Aa
Aa
A
A
A
Close
148588 tn?1465778809

Cure for cancer

http://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Jim-Allison-confronts-cancer-critics-with-5405290.php

"......Allison, chairman of immunology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, is credited with one of the most important breakthroughs in cancer history, the discovery that finally frees the immune system to attack tumors - a dramatic departure from the existing models of treating the disease......

The achievement has recently won Allison a raft of awards that M.D. Anderson President Dr. Ron DePinho thinks will culminate in the Nobel Prize. "By creating this brilliant approach that treats the immune system rather than the tumor, Jim Allison opened a completely new avenue for treating cancers that's the most exciting and promising area of cancer research today," DePinho says......

By then, the mid-'70s, Allison already was keenly aware of cancer immunotherapy's checkered history.

It was all the rage for a time, but when early mice experiments didn't show benefits, immunotherapy fell out of favor.

"It had such a bad rap," Allison says. "People would say to me, 'Don't do tumor immunology, it'll ruin your reputation.' "

In the ensuing years, cancer immunotherapy made some strides, but they were frequently undermined by hype, sometimes by the scientists themselves. Allison believed none of them really knew what they were doing. He set out to be the one who did......

Allison was most interested in T cells, the immune system's little-understood soldiers that "do all the killing."

He wondered what about cancer disarms them. Why do they so efficiently attack virus-infected cells but not get the necessary signals to attack tumors?

In the next decade, Allison's work laid important basic science groundwork. He identified, first, the T cells' ignition switch, a receptor that has to recognize proteins on tumor cells, then the gas pedal, a co-stimulatory molecule necessary to activate the T cells. They would provide key insights that helped facilitate the big discovery still to come......

Numerous immunology labs were looking for molecular signals to rally T cells into action, and nothing looked so promising as CTLA-4. A newly discovered protein that protrudes from T cells' surface, CTLA-4 turned out to resemble the structure of the "gas pedal" Allison described, so it seemed logical that it was an activation signal.

But when he tried binding molecules with CTLA-4 as he had done with the "gas pedal" protein, he got an opposite effect: It inhibited T-cell proliferation. Could it be a brake, not a gas pedal?

So while most everyone else was looking for evidence that CTLA-4 turned on the immune system, Allison designed a study based on the novel hypothesis that CTLA-4 turned it off: He implanted mice with cancer cells and treated some with an antibody that blocked CTLA-4 - in essence, taking the brake off the immune system.

Allison was astounded by the initial data his research fellow showed him at the end of November 1995: While all the untreated mice had died, 90 percent of the cancers of the treated mice had disappeared. Allison wanted to reproduce the results immediately, but there was a problem: His fellow was headed off to a European vacation, and Berkeley would soon be closing for Christmas.......

Allison took the measurements every other day during December and, for a short while, the results were the source of despair. All the tumors were continuing to grow. But at about the third week, things began to change. In half of the mice, the cancers first stopped growing, then started shrinking, then disappeared.

In March 1996, the journal Science published Allison's research: Blocking CTLA-4 enhances antitumor responses......

He took the finding and determined to apply it to cancer. He developed an antibody that worked great in mice, but for two years couldn't find a company to fashion a human version. Most were still gun-shy about cancer immunotherapy because of the field's past failures, and most were still convinced that the future of cancer treatment involved molecular targets on tumors, not the immune system itself.

Finally, a small New Jersey company named Medarex took the plunge, sublicensing the patent and manufacturing a drug called ipilimumab (ippy for short), the first of a new class of drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors. The company would ultimately be acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $2.4 billion.

Ippy was tested, successfully, in human patients for the first time in 2001, but results from its first large-scale trial weren't good. There was little impact at 12 weeks, the point at which chemotherapy is assessed, so it was declared a failure. It took a second large trial for ippy's prospects to gain momentum, after clinicians noticed some tumors that were unaffected at 12 weeks had shrunk; years later, some patients were thriving.

It turns out that the immune system sometimes took time to rev up, but once it did, its effects last, unlike other cancer therapies......"

9 Responses
Sort by: Helpful Oldest Newest
649848 tn?1534633700
Yeah, I am a bit down on pharma, after having the price of one of medications double, then take 2 more hikes after that - and of course, it's one that insurance won't pay for and there's no generic.

Love to see that optimism, though!!  I do hope something like this gets on the market.
Helpful - 0
973741 tn?1342342773
Whew, you people are doom and gloomy about the pharmaceutical industry.  LOL  

I'm personally excited at the prospect of this.  I have no doubt that if this science is out there, treatment options will come to market and could save the lives of cancer patients (which statistically, lots of us will be if we aren't already!).  I think this is great news!
Helpful - 0
148588 tn?1465778809
".....they paid that to keep it off the market....."

That had occurred to me as well, but that is a grim place I don't choose to go to today.
Besides, it's gotten to the point that, once something is known to exist, India or some other tech savvy country will reverse engineer it, cheerfully ignore international patent law, and busily crank it out at 1/10th the price.
And bravo for them I say.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
You are talking about a consperiousy theory that is unheard of. If more than 1 person knows something it would get leaked. They don't know how to cure cancer.
Helpful - 0
649848 tn?1534633700
It's possible that Bristol-Myers Squibb paying $2.4 billion could help get it on the market, but it's also possible that they paid that to keep it off the market, as they possibly have "treatments" that could, potentially, make them an even larger profit.  

I agree with teko that I think they already know how cure cancer, but the treatments bring much higher profits than a cure would bring.

And yes, Vance, it's entirely possible that if it did reach the market, they could make huge profits from it, but if they make it too expensive most people won't be able to afford it and most insurance companies won't pay for new drugs like that.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
If they had a cure for cancer they could still charge an arm and a leg for it and make huge profits all over the world and not just treat the best they can.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
I have always felt like they already knew how to cure cancer. But it brings in such huge money, that that would be against what they want. Its way ore profitable to treat us and let us die.
Helpful - 0
148588 tn?1465778809
I'm thinking that Bristol-Myers Squibb paying $2.4 billion for this tech is a good sign that it won't simply be sat on. Time will tell.
Helpful - 0
649848 tn?1534633700
Coming from a family in which I'm the only sibling (of 6) who hasn't had a cancer, this sounds really exciting.  

I have to wonder, though, if pharma will even let something like this fly.  Look at the millions spent each year for various cancer treatments that, often, don't work... I've always thought that if a cure were found, it wouldn't be allowed on the market because pharma wouldn't be able to sell their expensive chemos and other drugs.

Let's all hope something like this if found to, truly, work and that it can actually help cancer patients, rather than making them more ill than the cancer does.
Helpful - 0
You must join this user group in order to participate in this discussion.

You are reading content posted in the Current Events . . . Group

Didn't find the answer you were looking for?
Ask a question
Popular Resources
A list of national and international resources and hotlines to help connect you to needed health and medical services.
Herpes sores blister, then burst, scab and heal.
Herpes spreads by oral, vaginal and anal sex.
STIs are the most common cause of genital sores.
Condoms are the most effective way to prevent HIV and STDs.
PrEP is used by people with high risk to prevent HIV infection.