Tag Archives: Cancer Immunotherapy

Living with Cancer, Uncategorized

Sleep Disorders Can Impact Cancer Patients

Sleep in the mechanism that allows your body time to repair and recharge itself, both mentally and physically. While sleep is necessary for good health at any time, it’s even more essential if you’re living with cancer.

The Anatomy of Sleep Cycles

While you’re not consciously aware of it, there are two distinct phases to sleep:

  • REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is the time when your brain is active.
  • NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep is the restful phase, which includes four stages ranging from light to deep.

One full sleep cycle lasts approximately 90 minutes, with a NREM phase followed by a REM phase. This pattern repeats four to six times during the night, depending on the total length of sleep. Any interruption in the cycle prevents the brain from fully completing its restorative tasks.

Sleep Disorders and Cancer

The National Cancer Institute identifies the five major sleep disorders as:

  • Insomnia or the inability to fall asleep and remain asleep
  • Sleep apnea, where a patient actually stops breathing for several seconds at different times during the night
  • Hypersomnia, which causes difficulty staying awake during daytime hours
  • Circadian rhythm disorder, in which the entire sleep-wake cycle is skewed
  • Parasomnia encompasses unusual behavior such as walking or eating while asleep

Chronic lack of sleep can interfere with your ability to care for yourself during treatment while it saps your energy and increases the risk of depression.

Issels® Offers Immunotherapy for Cancer Designed for Your Specific Needs

Our integrative immunotherapy for cancer treatments are focused on boosting your body’s natural abilities to fight the disease. Visit our website for more information.

Cancer Treatment, Uncategorized

Will an Immune Profile Show if Immunotherapy Will be an Effective Cancer Treatment?

At Issels®, our cancer immunotherapy programs are tailored to fit a patient’s specific needs. Scientist have identified an immune profile that could lead to improved methods of determining which patients may benefit from treatment.

Building a Team of “Allies”

While T cells in the immune system are equipped to fight tumors, cancer cells frequently neutralize them by triggering the response that shuts T cells down. Checkpoint inhibitors are a form of immunotherapy that counteracts the process, enabling T cells to resume their job of attacking cancer cells.

Matthew “Max” Krummel, PhD, a leader in the field of immunotherapy, explains why his team broadened their focus to include other immune cells. They studied every type of cell in tumors to determine which ones could also activate T cells, forming a community of “allies.”

Boosting the T Cell Immune Response

Krummel, a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, led his team in identifying a special class of dendritic cell, which they refer to as stimulatory dendritic cells, or SDCs. In subsequent studies, they found that both mice and humans with tumors had a poor response to checkpoint inhibitors if they lacked SDCs.

The research team went on to explore why different patients have different SDC levels. They discovered a direct correlation between levels of a specific cytokine, expressed by natural killer cells, and levels of SDC.

Kevin Barry, PhD and leader of the latest study, said the results hold promising implications for two applications. NK cells and SDCs could be used as biomarkers to predict successful immunotherapy, while increasing NK cell levels in other patients could improve their response to treatment.

State-of-the-Art Cancer Immunotherapy

For years, Issels® has been a leader of integrating dendritic and NK cells in our cancer immunotherapy treatments. Contact us to learn more.

Cancer Treatment, Uncategorized

Fevers Boost the Immune Response – New Study Focuses on the Cancer Connection

Most people just want to crawl back into bed when they’re running a fever. Who would have thought there may be a positive aspect to feeling so bad? Incredibly, a published study indicates there may be a connection between fever and cancer immunotherapy.

What Is a Fever?

Infectious fever is one of the immune system responses to foreign organisms. When bacteria known as exogenous pyrogens enter the body, it triggers the immune system to produce endogenous pyrogens, or mediators, to fight them. This begins a chain of events that culminates in a rising temperature.

Endogenous mediators include cytokines, such as interleukins and interferons. During a fever, these mediators redirect metabolic substrates and energy, resulting in a higher range of immune effectors. One such effector is lymphocytes that express gd T cells.

How a Fever Affects the Immune System

A fever generates large numbers of gamma delta T cells. These cells are valuable in fighting infection that initiates the fever response. They also have potent anti-tumor properties, which may have applications for cancer immunotherapy methods. This process indicates that a high incidence of fevers may actually reduce the risk of cancer.

Past research has largely involved alpha beta T cells. While the connection between the fever response and cancer is still largely anecdotal, researchers now have a foundation to expand studies on the topic along with possible clinical benefits. This specific study, based on patient accounts documented over several decades, was first published in Quarterly Review of Biology.

Cancer Immunotherapy: The Issels® Difference

Our personally tailored immunotherapy programs are designed to help the body’s own immune system fight tumors. These non-toxic vaccines and cell therapies avoid the adverse side effects that accompany many traditional cancer treatments. Visit our website to learn more about the Issels® Difference.

Cancer Treatment, Uncategorized

Results in Clinical Trials May Not Represent Results in Real Life Treatment

For patients who choose to undergo immunotherapy for cancer, new medications are often available more quickly than usual. In fact, a new study found that new medications used in immunotherapy start being used faster than the standard practice for other new medical treatments. Some of this is due to the results of clinical trials, but there are a few potential problems to consider.

Age of Clinical Trial Participants

One of the most notable differences between clinical trial participants and cancer patients is age. Those who took part in clinical trials for immunotherapy treatments tended to be younger than those treated in clinical practice. Clinical trial participants were mainly in their late 50s or early 60s, while cancer patients treated clinically were 65 and older. Knowing more about how real world populations respond to newly adopted medications for cancer involves doing more research.

Early vs. Later Clinical Trials

Another problem with beginning the use of immunotherapy medications more quickly than usual is the risk of having later clinical trials show different results compared to early trials. Fast approval is often based on the findings of early clinical trials, but there is a risk of having later trials find that medications are harmful or not as effective.

Recommendations for Rapid Adoption

Experts recommend running clinical trials that include participants who are similar to real world populations of cancer patients. Doing this should help provide findings that better reflect results for real world populations. Other recommendations include avoiding basing approval on small studies, the use of atypical patient populations, and studies that don’t compare the treatment with current alternative options that are available.

For more information on immunotherapy for cancer, please contact Issels® today. We can provide additional information on this type of cancer treatment.

Cancer Treatment, Uncategorized

Cancer Genome Atlas Reveals an Inherent Weakness in Tumor Cells

In genetic analyses of cancer cells, scientists have focused largely on the DNA component. Thanks to a genetic database compiled over 13 years, researchers have discovered that information found in RNA may possibly enable expanded use of cancer immunotherapy.

What Is the Cancer Genome Atlas?

The Cancer Genome Atlas was a joint project between the US National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Genomics and the National Human Genome Research Institute. Genetic information from tumor cells representing 33 types of cancer was gathered from thousands of patients.

In 2017, the project came to its planned conclusion. Going forward, scientists will continue to mine the data in search of applications toward improved prevention, detection and treatment of cancer.

A New Clue in Cancer Detection

Just after the conclusion of the Atlas project, a research team headed up by Gunnar Rätsch, professor of biomedical informatics at ETH Zurich, took on an analysis of the database. They were aided by a supercomputer that was capable of processing several hundred terabytes of raw data.

RNA, which “transcribes” DNA, first undergoes a series of changes known as alternative splicing. In this process, specialized enzymes remove sections from an RNA molecule and join the remaining sides together.

While alternative splicing can take many variations, Rätsch’s team discovered tens of thousands of previously undescribed forms of splicing that were present in cancer cells. Up to 75 percent of the cases studied contained these variations, so the team is hopeful that further research could lead to using these markers for expanded cancer immunotherapy treatment.

State-of-the-Art Cancer Immunotherapy

At Issels®, we have always remained in the forefront of cancer studies and treatments. Contact us to learn more about our personalized, non-toxic programs and how they have helped patients with advanced cancer patients achieve long-term remission.

Cancer Treatment, Uncategorized

Pre-Surgical Immunotherapy May Improve Some Cancer Outcomes

As a popular saying reminds us, timing is everything, and that’s also true with cancer treatment. Researchers have discovered that pre-surgical cancer immunotherapy can improve outcomes with certain types of cancer.

How Does Immunotherapy Work?

Chemotherapy, surgery and other traditional cancer treatments have been used with varying degrees of success. Maximum dose limits and tumor resistance are some of the drawbacks that hamper their use. These therapies also affect healthy cells as well, resulting in side effects ranging from mild to serious.

As the name implies, immunotherapy aims to boost the ability of the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells. Since immunotherapy is a non-toxic treatment, it potentially eliminates or reduces many of the common side effects that accompany other methods.

Since cancer cells are derived from normal cells, the immune system on its own will often ignore them. Immunotherapy serves as “reinforcements” by training the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.

Benefits of Pre-Surgical Cancer Immunotherapy

Antibody therapy promotes the process of phagocytosis, in which macrophages actually ingest cancer cells. This treatment works best on leukemia rather than solid tumors.

Surgery is often the first course of treatment with tumors such as colorectal cancer, especially when the cancer has not yet spread, or metastasized. Unfortunately, surgery sometimes allows cancer cells to seep into the bloodstream, where they can circulate throughout the body.

Post-surgery antibody therapy has not been particularly effective. However, experimental models have shown that pre-surgical antibody therapy can stimulate phagocytosis with macrophages that are already present in the liver, which filters blood.

Personalized Therapies for Long-Term Success

Our individually-tailored therapies have helped a number of stage 4 patients achieve long-term remission, even when other treatments have failed. Contact us to learn more about the Issels® Difference.