Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines Show up Promising Preliminary Results
New research indicates that therapeutic cancer vaccines are being used in combination with conventional chemotherapy with growing success. These vaccines stimulate the body's immune system to target and destroy cancer cells.The promise shown by this method is described in several illuminating articles in Cancer Biotherapy and Radio pharmaceuticals, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert. These articles are available free online at http://www.liebertpub.com/cbr
The U.S. FDA recently approved the first cancer therapeutic vaccine for treatment of metastatic prostate cancer. At least 14 other cancer vaccine strategies are in Phase II or III clinical trials for metastatic melanoma, lung cancer, and lymphoma, for example.
A critical perspective, "Recent Advances in Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines," (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cbr.2012.1200) published in the Journal by Jeffrey Schlom, PhD, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD explains that a key advantage of cancer vaccines used in combination with chemotherapy is the extremely low level of toxicity. "The next frontier for vaccine therapy will be the use of vaccines in combination with certain chemotherapeutic agents, radiation, hormone therapy, and certain small molecule targeted therapies," according to Dr. Schlom.
These emerging areas of cancer vaccine therapy are explored in detail in two accompanying research reports by Dr. Schlom's colleagues at NCI/NIH. James Hodge, Hadley Sharp, and Sofia Gameiro describe how a tumor-targeted vaccine can enhance the effectiveness of radiation therapy on cancer growth and spread beyond the primary tumor in the article "Abscopal Regression of Antigen Disparate Tumors by Antigen Cascade After Systemic Tumor Vaccination in Combination with Local Tumor Radiation." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cbr.2012.1202) Drs. Hodge and Gameiro and coauthor Jorge Caballero present the molecular signatures of lung tumor cells that can be made more susceptible to immunotherapy when first exposed to chemotherapeutic agents in the article "Defining the Molecular Signature of Chemotherapy-Mediated Lung Tumor Phenotype Modulation and Increased Susceptibility to T-cell Killing." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cbr.2012.1203)
"This perspective and promising research reports are from one of the leading vaccine research laboratories in the world," says Co-Editor-in-Chief Donald J. Buchsbaum, PhD, Division of Radiation Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham. "The ultimate use of cancer vaccines in combination with other immunotherapies, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy will be based on preclinical investigations and hopefully will produce clinical survival benefit for a range of cancers."
Laser light technology combination to treat prostate & Pancreatic cancer
Lund University scientist are in the process of using laser light technology in combination with certain drug to treat prostate and Pancreatic cancer.
"I think we are about to see a real breakthrough, both for us and for other research groups around the world who conduct research on cancer treatment using laser light", says Johannes Swartling, Doctor of Atomic Physics at Lund University and Chief Technical Officer at SpectraCure, the company that is now developing the software.
The software's unique feature is that it uses the optical fibres for more than simply emitting light. Intermittently they also gather information about the tumour, which they send back to the laser instrument.
"In this way, the software can continually calculate the optimal light dose and adjust it if necessary. The entire tumour must be removed, while damage to adjacent organs must be avoided", says Johannes Swartling.
According to the researchers, the software could also be used with other light therapies that use LEDs or infra-red lasers.
Tests on prostate cancer patients in Sweden have shown that the method also works for internal tumours, and in the spring a clinical study on recurrent prostate cancer will begin in the US and Canada. An application for approval to carry out the study is pending. Meanwhile, the same laser light technology is being tested in the UK on pancreatic cancer.
"The advantage of laser light is that it appears that side effects can be minimised. With current treatment methods, prostate cancer patients who are cured risk both impotence and incontinence."
In addition, traditional treatments entail a risk of cancer recurrence, says Johannes Swartling.
The international tests focus on adjusting dosage, guaranteeing safety and ensuring the effectiveness of treatment. If everything goes smoothly, SpectraCure hopes the method will be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada within a few years.
"This really could be revolutionary", says Sune Svanberg, Professor of Laser Physics at Lund University and one of the researchers behind the technology.
"The new technology has great potential to help certain patient groups, for whom current treatment methods have major limitations", says Professor Dr Katarina Svanberg, Department of Oncology, Lund University, who has been involved in the medical side of the development of the method.
How photodynamic therapy works Before the procedure, the patient is given a light-activated drug, which has no effect without light. The drug spreads throughout the body, including to the area of the tumour. The patient then receives a local or general anaesthetic and the doctor inserts needles with optical fibres into the area affected. These channel light into the cancer tumour. When the light comes into contact with the light-activated drug, it reacts with the surrounding oxygen, causing the cells in the target area to die. The hardware and software are based on patents developed by atomic physicists in Lund, led by Sune Svanberg and Stefan Andersson-Engels. The idea was to allow the same optical fibres used for treatment to be used for diagnostic measurements that make it possible to calculate the light dose required. The method was soon seen to be practicable and has been developed over the years, now by SpectraCure. The implementation has been carried out by programmers.
Gene Therapy help regenerate injured brain cells
Alan Harvey, professor of anatomy and physiology at The University of Western Australia, said brain cell morphology (study of form and structure of organisms) was very important in determining how a cell communicated with other cells and formed the circuits that allowed the brain to function.
"Our previous work has shown that when growth-promoting genes are introduced into injured brain cells for long periods of time (up to nine months), the cells' capacity for survival and regeneration is significantly increased," he was quoted as saying by the journal Public Library of Science One.
"We have now shown that these same neurons have also changed shape in response to persistent over-expression of the growth factors," said Harvey, who co-authored the study with Jennifer Rodge, according to a statement of Western Australia.
"Any changes in morphology are therefore likely to alter the way neurons receive and transmit information. These changes may be beneficial but could also interfere with normal brain circuits, reducing the benefits of improved survival and regeneration."
Harvey said the results were significant for those involved in designing gene therapy based protocols to treat brain and spinal cord injury and degeneration.
Nano particles in Food, Vitamins is more Harmful To Humans
A new research has warned that billions of engineered nanoparticles present in food and pharmaceuticals could do more harm to human health than previously thought.
A research collaboration led by Michael Shuler, a professor of Chemical Engineering and chair of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University, studied how large doses of polystyrene nanoparticles – a common, FDA-approved substance found in substances ranging from food additives to vitamins – affected how well chickens absorbed iron, an essential nutrient, into their cells.
The results were reported online Feb. 12 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
According to the study, high-intensity, short-term exposure to the particles initially blocked iron absorption, whereas longer-term exposure caused intestinal cell structures to change, allowing for a compensating uptick in iron absorption.
The researchers tested both acute and chronic nanoparticle exposure using human gut cells in petri dishes as well as live chickens and reported matching results. They chose chickens because these animals absorb iron into their bodies similarly to humans, and they are similarly sensitive to micronutrient deficiencies.
Shuler said the research serves to underscore how such particles, which have been widely studied and considered safe, cause barely detectable changes that could lead to, for example, over-absorption of other, harmful compounds.
Human exposure to nanoparticles is only increasing, Shuler said.
"Nanoparticles are entering our environment in many different ways," Shuler said. "We have some assurance that at a gross level they are not harmful, but there may be more subtle effects that we need to worry about."
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research, Army Corp of Engineers and U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Clot-busting drugs find out safe for kids with strokes
A new research has found that clot-busting drugs can safely for kids with strokes.
In adults, the clot-busting drugs can reduce disability if given within a few hours after stroke symptoms begin. But few studies have looked at whether the drugs are safe for children.
The study used a national database to look at all children admitted to a hospital with a diagnosis of ischemic stroke from 1998 to 2009. Only ischemic strokes can be treated with clot-busting drugs; they are the most common type of stroke.
Of the 9,367 children who were admitted with ischemic stroke, only 75 children, or 0.8 percent, received clot-busting drugs, also called thrombolytic therapy. Intracerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding in the brain, is a risk of thrombolytic therapy. The four percent rate of hemorrhage in the 75 kids who received thrombolytic therapy was higher than the 0.38 percent rate in kids who did not receive the therapy, but it was similar to the rate in adults who receive thrombolytic therapy.
Children who received thrombolytic therapy were no more likely to die following the stroke than those who did not receive the therapy.
"These findings provide evidence that clot-busting drugs can be safely used with children," said study author Amer Alshekhlee, MD, of St. Louis University in St. Louis. "More research is needed to determine whether the drugs are as effective in preventing disability from stroke in children as they are in adults."
The children in the study who received the therapy were older than those who did not, an average of 13 years old compared to eight years old. There were no differences in treatment regarding race, gender, or family income.
Molecular Mechanism underlying the most common malformation of the brain
A molecular mechanism underlying the most common malformation of the brain in human has been identified and researchers of the max Delbruck center for Molecular medicine ( MDC) Berlin-Buch.
In holoprosencephaly (HPE), the forebrain (prosencephalon) is only incompletely formed. Here a binding site (receptor) for cholesterol plays a key role. If this receptor is defective, specific signals cannot be received, and the forebrain cannot separate into two hemispheres, as Dr. Annabel Christ, Professor Thomas Willnow and Dr. Annette Hammes have now shown in mice (Developmental Cell, DOI 10.1016/j.devcel.2011.11.023)*.
Cholesterol has a bad reputation because it may lead to vascular calcification in adults (atherosclerosis) as well as to heart attacks and strokes. However, cholesterol is vital for embryonic development because it controls the development of the central nervous system. The lack of it can lead to severe developmental disorders of the forebrain (prosencephalon), the largest region of the human brain. One in 250 pregnancies does not come to term due to this malformation called holoprosencephaly (HPE). One in 16000 children is born with HPE, of which the mildest form is cleft lip and palate. In severe forms of HPE the affected children do not survive the first weeks of life.
HPE may be due to genetic factors, but environmental factors such as viral infections or alcohol abuse during pregnancy may also cause the malformation. Moreover, the cholesterol metabolism is also frequently disturbed. Thus, patients whose bodies cannot produce cholesterol due to a genetic disorder inevitably have HPE.
As Professor Willnow explained, the human brain develops from the neural tube, a simple tube-like cluster of cells in the embryo. Why defects in cholesterol metabolism lead to a developmental disorder of the neural tube and to HPE is thus far not completely understood. The studies of the Berlin researchers may give a possible clue. They identified a receptor called LRP2 that is formed in the neural tube and can bind lipoproteins, which are the transport form of cholesterol.
Interestingly, this receptor also binds an important signal molecule of forebrain development (sonic hedgehog, abbreviated SHH). As the researchers demonstrated, this lipoprotein receptor drives the accumulation of SHH in the neural tube at a specific site and induces the development of the forebrain structures. The researchers now suspect that cholesterol – directly or indirectly – plays a central role in controlling the activity of this novel receptor and assume that disturbances in cholesterol metabolism lead to a loss of function of this auxiliary receptor for SHH signaling.
New research indicates that therapeutic cancer vaccines are being used in combination with conventional chemotherapy with growing success. These vaccines stimulate the body's immune system to target and destroy cancer cells.The promise shown by this method is described in several illuminating articles in Cancer Biotherapy and Radio pharmaceuticals, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert. These articles are available free online at http://www.liebertpub.com/cbr
The U.S. FDA recently approved the first cancer therapeutic vaccine for treatment of metastatic prostate cancer. At least 14 other cancer vaccine strategies are in Phase II or III clinical trials for metastatic melanoma, lung cancer, and lymphoma, for example.
A critical perspective, "Recent Advances in Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines," (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cbr.2012.1200) published in the Journal by Jeffrey Schlom, PhD, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD explains that a key advantage of cancer vaccines used in combination with chemotherapy is the extremely low level of toxicity. "The next frontier for vaccine therapy will be the use of vaccines in combination with certain chemotherapeutic agents, radiation, hormone therapy, and certain small molecule targeted therapies," according to Dr. Schlom.
These emerging areas of cancer vaccine therapy are explored in detail in two accompanying research reports by Dr. Schlom's colleagues at NCI/NIH. James Hodge, Hadley Sharp, and Sofia Gameiro describe how a tumor-targeted vaccine can enhance the effectiveness of radiation therapy on cancer growth and spread beyond the primary tumor in the article "Abscopal Regression of Antigen Disparate Tumors by Antigen Cascade After Systemic Tumor Vaccination in Combination with Local Tumor Radiation." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cbr.2012.1202) Drs. Hodge and Gameiro and coauthor Jorge Caballero present the molecular signatures of lung tumor cells that can be made more susceptible to immunotherapy when first exposed to chemotherapeutic agents in the article "Defining the Molecular Signature of Chemotherapy-Mediated Lung Tumor Phenotype Modulation and Increased Susceptibility to T-cell Killing." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cbr.2012.1203)
"This perspective and promising research reports are from one of the leading vaccine research laboratories in the world," says Co-Editor-in-Chief Donald J. Buchsbaum, PhD, Division of Radiation Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham. "The ultimate use of cancer vaccines in combination with other immunotherapies, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy will be based on preclinical investigations and hopefully will produce clinical survival benefit for a range of cancers."
Laser light technology combination to treat prostate & Pancreatic cancer
Lund University scientist are in the process of using laser light technology in combination with certain drug to treat prostate and Pancreatic cancer.
"I think we are about to see a real breakthrough, both for us and for other research groups around the world who conduct research on cancer treatment using laser light", says Johannes Swartling, Doctor of Atomic Physics at Lund University and Chief Technical Officer at SpectraCure, the company that is now developing the software.
The software's unique feature is that it uses the optical fibres for more than simply emitting light. Intermittently they also gather information about the tumour, which they send back to the laser instrument.
"In this way, the software can continually calculate the optimal light dose and adjust it if necessary. The entire tumour must be removed, while damage to adjacent organs must be avoided", says Johannes Swartling.
According to the researchers, the software could also be used with other light therapies that use LEDs or infra-red lasers.
Tests on prostate cancer patients in Sweden have shown that the method also works for internal tumours, and in the spring a clinical study on recurrent prostate cancer will begin in the US and Canada. An application for approval to carry out the study is pending. Meanwhile, the same laser light technology is being tested in the UK on pancreatic cancer.
"The advantage of laser light is that it appears that side effects can be minimised. With current treatment methods, prostate cancer patients who are cured risk both impotence and incontinence."
In addition, traditional treatments entail a risk of cancer recurrence, says Johannes Swartling.
The international tests focus on adjusting dosage, guaranteeing safety and ensuring the effectiveness of treatment. If everything goes smoothly, SpectraCure hopes the method will be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada within a few years.
"This really could be revolutionary", says Sune Svanberg, Professor of Laser Physics at Lund University and one of the researchers behind the technology.
"The new technology has great potential to help certain patient groups, for whom current treatment methods have major limitations", says Professor Dr Katarina Svanberg, Department of Oncology, Lund University, who has been involved in the medical side of the development of the method.
How photodynamic therapy works Before the procedure, the patient is given a light-activated drug, which has no effect without light. The drug spreads throughout the body, including to the area of the tumour. The patient then receives a local or general anaesthetic and the doctor inserts needles with optical fibres into the area affected. These channel light into the cancer tumour. When the light comes into contact with the light-activated drug, it reacts with the surrounding oxygen, causing the cells in the target area to die. The hardware and software are based on patents developed by atomic physicists in Lund, led by Sune Svanberg and Stefan Andersson-Engels. The idea was to allow the same optical fibres used for treatment to be used for diagnostic measurements that make it possible to calculate the light dose required. The method was soon seen to be practicable and has been developed over the years, now by SpectraCure. The implementation has been carried out by programmers.
Gene Therapy help regenerate injured brain cells
Alan Harvey, professor of anatomy and physiology at The University of Western Australia, said brain cell morphology (study of form and structure of organisms) was very important in determining how a cell communicated with other cells and formed the circuits that allowed the brain to function.
"Our previous work has shown that when growth-promoting genes are introduced into injured brain cells for long periods of time (up to nine months), the cells' capacity for survival and regeneration is significantly increased," he was quoted as saying by the journal Public Library of Science One.
"We have now shown that these same neurons have also changed shape in response to persistent over-expression of the growth factors," said Harvey, who co-authored the study with Jennifer Rodge, according to a statement of Western Australia.
"Any changes in morphology are therefore likely to alter the way neurons receive and transmit information. These changes may be beneficial but could also interfere with normal brain circuits, reducing the benefits of improved survival and regeneration."
Harvey said the results were significant for those involved in designing gene therapy based protocols to treat brain and spinal cord injury and degeneration.
Nano particles in Food, Vitamins is more Harmful To Humans
A new research has warned that billions of engineered nanoparticles present in food and pharmaceuticals could do more harm to human health than previously thought.
A research collaboration led by Michael Shuler, a professor of Chemical Engineering and chair of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University, studied how large doses of polystyrene nanoparticles – a common, FDA-approved substance found in substances ranging from food additives to vitamins – affected how well chickens absorbed iron, an essential nutrient, into their cells.
The results were reported online Feb. 12 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
According to the study, high-intensity, short-term exposure to the particles initially blocked iron absorption, whereas longer-term exposure caused intestinal cell structures to change, allowing for a compensating uptick in iron absorption.
The researchers tested both acute and chronic nanoparticle exposure using human gut cells in petri dishes as well as live chickens and reported matching results. They chose chickens because these animals absorb iron into their bodies similarly to humans, and they are similarly sensitive to micronutrient deficiencies.
Shuler said the research serves to underscore how such particles, which have been widely studied and considered safe, cause barely detectable changes that could lead to, for example, over-absorption of other, harmful compounds.
Human exposure to nanoparticles is only increasing, Shuler said.
"Nanoparticles are entering our environment in many different ways," Shuler said. "We have some assurance that at a gross level they are not harmful, but there may be more subtle effects that we need to worry about."
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research, Army Corp of Engineers and U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Clot-busting drugs find out safe for kids with strokes
A new research has found that clot-busting drugs can safely for kids with strokes.
In adults, the clot-busting drugs can reduce disability if given within a few hours after stroke symptoms begin. But few studies have looked at whether the drugs are safe for children.
The study used a national database to look at all children admitted to a hospital with a diagnosis of ischemic stroke from 1998 to 2009. Only ischemic strokes can be treated with clot-busting drugs; they are the most common type of stroke.
Of the 9,367 children who were admitted with ischemic stroke, only 75 children, or 0.8 percent, received clot-busting drugs, also called thrombolytic therapy. Intracerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding in the brain, is a risk of thrombolytic therapy. The four percent rate of hemorrhage in the 75 kids who received thrombolytic therapy was higher than the 0.38 percent rate in kids who did not receive the therapy, but it was similar to the rate in adults who receive thrombolytic therapy.
Children who received thrombolytic therapy were no more likely to die following the stroke than those who did not receive the therapy.
"These findings provide evidence that clot-busting drugs can be safely used with children," said study author Amer Alshekhlee, MD, of St. Louis University in St. Louis. "More research is needed to determine whether the drugs are as effective in preventing disability from stroke in children as they are in adults."
The children in the study who received the therapy were older than those who did not, an average of 13 years old compared to eight years old. There were no differences in treatment regarding race, gender, or family income.
Molecular Mechanism underlying the most common malformation of the brain
A molecular mechanism underlying the most common malformation of the brain in human has been identified and researchers of the max Delbruck center for Molecular medicine ( MDC) Berlin-Buch.
In holoprosencephaly (HPE), the forebrain (prosencephalon) is only incompletely formed. Here a binding site (receptor) for cholesterol plays a key role. If this receptor is defective, specific signals cannot be received, and the forebrain cannot separate into two hemispheres, as Dr. Annabel Christ, Professor Thomas Willnow and Dr. Annette Hammes have now shown in mice (Developmental Cell, DOI 10.1016/j.devcel.2011.11.023)*.
Cholesterol has a bad reputation because it may lead to vascular calcification in adults (atherosclerosis) as well as to heart attacks and strokes. However, cholesterol is vital for embryonic development because it controls the development of the central nervous system. The lack of it can lead to severe developmental disorders of the forebrain (prosencephalon), the largest region of the human brain. One in 250 pregnancies does not come to term due to this malformation called holoprosencephaly (HPE). One in 16000 children is born with HPE, of which the mildest form is cleft lip and palate. In severe forms of HPE the affected children do not survive the first weeks of life.
HPE may be due to genetic factors, but environmental factors such as viral infections or alcohol abuse during pregnancy may also cause the malformation. Moreover, the cholesterol metabolism is also frequently disturbed. Thus, patients whose bodies cannot produce cholesterol due to a genetic disorder inevitably have HPE.
As Professor Willnow explained, the human brain develops from the neural tube, a simple tube-like cluster of cells in the embryo. Why defects in cholesterol metabolism lead to a developmental disorder of the neural tube and to HPE is thus far not completely understood. The studies of the Berlin researchers may give a possible clue. They identified a receptor called LRP2 that is formed in the neural tube and can bind lipoproteins, which are the transport form of cholesterol.
Interestingly, this receptor also binds an important signal molecule of forebrain development (sonic hedgehog, abbreviated SHH). As the researchers demonstrated, this lipoprotein receptor drives the accumulation of SHH in the neural tube at a specific site and induces the development of the forebrain structures. The researchers now suspect that cholesterol – directly or indirectly – plays a central role in controlling the activity of this novel receptor and assume that disturbances in cholesterol metabolism lead to a loss of function of this auxiliary receptor for SHH signaling.
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