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Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?
- brador 13y agoThis is an interesting precursor to curing cancer. What will happen to the leukaemia industrial complex? The charities? the specialists? the drugs? Will they all just close shop and go home?
- aspensmonster 13y agoMove on to another disease that has yet to be cured or feasibly treated?
- sliverstorm 13y agoSuch as one of the uncountable numbers of other types of cancers?
- bad_user 13y agoAll the cancers have one thing in common: unregulated cell growth. Any victory against one type of cancer is a step forward that may help us one day find a permanent cure for all types of cancer. Besides, Leukemia is amongst the most common types, so I don't get the cynicism of some people in this thread.
- x0x0 13y agoI think you shouldn't allow yourself to become too cynical, even when you see bad examples like the komen foundation. I have no doubt the vast vast majority of doctors and charity employees that treat or support leukemia patients would be delighted (in particular, I'd bet many volunteers have been personally affected) to declare victory and either retrain for different diseases or find another hobby. edit: for an example rather than a hypothetical, see polio edit2: also, if this works, an enormous chunk of doctors, medical researchers, and scientists are going to drop whatever they're doing and frantically attempt to apply this technique to every cancer one can think of
- gargoiler00 13y agoAlso what about the sudden population explosion? What if the survivors need after care for the rest of their lives, or expensive drugs?
- Mvandenbergh 13y agoWhat sudden population explosion? I'm fairly sure that leukemia isn't playing a huge role in demographics.
- anovikov 13y agoLeukemia doesn't affect many enough people in reproductive age to cause a population explosion. Basically, no medical advance can cause population explosion in the rich world: there are very few people dying from disease in reproductive ages there. Making people who would otherwise die at 55 live through 95 does not make a population explosion because they won't have any kids anyways.
- chris_wot 13y agoGladly, I would think!
- 3327 13y agoMisleading headline...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- vertr07 13y agoWow, all of those links are full of utter bs.
- nwh 13y agoMan, that's a collection of utter bullshit. There's nothing lower than preying on the hopes of potentially terminal patients. That last link is sick, there's hundreds of commenters begging for help. ED: For future reference, the deleted post referred to http://cancertutor.com/ http://cancertutor.com/ as a trustworthy source. It also refered to a miracle cancer healer's blog post http://thinkindia.hubpages.com/hub/CANCER-TREATMENT-FOR-FREE http://thinkindia.hubpages.com/hub/CANCER-TREATMENT-FOR-FREE .
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nwh 13y agoI'm sorry, but you're totally and utterly wrong. I've sat in the oncology ward at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for a solid six months and watched scores of patients undergoing the most diabolical treatments anybody could ever conceive. People so blasted by the chemotherapy drugs that they can't even be visited, lest their damaged immune system succumbs to even the weakest of infections. I sat with someone as they dripped blood because there was a severe shortage of platelets and they had none of their own to clot with. If there was a better solution, we'd be using it. You also linked to a site claiming that Autism is caused by vaccinations.
- conroe64 13y agoI don't think you should be so sure that all solutions to cancer have been tried. http://www.sfweekly.com/2013-04-24/news/key-words-cannabis-oil-cure-cancer-constance-finley/ http://www.sfweekly.com/2013-04-24/news/key-words-cannabis-o... There is no money in natural cures, so most researchers don't bother.
- swombat 13y agoI really hope this is not another one of those false cures. It's time we made some real big-news progress against this horrible collection of ailments we call cancer. For those who don't want to read through the lengthy human interest story wrapping the news here, from a quick read I gathered they're basically modifying T-Cells: > In their natural state, T cells usually aren’t able to kill tumor cells, partly because they can’t latch on strongly enough. But June was fascinated by scientific papers showing it was possible to change this. A few researchers—first an Israeli named Zelig Eshhar in the ’80s, then other investigators around the world—had discovered that you could force a T cell to stick to a tumor cell and kill it. To pull this off, you built an “engineered T cell”—a T cell never before seen in nature. You altered the T cell’s genetic blueprint by injecting a new gene into the cell. The new gene would tell it to build a new molecular limb. The limb, called a “chimeric antigen receptor,” would sit partly inside the cell and partly outside, and it could send signals either in or out. One signal it could send was: kill. Another was: replicate. > June loved this approach. So elegant. Put the immune system on steroids. What if you could train the body to fight cancer on its own? What if, instead of replacing a patient’s immune system (as in a bone-marrow transplant) or pumping him full of poison (chemo), you could just borrow some cells, tweak them, and infuse them back into the patient? In theory, the engineered cells would stay alive in the blood, replenishing themselves, killing any tumors that recurred. It occurred to June that one infusion could last a lifetime. It seems this research has been going on for 10+ years. How many people have died because of the glacial regulatory pace of cancer research?
- grey-area 13y agoI really hope this is not another one of those false cures. It seems this research has been going on for 10+ years. How many people have died because of the glacial regulatory pace of cancer research? One of these statements explains the other - verifying research is safe with trials takes time, it's not something that should be rushed.
- nazgulnarsil 13y agoBlanket statements like this aren't true. With a lethal ailment, a risk analysis must be done on how many you are killing with each delay.
- codezero 13y agoI'm baffled by the HN title of this article. There is no place in the article that claims a 100% success rate for curing leukemia. The title is: "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" Fighting cancer and curing it are hugely different. Yes, this is a human interest story that outlines the success of a particular patient using a particular method, it's great, but it seems disingenuous to use the title that is here.
- tluyben2 13y ago9 out of 12 is also not 100%
- westicle 13y ago60% of the time, it works every time.
- derleth 13y ago> I'm baffled by the HN title of this article. There is no place in the article that claims a 100% success rate for curing leukemia. > The title is: "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" And here we see the other side of not being able to change (editorialize) titles. I can see both sides of the argument, but I think this example forms a good reason to disallow giving articles different titles.
- reustle 13y agoIsn't that what downvoting is for?
- tomp 13y agoOne can't downvote submissions, only flag them.
- lukeholder 13y agotomp, you can downvote after you have reached the right points/karma
- aspensmonster 13y agoThis certainly seems like a very interesting and double-edged sword of a treatment. The engineered T-cells nuke the tumors, which is a good thing. But if I'm reading this right, the large amount of cytokine that gets released from such a rapid destruction also wreaks havoc on your kidneys and could itself be fatal. It sounds like an all-or-nothing treatment that you either sweat out or succumb to. Apparently there's a drug (tocilizumab) that essentially acts as an undo button by taming the engineered T-cells and avoiding such fatalities, but then you're back to square one. It looks like the Penn team has partnered with Novartis to study the engineered T-cells and (I'm guessing) develop a method to tailor the engineered T-cell growth rate to a magnitude the kidneys can manage.
- nostrademons 13y agoCytokine storms are fairly well-understood complications of various infectious diseases like Spanish Flu, SARS, and Hantavirus. There's no perfect cure for them, but there are a number of treatments that seem to help, and research into that benefits a number of other deadly ailments other than this cancer treatment. This is not a phenomena unique to this treatment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm
- VLM 13y agoOne answer that immediately struck me was generally in medicine if something is on a decline, waiting for it to get worse is not a wise choice. On the other hand at research time, administering something that might simply kill someone or confuse them into not taking a known existing "good" treatment path because they're experimenting has some ethical issues (unless you're into patent medicine, fads, faith healing, homeopathy, crystal healing, that type of thing). So in the long run, rather than sitting around waiting for the tumors to weigh 7 pounds because every other current treatment failed as per the article examples, this might be an early treatment option. Certainly "processing" 7 pounds of dead tumor is going to be hard on your biochemistry. But years or months earlier in the progress of the disease, a couple grams of dead tissue, maybe even less, eh, no big deal. Gangrene of a leg, today, well that's gonna be a tough one. Minor infection of a toenail six months earlier, eh, no problemo. The interesting part of the human interest puff piece is they ran several trials and of course only the successes get any commentary. Curious what happened with the failures, ranging from no effect to maybe the treatment killed them. Although the journalist thinks what happened to the most successful patient will define the future of this treatment, in the real world, what happened to those folks where it didn't work is likely to define the future. Compared to the amount of ink spilled about baseball, not much was mentioned, which sounds like good news...
- angersock 13y agoSo, somewhat darkly, when I saw this article a moment ago, it had a claimed 100% success rate. Now it's a 75% success rate. Did a quarter of the patients just die?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mrb 13y agoThe title was edited to reflect the actual success rate (9 out of 12 patients).
- dalek_cannes 13y agoThe article's more about the patients than the science. I got bored with it so I went and found this, from Carl June himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1sA_oz_1P5E&t=444 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1sA...
- reubensutton 13y agoWould a reduction of 70%, like it cites for one of the failures of the treatment, cause the patient's condition to improve a bit, or would it be effectively the same?
- lutusp 13y ago> Human trials having 75% success rating for curing leukemia Please do not use the word "cure" when talking about cancer. The article's submitter invented this headline -- the article doesn't support it in any way. In fact, it says this: "Scientists don’t talk about “curing” cancer. A cure is the hope so great, so seemingly out of reach, that it must never be invoked. They’ve built a wall around the word." And well they might.
- adaml_623 13y agoNot using the word cure is superstitious claptrap. If I get cancer I want a cure. If anybody in my family gets cancer I want them cured. This wariness of using the word cure is just because of the idiots in this world. People who can't understand percentages and possibilities. People who believe that anecdotes prove a point. HN doesn't have to conform to that silliness.
- lutusp 13y ago> Not using the word cure is superstitious claptrap. Not using the word cure is the rational response to the fact that there is no cure for cancer -- there is only remission. > If I get cancer I want a cure. If anybody in my family gets cancer I want them cured. You just changed the subject. Wanting a cure, and having a cure, are obviously different topics. > This wariness of using the word cure is just because of the idiots in this world. So scientists, and medical ethicists, are idiots. Good for you -- I prefer it when a person reveals his ignorance without beating around the bush. > People who believe that anecdotes prove a point. It is you who are relying on anecdotes. Scientists evaluate evidence, and the evidence says there is no cure. Anyone who claims otherwise is deluding himself.
- adaml_623 13y agoI never said that this article was about a cure. I was responding to the quote: "A cure is the hope so great, so seemingly out of reach, that it must never be invoked" I was responding to the fact that people seem scared to hope. There is no cure yet (probably). But to not hope that somebody has just found a cure is just silly.
- jetru 13y agoStories like these not only show that cancer research edges us ever so slightly towards solving one of the world's biggest problems, but also shows to us the ever upward curve of human innovation. The path to an engineered humanity may seem unspiritual and mechanized to some, but to me it expositions one of the true beauties of our existence - that is, we are our own antibodies. Stories like these inspire and nurture the best in us. Keep at it Carl June - you are a true hacker.
- polskibus 13y agoFantastic story, good to hear about people who decide to tackle the hardest problems. One step closer to understanding and defeating cancer.
- thucydides 13y agoThe real headline here: "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" If a headline asks a question, the answer is virtually always "no" or "not yet," but the paper wanted to run a story anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
- anonymous 13y agoActually, I was presently surprised that the answer was not the resounding "no" I expected, but instead a "kind of (for a layman's definition of cure, for a certain kind of cancer)".
- ckayatek 13y agoMicromet was developing a set of bi-functional antibodies that pretty much accomplished this same thing. That is directing the immune system to tumors. One side of the antibody would bind the tumor, while the other bound the T-cells. They were bought out by Merck a year or two ago and I believe the therapies are in clinical trials. You can read about the antibodies here: http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/69/12/4941.full.pdf+html http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/69/12/4941.full.pd... The added benefit here is that the antibodies can be produced en masse and delivered as a drug rather than reprogramming the person's T-cells.
- krschultz 13y agoI would highly recommend "The Emperor of All Maladies" for anyone seeking a more solid understanding of cancer. I really didn't know much about cancer and treatments until reading this book, and now I feel like I at least have a general understanding. I read it after a family friend succumbed to cancer and I realized that I knew very little about the entire disease. My take away at the end of the book was that for all of the "war on cancer" hyperbole going back to the 50s, up until the mid-90s, we just didn't know enough about cancer to really be fighting it. I feel a lot more optimistic about the next 50 years of cancer research than the previous 50. http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/dp/1439170916/ http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/... (non-affliate link)
- anovikov 13y agoI wonder what happened to those 3 unlucky guys for who it didn't work. Were they just too physically weakened+had too much tumors to survive the resulting cytokine storm, leaving the doctors with a grim choice between letting patient die of cancer by suppressing T-cells too much, or from cytokine storm by not suppressing them enough? Or there was simply no result from these T-cells, like they failed to multiply to work, or failed to work after multiplying?