Tag Archives: Immunotherapy for Cancer

Use Your Body to Fight Cancer

Conventional cancer treatment, such as chemotherapy and radiation, focuses on using external methods of destroying cancer cells. Immunotherapy focuses on using your body’s own defenses to fight cancer. Issels® Immunotherapy offers several cancer vaccines that are non-toxic and do not cause adverse effects, including the following.

Prostate Cancer Vaccine

This cancer vaccine helps the immune system find and destroy cancerous cells in the prostate. Prostate cancer vaccines contain monocytes, cytokines, and other elements of the patient’s immune system, which helps provide a more targeted immune response.

Autologous Dendritic Cell Cancer Vaccine

This cancer vaccine involves the use of dendritic cells, which play an important role in the immune system. These cells have a strong potential to trigger an immune response that effectively destroys tumors. This cancer vaccine contains tumor antigens, cytokines, and other elements of the patient’s immune system.

Coley’s Mixed Bacterial Vaccine

This cancer vaccine helps the patient’s body produce interleukins, interferons, and other parts of the immune system that are needed to fight disease.

Lymphokine-Activated Killer Cells

This cancer vaccine contains LAK cells and interleukin-2 that help the patient’s body fight cancer.

Activated Natural Killer Cells

This cancer vaccine contains NK cells and interleukin-2 to help the immune system fight cancer.

Uses for Cancer Vaccines

Cancer vaccines can be used for a wide range of cancer types, including cancers that are typically difficult to treat using conventional methods. Since they use the patient’s immune system to fight cancer, they don’t come with a risk of side effects or adverse reactions as other cancer treatments do. Cancer vaccines are an important part of immunotherapy and provide a highly personalized approach to fighting cancer.

To learn more about immunotherapy as cancer treatment, please contact Issels®. We can give you more detailed information on cancer vaccines and other therapies.

Cancer Risks with Alcohol Use

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.

Non-Toxic Immunotherapy for Cancer at Issels®

Our integrative programs are individually created to include gene-targeted therapies and other treatments that address a patient’s specific needs. Contact us for more information.

Liver Cancer Rates Rise and Becomes the Sixth Deadliest Cancer

Liver Cancer Rates Are Rising
Liver Cancer Rates Are Rising

Thanks in part to the improved effectiveness of immunotherapy cancer treatment, overall death rates due to this disease have been dropping over the past few decades. Unfortunately, liver cancer death rates have been going in the opposite direction.

Liver Cancer Death Rates Climb

According to a July 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), death rates for all forms of cancer combined have declined since 1990. But in the period from 2000-2016, liver cancer death rates for ages 25 and up rose a dramatic 43 percent.

The increase breaks down to 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people in 2016 compared to 7.2 deaths per 100,000 people in 2000. As a result, liver cancer moved from the ninth-leading cause of cancer deaths up to the sixth spot.

Behind the Numbers

Patients with other types of cancer, such as breast, lung and colon, have benefited from better diagnostic and treatment procedures. In addition, lower rates of people are developing these forms of cancer than in the past.

The same can’t be said for liver cancer. Rates of developing this disease have remained fairly steady, while diagnostic and treatment methods are not as effective as those for other cancers.

Within overall liver cancer death rates, the numbers were highest for adults aged 75 and up. Dr. Jeffery Drebin, liver cancer surgeon at NYC’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, explains that it’s primarily due to long-term effects of liver inflammation.

Personalized Cancer Treatment at Issels®

Our immunotherapy cancer treatment programs are individually created to address the needs of patients with liver cancer and other therapy-resistant tumors. Contact us for more information.

Personalized Immunotherapy: The Future for Cancer Treatment One Story

Immunotherapy is Changing Cancer Treatment Again in Exciting New Ways
Immunotherapy is Changing Cancer Treatment Again in Exciting New Ways

At Issels®, we recognize that successful cancer treatment is designed for a patient’s individual needs. This immunotherapy approach recently saved the life of one woman whose recurring breast cancer was spreading to other parts of her body.

“Two to Three Months to Live”

In 2003, Judy Perkins of Port St. Lucie, Florida underwent a mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Just over two years ago the cancer returned, resulting in tennis-ball-sized tumors throughout her torso, including the lymph nodes.

This time around, Perkins was treated by Dr. Steven Rosenberg and his team at the National Cancer Institute. Rosenberg’s career has been devoted to the field of immuno-oncology, which involves finding ways to help the body’s own immune system attack and destroy cancer cells.

Weaponizing the Immune System

Rosenberg and his team began by obtaining samples of the tumors to sequence DNA and analyze tumor-fighting immune cells called lymphocytes. The scientists were then able to identify the specific gene mutations that allowed cancer cells to multiply and spread.

After determining which lymphocytes were most effective against the mutations, the team grew those cells in the lab and re-introduced them to Perkins’ system. In addition to doses of interleukin 2 and an immunotherapy drug approved by the FDA in 2017, Perkins received one last round of chemotherapy.

All tumors disappeared, and Perkins remains cancer-free today. Rosenberg is optimistic that this success will propel immunotherapy research to more breakthroughs.

Personalized, Integrative Cancer Treatment at Issels®

Many patients with advanced and therapy-resistant cancers have achieved long-term remission through our cancer treatment programs. Contact us to learn more.

Autoimmune Disease May Hold a Key for More Effective Immunotherapy Treatments

Research is Under Way to Cross Out Cancer
Research is Under Way to Cross Out Cancer

Thanks to their ability to avoid detection by the immune system, cancer cells are able to rapidly reproduce and spread. In a major breakthrough, scientists have discovered that a gene associated with hair loss could provide valuable clues to improve immunotherapy for cancer.

Autoimmune Disease: The Other Side of the Coin

Ironically, a research team at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) turned to the autoimmune disease alopecia areata as the topic of their recent study, published last June in Cell Systems. While cancer is marked by failure of the immune system, alopecia represents the opposite situation, an immune system in overdrive.

Alopecia results in immune cells attacking and destroying healthy hair cells. During previous research, the CUIMC team isolated a gene called IKZF1 that causes overproduction of T cells in the immune system.

“Flipping the Switch” on the Immune System

In the latest study, the scientists demonstrated that IKZF1 is turned off in many cancer cells. The team then set out to test their theory that activating IKZF1 would trigger T cells to begin attacking tumors.

The study broke down into two parts:

– When a mouse model of melanoma was engineered to express IKZF1, the corresponding tumors revealed increased levels of immune cells.

– Analysis of data from a previous study of melanoma patients showed higher recurrence in those with disabled IKZF1.

Immunotherapy for Cancer: A Personalized Treatment

Immunotherapy for cancer programs at Issels® are focused on boosting your body’s own immune system, so they’re not accompanied by the side effects that frequently accompany conventional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

Visit our website for more information.

Genetic Testing Identifies Best Immunotherapy Prospects for Prostate Cancer Patients

New Treatments for Prostate Cancer
New Treatments for Prostate Cancer

While immunotherapy has proven to be a viable form of cancer treatment, not all patients respond to the currently available methods. A major breakthrough occurred this summer, when scientists found that genetic testing could identify prostate cancer patients who are likely candidates for immunotherapy.

Treating Prostate Cancer with Immunotherapy

Last June, a major clinical trial provided the first evidence that advanced prostate cancer could be successfully treated with an immunotherapy drug called pembrolizumab. Approximately ten percent of patients responded, so the question became how to determine which patients to treat.

A possible answer came in the form of a study recently published in Cell. Scientists from London’s Institute of Cancer Research and the University of Michigan joined forces to analyze tumor DNA collected from 360 men with advanced prostate cancer in various countries.

Is Genetic Testing the Solution?

Results indicated that seven percent of the tumors lacked a gene called CDK12. This feature is a hallmark of a unique genetic pattern that contains a greater amount of immune cells than other types of advanced prostate cancer.

In addition, these tumors had more neoantigens, which are proteins that alert the immune system to the presence of cancer cells. Thanks to the higher numbers of immune cells and neoantigens, the immune system already begins to recognize the tumor, which is why scientists think such tumors are more receptive to immunotherapy.

Cancer Treatment for Therapy-Resistant Tumors

Issels® uses genetic testing to individually develop cancer treatment programs that are best suited to a patient’s specific needs. Visit our website to learn how we have been successfully using integrative immunotherapy methods to treat advanced cancer.