Exciting news on the cancer research front

[dropkickpa]

Just talked with a guy today who's been working on tumor selective viral vector research for several years that went to phase one clinical trials just this year. I don't want to get into identifying details, but the early early early preliminary results seem promising. They are right now just in the dose testing phase, and have only had two patients so far (breast cancer, chemo and radiation not working for them, *lots* of competition for research subjects here) but even at the lowest dose there have been promising results!!! It's very exciting, as they weren't even sure that ANY positive effects on the tumors would be seen at this tiny dose, and both were not even ideal patients as they'd been previously vaccinated against the virus used, but immune response *did* still happen and there was shrinking and change in the tumors! It's raising some questions about whether there would be even better response if there was transient immune suppression first. Very interesting, and I'm going to be bugging hm for progress reports!

[Heddi]

1. Great news!

Before I went to nursing school, I was a phlebotomist/specimen collection specialist at a MAJOR world-renowned cancer center out in my neck of the woods. The study my particular department was working on was to find a rapid blood test that could provide early detection for ovarian cancer. We then expanded to breast cancer as well. The CA-125 test has too many false positives and negatives to be completely reliable. Our job was to collect blood and tissue samples from study participants in the hope of finding an even MORE selective and reliable blood marker for early stage ovarian cancer.

I left the job in 2004, but several results from the study have been published internationally, and it's looking very promising!

[TZ]

2. I'm currently working on a monoclonal aimed at ovarian cancer!

Unfortunately its only at the pre-clinical stages and I understand the rats in the study are reacting kind of badly to the drug..*sigh*.

Dropkickpa...that is indeed very exciting research. Did you know that someone actually discovered this "cure" a long time ago but it was surppressed? At least that's what I learned in GD....;-)

[dropkickpa]

7. Shhhhhhhhh!!!!

Big Academia doesn't want people to know we have the cure!! Big Pharma will get mad and make us sleep on the couch!

[Orrex]

3. Big pharma has no interest in curing cancer

No doubt your friend is actually working on a way to modify cancer so that its victims excrete bank drafts payable to Big Pharma.

[TZ]

4. Pfft

I have the cure for cancer in my basement. Since you are a fellow $keptic perhaps I will share with you, for the right price.:P

[Orrex]

5. No problem.

I'll just have my friends in Merck's Petty Cash department ship over a palette of thousand dollar bills for you. You know, the usual shill-deal.

[madinmaryland]

6. pFFTH!!!

You and Ivins are developing new strains of anthrax so that big pharma can develop new antidotes!!

:hi:

[rexcat]

8. There is already a monoclonal antibody to the...

anthrax edema toxin and lethal toxin in clinical trial. The antibody hits one target that is common to both toxins. The first clinical trial showed that the intravenous form (IV) was safe in humans. The next phase will be an intramuscular injection (IM) of the antibody. Since is seems to be unethical to challenge humans with the spores of anthrax they will not test the efficacy in humans but are relying on animal studies which has shown the IV form to be efficacious. The only problem with the trials is the NIH is heavily involved and making things very difficult. Those damn government types really need a lesion in real world reality and how the FDA works!

I usually work on early phase oncology studies but got to work on the IV anthrax study and will be working on the IM study. Being a microbiologist was helpful with these trials. I rarely get to work on infectious disease studies despite my background. By the way a small Pharma company is handling the trials and for those who think it is always about money with the Pharma companies your are partially correct but there are a lot of people in Pharma who really care about what they do and want to do a good job and get the good drugs and biologics to market.