immune system “specialists” to provide your body with continuous, long-term protection.

Like Natural Killer Cells, T-Cells are a type of lymphocyte that originates in the bone marrow. T-cells eventually migrate to the thymus from which they get the “T” in their name. A specialized organ of the immune system, the thymus straddles the trachea and is located in the lower neck below the thyroid gland. In the thymus, T-cells undergo their final stage of maturation and receive their marching orders.

There are several different types of T-cells, each tasked with playing a specific role in helping with the recognition, attack and destruction of cancer cells and harmful invaders.

Issels Autologous Vaccine stimulates the formation and activation of T-cells. When used in conjunction with Issels integrative immunotherapy, autologous vaccines can strengthen and enhance your body’s immune system response to cancer cells. Visit our website to find out more.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Cold Sore Virus Could Hold Key to New Cancer Treatments

Cold Sores Are a Cure For Cancer?
Can the Cold Sore Virus be a Cure For Cancer?

“We’re trying to give cancer a cold sore,” is how Dr. Timothy Cripe, a pediatric oncologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, explains his team’s research on viral therapy. Viral therapy uses altered forms of common viruses, such as the herpes simplex virus that causes cold sores, to fight cancer. When injected into cancer tumors, viruses trigger the body’s immune system response and serve as bull’s eyes, allowing immune system cells to find and attack the tumors. To date, most viral therapy has focused on adult cancers. Dr. Cripe and his colleagues are among the first to research its potential to fight childhood cancers.

Earlier this year, research findings presented at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Switzerland showed promising results using modified herpes simplex virus to target liver and colorectal cancer cells. Scientists were successful in creating a genetically modified herpes virus that killed cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. One of the biggest problems with the most prevalent traditional cancer treatments — chemotherapy and radiation – is that they cast too wide a toxic net, killing both healthy and cancerous cells which can cause patients to suffer traumatic side effects.

Herpes simplex virus “doesn’t replicate in normal, healthy cells, so our hope is that it will help fight cancers without causing side effects in the rest of the body” Dr. Axel Mescheder of German biotech company MediGene said in a statement issued at the conference.

Viral therapy has the potential to join other successful, non-toxic cancer treatments such as targeted cell therapies and cancer vaccines in expanding the treatment horizons of immunotherapy.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Immunotherapy

Cancer Report: Immunotherapy Yields ‘Remarkable’ Long-Term Results

Two physicians back to back.
Immunotherapy is in the news

After an intense review of cancer statistics and research conducted since 1990, the American Association for Cancer Research has issued a sobering progress report on the state of cancer and cancer treatments in the U.S. The report is of particular interest in light of a recent Institute of Medicine study warning that the U.S. is on the brink of a critical cancer care crisis that is expected to escalate as more baby boomers enter their senior years when cancer is more likely to occur. Despite progress being made in cancer awareness and treatment, cancer will strike more than 1.6 million Americans this year alone and kill more than 580,000.

As reported by CBS News, two key findings emerged from the report:

  1. Compared to 1990, cancer survival rates have increased by more than 1 million; but, as we discussed last time, the U.S. is falling behind in cancer prevention. According to the report, three lifestyle changes could prevent 50% of current cancer deaths.
  2. Advanced immunotherapy cancer treatments that employ the body’s own immune system to attack cancer are producing “remarkable,” long-term results without the difficult side effects that plague traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. The report notes that immunotherapies are in part responsible for the both the increase in cancer survival rates and the fact that survivors are living longer.

Issels Integrative Oncology has more than 60 years of experience using advanced immunotherapies as an essential part of integrative cancer treatment. As Issels treatment reviews indicate, we have a unique history of achieving complete, long-term remissions of advanced and standard-therapy resistant cancers. Visit our website to find out more about integrative immunotherapy cancer treatments.