11 ms·
Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
- gt565k 10y ago'Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. “There is a hint of efficacy but no proof,” says Stephan Grupp, director of cancer immunotherapy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who collaborates with Novartis. “It would be great if it works, but that just hasn’t been shown yet.”' So the title is basically click-bait, as the treatment is unconfirmed.
- blisterpeanuts 10y agoPoint taken, but the title doesn't actually say the universal immune cells cured the disease.
- mikeash 10y agoMost clickbait isn't outright false, just highly suggestive in a misleading way.
- dmoy 10y agoThere's no way they don't also give them chemo. Doing otherwise would be hugely unethical. Just need more data points before we would know more...
- blacksmith_tb 10y agoTrue, but it could still be the case the combination of traditional chemo and the experimental therapy would work on other patients. Obviously it'd be preferable if it worked without chemo (given the side effects), but the cure is the goal.
- esalazar 10y ago'says Stephan Grupp, director of cancer immunotherapy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who collaborates with Novartis.' I don't know if I would trust the opinion of somebody that 'collaborates' with one of the companies that has already lost millions trying a different approach and has the most to lose if this actually works. It even points this out earlier in the article - 'The ready-made approach could pose a challenge to companies including Juno Therapeutics and Novartis, each of which has spent tens of millions of dollars pioneering treatments that require collecting a patient’s own blood cells, engineering them, and then re-infusing them.'
- jackweirdy 10y ago> Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. Could someone explain what the process for proving it would be in this case? I presume some kind of animal testing? Seems pretty immoral to give someone a wildcard treatment and not back it up with something known to work. Not disparaging this treatment but given we don't know if it works yet (and how aggressive cancer can be) it seems totally fair to administer it alongside chemo.
- pen2l 10y ago> Seems pretty immoral to give someone a wildcard treatment and not back it up with something known to work. I think they're giving the treatment to patients for whom pretty much all options have already been pursued and they're still terminally ill. Of course that still doesn't "justify" necessarily a wildcard treatment completely, but I guess one last wildcard attempt might be better than nothing.
- Retric 10y agoGive both the normal treatment and (new thing), and compare it to just the normal treatment and see which group has better outcomes. For serious issues you can stop the trial early and give it to everyone if it's shown to be a dramatic improvement.
- maxerickson 10y agoThe full paper states that they did this prior to even phase I of clinical trials: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/9/374/eaaj2013.full http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/9/374/eaaj2013.full Therapy was provided for two infants under the UK. special license arrangements after institutional ethical reviews. Named-patient, open-label, nonblinded, compassionate therapy was undertaken in two infants ahead of planned phase 1 clinical trials. I guess the proceedings of the ethical reviews would be quite interesting.
- aetherson 10y ago
- ryeguy_24 10y ago"The ready-made approach could pose a challenge to companies including Juno Therapeutics and Novartis, each of which has spent tens of millions of dollars pioneering treatments that require collecting a patient’s own blood cells, engineering them, and then re-infusing them." Is author serious with this statement? Two kids lives were saved with a potentially inexpensive technique and the author think's this point is relevant? If 500 companies go bankrupt because cancer is cured, that is a monstrous win.
- impish19 10y agoI don't see it as the author complaining about the danger to the companies but merely stating it. It's not only just OK, but also necessary to throw light on this.
- ryeguy_24 10y agoAgreed, but it's still the 3rd of 16 paragraphs. I think it's far the most relevant item.
- chrischen 10y agoThink of it as a warning.
- Jugurtha 10y agoI agree, especially considering that the author also mentions relations to expose potential bias or conflict of interest (italics are mine for emphasis): >Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. “There is a hint of efficacy but no proof,” says Stephan Grupp, director of cancer immunotherapy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who collaborates with Novartis.
- pmiller2 10y agoI hardly think a treatment costing $4000/dose to manufacture is inexpensive.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoIt's hard to cure cancer definitely because cancer cells will always be trying to out-evolve any treatment. Anything that quickly kills 99% of cells, unfortunately, lets them select for survival traits really fast.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoHowever, given that cancer cells do not evolve between individuals (as opposed to bacteria and virii), if we are to find a efficient immunological treatment it's going to stay efficient. If anything, we will evolve for our cancers to respond better to it.
- Retric 10y agoWell, until you deal with super cancer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease
- EdHominem 10y agoWow, that's an actual transmissible cancer, not a transmissible trigger.
- JPLeRouzic 10y agoSomehow it is strange that cancer cells do not try to propage to other organisms, given they try hard to invade their host? Is there any known reason for that (absence of) behavior?
- maxerickson 10y agoI imagine a big part of it is that they kill the host pretty quickly.
- ska 10y agoSee Retric's comment and link. Short answer is, can. A more common transmission mechanism is itself a virus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus) . But, remember unlike bacteria or a virus, cancer isn't typically "invading" and you aren't "hosting". It's a malfunction of your own cells resulting in unregulated growth. For the most part it isn't really something you "get", so much as a failure mode of you as a system. We do use the terminology "invasive" but not because it came from outside the body, rather that it is leaving one organ or tissue and entering another.
- mediocrejoker 10y ago> “We estimate the cost to manufacture a dose would be about $4,000,” she says. That’s compared to a cost of around $50,000 to alter a patient’s cells and return them. > Either type of treatment is likely to cost insurers half a million dollars or more if they reach the market. Can someone more familiar with the pharmaceutical industry explain this?
- L_Rahman 10y agoI can explain the first quote. In a universal donor scenario, the T-cells are engineered, error corrected and tested once. From there, they can be multiplied pretty cheaply. Most of the cost is in the initial engineering. In a patient cell scenario, each individual patient's cells must be engineered, tested and delivered. This is obviously much more expensive. A very crude computer science analogy would be the difference between scaling up a load balanced application relative to adding a new server from bare metal without automated scripts. Why the treatment would cost half a millions dollars at the market is outside of my purview, so I'm eager to get an explanation as well.
- omegaworks 10y agoPrivate insurers are too fragmented and small to negotiate a reasonable price for treatment. They lack the leverage that something like a national single-payer system would have.
- replicatorblog 10y agoThe largest insurer in the US covers more people than the NHS. The second and third largest insurers rival other continental health services.
- omegaworks 10y agoPlease offer an alternative rationale for why they aren't as effective. I'm trying to understand why US healthcare is so broken.
- rdlecler1 10y ago>And I guarantee you even if things were equal, which they are not, you would want your own stuff, not someone else’s cells. This sounds like wishful thinking from VC who just put a lot of money into the Bespoke solution. The idea of immunotherapy is that your injecting cells that can attack the cancer. What does it matter it it's your own cells especially when the cost is an order of magnitude bigger.
- duderific 10y agoYep. In medicine "other people's stuff" is used quite often...blood transfusions...sperm donors...organ transplants...etc.
- blisterpeanuts 10y agoHappy babies! As a point of interest, this type of engineered T-cell treatment has its roots in research at the Weizmann Institute in Tel Aviv. They demonstrated the use of CARs modified T-cells in curing leukemic disease in rats and mice several years ago. Their research was expanded to human trials at Univ. of Penn. where 27 of 29 patients with incurable leukemia and most of whom had a prognosis of death within a few months went into remission and showed no sign of the disease. This modality may work with other forms of cancer; engineered T-cells that can enter every capillary in the body could potentially wipe out entire colonies of cancer cells. The potential is enormous, as are the challenges; cancers can be very difficult to differentiate from healthy tissue. [1]http://www.timesofisrael.com/breakthrough-cancer-cure-has-deep-israeli-roots/ http://www.timesofisrael.com/breakthrough-cancer-cure-has-de...
- eliben 10y agoThanks for the extra info - very interesting. I'm always curious about whether these trials were followed later on as well. I mean those 27 of 29 patients, what is their state now? Still healthy? And how long ago did this trial occur?
- eliben 10y agoDoes anyone here know which companies are looking for software engineers to help with this kind of stuff?
- chrisamiller 10y agoThere are lots of companies in the immunotherapy space. Don't limit yourself to industry, though - lots of academic labs working on this that are in desperate need of good coders and data scientists.
- a3n 10y agoNovartis, mentioned in the article would be one. Companies that partner with those like Novartis would be some more. The needs would be both "data-ish," running databases and studies, as well as medical device control software. Lots of breadth and depth, start looking around. Follow press releases from company to mentioned company would be one way to start looking. Another way would be to ask the FDA: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfPMN/pmn.cfm https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfPMN/pmn... Searching in that form for "immunology" in the Panel field yields 500 results, and lots of companies. That link also points to other databases.
- SolaceQuantum 10y agoI just got an email from a colleague that the Roswell Park Cancer Institute is looking for software developers and cloud developers. They're a good group doing good things.
- ak217 10y agoCheck out http://www.parkerici.org/ http://www.parkerici.org/. Their head offices are in San Francisco, but they work with a lot of labs across the US.
- FT_intern 10y agoIsn't this how 'I Am Legend' started?
- CodeSheikh 10y ago"Rights to the London treatment were sold to the biotech company Cellectis, and the treatment is now being further developed by the drug companies Servier and Pfizer." And that's when it will get sunk into an abyss of bureaucratic processes and this treatment probably won't see sunlight for another ten years.
- tormeh 10y agoIn fairness, that is mostly the fault of the world's various regulatory agencies. I mean, I understand that it's easy, when asked "How many people should die yearly of insufficiently tested medicine?" to answer "zero!", but that's kind of how medicine became so stale.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- roombarampage 10y agoChildren saved from deadly illness by using T-cells(virus?)... I think we all know where this is going...
- geekuillaume 10y agoThere is some scrutiny. Abstract: The London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. “There is a hint of efficacy but no proof,” says Stephan Grupp, director of cancer immunotherapy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who collaborates with Novartis. “It would be great if it works, but that just hasn’t been shown yet.”
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoThe odd thing: does standard chemo ever totally cure anybody? If not, then what did cure them, if not the new treatment?
- vivekd 10y agoYes, chemotherapy can and has cured cancer.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoNot like this as I understand it - remission isn't the same thing as "zero cancer cells detectable" - total eradication of the disease.
- vivekd 10y agoIt can completely cure the cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy#Efficacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy#Efficacy