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Thread: Cancer breakthroughs, research & treatment

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dangermouse View Post
    While there are advances being made in many areas, the "cure" for cancer has been ten years away for decades.
    That is not correct.
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    Quote Originally Posted by Dangermouse View Post
    While there are advances being made in many areas, the "cure" for cancer has been ten years away for decades.
    In past decades the kind of technology didn't exist that is available today.

    Same with the level of knowledge about genetic engineering.

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    Peter1469 (04-17-2016)

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    waltky's Avatar Senior Member
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    Immuno-therapy drugs to fight cancer could be approved next year...

    Cancer cell therapies could be approved next year: Juno, Kite Pharma
    Sat Jun 4, 2016 - A new wave of experimental cancer drugs that directly recruit the immune system's powerful T cells could begin reaching patients next year, according to companies presenting new data at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
    In interviews with Reuters, Kite Pharma Inc (KITE.O) and Juno Therapeutics Inc (JUNO.O) both said they could receive initial regulatory approvals next year for a type of immunotherapy treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies. CAR-T therapies involve a complicated process of extracting immune system T cells from an individual patient, altering their DNA to sharpen their ability to spot and kill cancer cells, and infusing them back into the same patient. The technique is being tested against a range of different cancer types, but first in blood cancers. Kite aims to file this year for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of its therapy, KTE-C19, for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), according to Chief Medical Officer David Chang.

    Juno Chief Executive Officer Hans Bishop said adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are now being enrolled in a mid-stage trial of the company's most advanced product, JCAR015, that "we believe will support accelerated approval." He said JCAR015 "could be approved as soon as 2017." Data presented on Saturday showed that 77 percent of patients with advanced ALL achieved a "complete response," meaning cancer remission, when treated with chemotherapy followed by Juno's cell therapy. For the trial patients with minimal disease, 90 percent achieved remission, researchers said. Twenty-seven percent of patients in the JCAR15 trial experienced a severe inflammatory response to the altered cells, and 15 percent had serious nervous system side effects.


    Preparations of media for cultivating cancer cells, being made in cancer research laboratories at the Old Road Campus research building at Oxford University, in Oxford, Britain

    Bishop said Juno has developed an assay to determine which patients are likely to experience risky side effects, but said the company has not yet disclosed the details. A separate National Institutes of Health early-stage study involving Kite's CAR-T drug and low-dose chemotherapy included 19 patients with various subtypes of DLBCL. Of those, eight patients achieved remission, five had partial responses, two had stable disease, and four had their cancer get worse. Two trial patients with advanced follicular lymphoma also obtained remissions. "In the near future, CAR-T cells will likely be a standard therapy for lymphoma," said lead study author James Kochenderfer, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute.

    Some patients treated with the still-experimental therapies have remained cancer free, but the jury is out on whether that will continue, or whether they will need new treatment. "Some of these responses are amazing in patients who would never have responded to anything," said ASCO President Dr Julie Vose. "The question is, is it practical? We are now seeing results for more patients, and longer follow up." Juno's Bishop said he is certain that the benefit of CAR-T therapies will be shown to outweigh any risks. "These are patients that are relapsed and refractory. They are going to die of their disease," he said. "We can get 90 to 100 percent of them into remission, and a meaningful percentage of them have durable remission."

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-he...-idUSKCN0YQ0T1

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    New Biomarker to Guide Cancer Immunotherapy...
    Scientists Find New Biomarker to Guide Cancer Immunotherapy
    June 20, 2017 — Scientists said on Monday they had pinpointed a particular type of immune system cell that could predict more precisely if cancer patients are likely to respond to modern immunotherapy medicines.
    The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Immunology, suggests doctors and drug developers will need to get smarter in zeroing in on those people who stand to benefit from the expensive new drugs, which are revolutionizing cancer care. Drugs such as Merck's Keytruda, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Opdivo, Roche's Tecentriq and AstraZeneca's Imfinzi can boost the immune system's ability to fight tumors, but they only work for some patients.

    The current widely used benchmark when giving cancer immunotherapy is a protein called PDL-1. However, many experts view PDL-1 as a "blunt instrument", since it does not match precisely to drug response, leading to the consideration of other measures, such as the level of mutation in tumors. The latest research adds a further twist by highlighting therole of so-called tissue-resident memory T-cells.

    A lymphoma patient receives cellular immunotherapy as part of a study at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.
    Researchers from the University of Southampton and La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology found that lung cancer patients with lots of this cell type in their tumors were 34 percent less likely to die than others. "Having made the first baby steps with PDL-1 testing, we need to be smarter by using new tests," said Christian Ottensmeier, a Cancer Research UK scientist who worked on the study. "PDL-1 testing is a little bit like saying 'you've got a Ferrari because it is red.' Many Ferraris are red and many tumors that are PDL-1 positive will respond to immunotherapy, but on its own that is not sufficient."

    Ottensmeier and colleagues now plan further clinical trials to see how well their biological predictor can pick out patients who will benefit from taking Opdivo. Industry analysts expect the new generation of cancer immunotherapy drugs to generate tens of billions of dollars in annual sales by early next decade, with lung cancer the biggest single market.

    https://www.voanews.com/a/scientists...y/3907606.html
    See also:


    Living Drugs New Frontier for Cancer Patients Out of Options
    June 12, 2017 — Ken Shefveland's body was swollen with cancer, treatment after treatment failing until doctors gambled on a radical approach: They removed some of his immune cells, engineered them into cancer assassins and unleashed them into his bloodstream. Immune therapy is the hottest trend in cancer care and this is its next frontier - creating “living drugs” that grow inside the body into an army that seeks and destroys tumors.
    Looking in the mirror, Shefveland saw “the cancer was just melting away.” A month later doctors at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center couldn't find any signs of lymphoma in the Vancouver, Washington, man's body. “Today I find out I'm in full remission - how wonderful is that?” said Shefveland with a wide grin, giving his physician a quick embrace. This experimental therapy marks an entirely new way to treat cancer - if scientists can make it work, safely. Early-stage studies are stirring hope as one-time infusions of supercharged immune cells help a remarkable number of patients with intractable leukemia or lymphoma. “It shows the unbelievable power of your immune system,” said Dr. David Maloney, Fred Hutch's medical director for cellular immunotherapy who treated Shefveland with a type called CAR-T cells. “We're talking, really, patients who have no other options, and we're seeing tumors and leukemias disappear over weeks,” added immunotherapy scientific director Dr. Stanley Riddell. But, “there's still lots to learn.”



    A photo shows the cell processing facility at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where workers create customized cellular immunotherapies for patients, in Seattle, Washington



    T cells are key immune system soldiers. But cancer can be hard for them to spot, and can put the brakes on an immune attack. Today's popular immunotherapy drugs called “checkpoint inhibitors” release one brake so nearby T cells can strike. The new cellular immunotherapy approach aims to be more potent: Give patients stronger T cells to begin with. Currently available only in studies at major cancer centers, the first CAR-T cell therapies for a few blood cancers could hit the market later this year. The Food and Drug Administration is evaluating one version developed by the University of Pennsylvania and licensed to Novartis, and another created by the National Cancer Institute and licensed to Kite Pharma. CAR-T therapy “feels very much like it's ready for prime time” for advanced blood cancers, said Dr. Nick Haining of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who isn't involved in the development.


    ‘There's a desperate need’


    Now scientists are tackling a tougher next step, what Haining calls “the acid test:” Making T cells target far more common cancers - solid tumors like lung, breast or brain cancer. Cancer kills about 600,000 Americans a year, including nearly 45,000 from leukemia and lymphoma. “There's a desperate need,” said NCI immunotherapy pioneer Dr. Steven Rosenberg, pointing to queries from hundreds of patients for studies that accept only a few. For all the excitement, there are formidable challenges. Scientists still are unraveling why these living cancer drugs work for some people and not others. Doctors must learn to manage potentially life-threatening side effects from an overstimulated immune system. Also concerning is a small number of deaths from brain swelling, an unexplained complication that forced another company, Juno Therapeutics, to halt development of one CAR-T in its pipeline; Kite recently reported a death, too. And, made from scratch for every patient using their own blood, this is one of the most customized therapies ever and could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.


    MORE
    Last edited by waltky; 06-21-2017 at 03:31 AM.

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    Cool

    First-of-a-kind Test for Cancer Gene Profiling...


    FDA Approves First-of-a-kind Test for Cancer Gene Profiling
    December 01, 2017 - U.S. regulators have approved a first-of-a-kind test that looks for mutations in hundreds of cancer genes at once, giving a more complete picture of what's driving a patient's tumor and aiding efforts to match treatments to those flaws.
    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Foundation Medicine's test for patients with advanced or widely spread cancers, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed covering it. The dual decisions, announced late Thursday, will make tumor-gene profiling available to far more cancer patients than the few who get it now, and lead more insurers to cover it. "It's essentially individualized, precision medicine," said Dr. Kate Goodrich, chief medical officer for the Medicare oversight agency. Currently, patients may get tested for individual genes if a drug is available to target those mutations. It's a hit-and-miss approach that sometimes means multiple biopsies and wasted time. In lung cancer alone, for example, about half a dozen genes can be checked with individual tests to see if a particular drug is a good match.


    The new FoundationOne CDx test can be used for any solid tumor such as prostate, breast or colon cancer, and surveys 324 genes plus other features that can help predict success with treatments that enlist the immune system. "Instead of one or two, you have many" tests at once from a single tissue sample, said the FDA's Dr. Jeffrey Shuren. The tests give better and more information to guide treatment and can help more patients find and enroll in studies of novel therapies, he said. "This will be a sea change" for patients, said Dr. Richard Schilsky, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the association of doctors who treat the disease. "On balance I think this is good," but there is a risk that spotting a mutation will lead doctors and patients to try treatments that haven't been proven to work in that situation and promote more off-label use of expensive drugs, he said. A better outcome in those situations is to guide people into studies testing drugs that target those genes, Schilsky said.



    Patient Alison Cairnes (foreground) looks at images with her doctor Shumei Kato at the University of California San Diego in San Diego



    Foundation Medicine, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and others have sold tumor profiling tests for several years under more lax rules governing lab-developed tests. But insurers have balked at paying for the tests, which cost around $6,000. Now, the FDA's approval gives assurance of quality, Shuren said, and the government's proposed coverage for Medicare and other public insurance programs means private insurers will more likely follow. Public comments on the coverage proposal will be taken for 30 days. A final decision is expected early next year followed by setting a price for reimbursement. Coverage is proposed for patients with recurrent, widely spread or advanced cancers, in people who have decided with their doctors to seek further treatment and who have not previously had a gene sequencing test. "A lot of these folks have run out of treatment options," but the tests may point to something new that might help, Goodrich said. The impact is expected to be greatest on lung cancer, since so many of those tumors are found at an advanced stage and multiple gene-targeting drugs are available to treat it.


    Evidence isn't strong enough to warrant using these gene profiling tests for earlier stages of cancer. Patients get standard, guideline-based care in those cases. In mid-November, the FDA also approved a gene-profiling test developed by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, but it's used almost exclusively on patients at that cancer center and is not envisioned to be a widely available commercial test. The federal decisions will make gene sequencing a more routine component of cancer care, "just like we normally look with a microscope" to classify the stage of a patient's disease, said Dr. David Klimstra, pathology chief at the cancer center. Another leader in this field, Caris Life Sciences, says it also intends to pursue FDA approval for its widely used tumor profiling test, sold now through lab certifications. It's also working on a newer tool to profile tumor genes from a blood sample. Many companies already sell these so-called liquid biopsy tests, though none are FDA-approved yet. This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


    https://www.voanews.com/a/fda-approv...g/4145522.html

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