Tag Archives: Fighting Cancer

Cancer Survivors, Immunotherapy, News

World Cancer Report: Cancer Becoming Global Pandemic

The Fight Against Cancer With Age
The Fight Against Cancer With Age

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its annual World Cancer Report and the news is troubling. WHO warns that cancer is becoming a global pandemic. In predicting a 57% worldwide increase in cancer cases over the next 20 years, WHO estimates that both cancer cases and deaths will nearly double by 2032.

It’s a grim picture made even grimmer by WHO’s finding that nearly half of all cancers could be prevented through a worldwide commitment to prevention, lifestyle education and collaborative research.

“We cannot treat our way out of the cancer problem,” Christopher Wild of the International Agency for Research on Cancer told CNN. “More commitment to prevention and early detection is desperately needed in order to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in cancer burden globally.”

Despite the gloomy global picture, there are glimmers of hope. Cancer risk increases with age and a significant portion of cancer’s predicted increase is related to the aging of the world’s population. However, if adjusted for aging, the U.S. cancer rate “is declining notably,” Dr. Walter Curran of Emory University’s School of Medicine told CNN. Curran credits the drop to healthier lifestyle choices.

While Africa, Asia and South and Central America, which account for 60% of global cancer, face tremendous challenges, America’s success offers encouragement for increasing global prevention efforts.

A strong immune system has proven to be a significant aid to cancer prevention and successful treatment. Issels alternative cancer treatments have achieved a unique record of complete long-term cancer remissions utilizing integrated immunotherapy to maximize the body’s immune response. Visit our website to find out more about our cancer treatment and cancer vaccine programs.

Next time: What you can do to decrease your cancer risk

Cancer Care Tips, Cancer Research, Living with Cancer

New Study: Antioxidants Might Speed Lung Cancer

Antioxidants and Cancer
Antioxidants and Cancer

A new study calls into question one of the most widely accepted beliefs about cancer prevention: Eating foods that are rich in antioxidants can help decrease cancer risk. Not necessarily, say researchers at the University of Gothenburg Sahlgrenska Cancer Center in Sweden. Antioxidants may actually increase lung cancer risk for smokers and people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Antioxidants are supposed to protect the body from cancer by preventing free radicals from damaging cells. “These radicals can damage almost anything inside the cell, including DNA, and DNA damage can lead to cancer,” explained study leader Dr. Martin Bergo. By neutralizing free radicals, antioxidants should decrease the possibility of DNA damage and cancer risk.

However, Swedish researchers found that in people with cancerous or precancerous cells, the body’s response to antioxidants appears to backfire. Instead protecting, antioxidants short-circuit a key immune response to cancerous cells, accelerating cancer progression, according to a HealthDay report posted on WebMD.

The study tested response to vitamin E and acetylcysteine, an antioxidant supplement, in mice with early lung cancer. “We found that antioxidants caused a threefold increase in the number of tumors and caused tumors to become more aggressive,” Dr. Bergo said. “Antioxidants caused the mice to die twice as fast, and the effect was dose-dependent.”

The findings are of concern not only because they fly in the face of current cancer prevention recommendations, but also because acetylcysteine is commonly used to improve breathing in COPD patients. Until further testing can be done, researchers recommend that people at risk of lung cancer avoid taking antioxidant supplements. Issels cancer experts point out that study findings were limited to lung cancer and that antioxidants received through food were not implicated.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Alternative Cancer Therapy Breakthrough Could Transform Cancer Treatment

New Cancer Breakthoughs
New Cancer Breakthoughs

The combination of two alternative cancer therapies that are still in experimental stages could have the power to transform cancer treatment. The breakthrough discovery was recently announced by Canadian researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute (CHEO).

The new cancer therapy combines two alternative cancer treatments pioneered at CHEO: a recently developed viral therapy and an apoptosis protein inhibitor developed nearly two decades ago. Separately, each treatment showed promise but had failed to have a significant impact on cancer remission results. However, when the two therapies were combined in the lab and tested on mice, the results were dramatic. Combination magnified the cancer-killing effect of both therapies, resulting in a 90% cure rate in laboratory mice.

“The discovery, in effect, takes a drug that knocks out the genes that make cancer cells ‘bullet proof’ – something like pulling the plug on those cells’ resistance to dying – and gives it an extra push by priming the body’s immune response.” as lead researcher Dr. John Bell explained to the Ottawa Citizen.

Like other immunotherapy cancer treatments, the Canadian discovery is non-toxic, safe for children, highly effective against cancer and has the potential to be applicable to many different forms of cancer. Clinical trials of the combination therapy are expected to be scheduled soon. If successful, the Canadians estimate it will take about a decade before the new treatment will be available to patients as a non-toxic alternative to traditional chemotherapy and radiation and the destructive toll they take on the body.

As a pioneer in the use of immunotherapy to treat cancer, Issels welcomes this promising new addition to the growing body of immunotherapy-based alternative cancer treatments that are changing the way cancer is treated.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Predicting Hereditary Cancer Risk

Hereditary Cancer
Hereditary Cancer

A new international study spearheaded by Spanish cancer researchers has developed a method of identifying people with a hereditary risk of cancer related to Lynch Syndrome, Science Daily reports. While the focus of the study was limited to a specific hereditary condition known to increase cancer risk, researchers believe their findings may be applicable to other hereditary cancers.

Cancer develops within the body. Errors in normal DNA replication and other issues can cause genetic alterations or mutations that interfere with normal cell functioning and may lead to cancer. Some people, however, are born with a genetic mutation that predisposes them to a certain type of cancer. An estimated 5% to 10% of all cancer tumors are hereditary through predisposition.

An inherited colorectal disease, Lynch syndrome, also known as HNPCC (Hereditary Nonpolyposis Colorectal Cancer), carries an increased risk of colon cancer and endometrial cancer. In a cooperative international effort to identify the genetic variants responsible for Lynch Syndrome, researchers around the world culled through data on thousands of genetic variants.

The significance of many of these variants is as yet unknown. However, it is hoped that consolidation of global research into a public database will allow researchers to translate data into useful clinical information, expanding our understanding of Lynch Syndrome and its genetic implications. The project is being funded and managed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Scientific Foundation of the Spanish Association Against Cancer.

Identifying the genetic variants responsible for hereditary cancers may help identify at-risk families, encourage early monitoring and preventive measures, inform targeted cancer therapies and provide affected families with useful genetic counseling in the hopes of minimizing cancer risk for future generations. Researchers believe that the process they are using with Lynch Syndrome could be applied to other hereditary cancer genes.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Is Cancer Inevitable? Immunotherapy May Change the Answer – Part III

Cancer Immunotherapy
Cancer Immunotherapy

Cancer risk increases with age, but why that is true and whether we can change that is the complex question we have been discussing in our previous two posts. For a long time, the relationship between cancer and age was assumed to be a simple matter of living long enough for mutations to accumulate and trigger cancer development. Now, new cancer research from the University of Colorado Cancer Center shows that tissue changes that occur with aging, not accumulated mutations, allow the development of age-related cancer.

Colorado researchers found that by the time we reach our teens and stop growing, our bodies have already accumulated most of the mutations we will ever have, refuting the argument that mutations increase with age. They also found many mutations in healthy tissue, refuting the argument that more mutations cause cancer. Further, they argue that if mutations were the key cause of age-related cancer, our immune system should have developed better protections against mutations; but it hasn’t.

As our “tissue landscape” begins to deteriorate with age, those changes erode our ability to fight off cancer, as well as other diseases. The Colorado team didn’t take their findings further, but what if our bodies could “rejuvenate” aging cells and return them to the disease-fighting strength of our youth? Issels’ more than 60 years of experience with cancer treatments including integrative immunotherapy has shown us that boosting the body’s immune system has tremendous power to fight cancer. Perhaps taking steps to “supercharge” our immune system as we age could have similar benefits for preventing cancer.

Cancer Care Tips, Cancer Research

Is Cancer Inevitable? New Research Suggests a More Hopeful Future Part II

Gene and Cell Therapy
Gene and Cell Therapy

When George Johnson, author of The Cancer Chronicles suggested in the New York Times that cancer is inevitable (see our previous post), he echoed a common belief: that as we age our bodies accumulate an increasing number of potentially cancerous mutations that will eventually catch up to us if we live long enough. In other words, if you don’t die of something else, cancer will get you in the end.

That’s a depressingly defeatist attitude that the cancer specialists at Issels cancer treatment centers reject. In more than 60 years of experience treating cancer with integrative immunotherapy, our staff and our patients have found many reasons to be hopeful about the eventual development of a cancer cure. Advanced immunotherapy and targeted cancer therapies have produced some remarkable results in our ongoing battle against cancer.

Cancer mortality rates in the U.S. have been declining slowly but steadily since the War Against Cancer was launched. According to the American Cancer Society’s most recent annual report, the average American’s risk of dying from cancer has decreased 20% over the past two decades. But the fact remains that cancer risk increases with age.

A new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Cancer Center has found that, contrary to current thinking, cancer risk is not increased by years of accumulated mutations, but by tissue changes that occur as we age. As lead researcher James DeGregori, Ph.D., explained to Medical News Today:

“If you look at Mick Jagger in 1960 compared to Mick Jagger today, it’s obvious that his tissue landscape has changed. And it’s this change, not the accumulation of cancer-causing mutations, that drive cancer rates higher as we grow older.”

More on this startling discovery and what it means next time.