Cancer treatment latest news

Share on Pinterest Siro Rodenas Cortes/Getty Images • A recent clinical trial has started evaluating the safety and tolerability of a novel therapy involving a virus that can infect and kill human cancer cells . • The novel therapy called Vaxinia can reduce the size of a broad range of cancers in animal and laboratory models at low doses. • This new therapy has considerable promise due to its selective targeting of cancer cells and its ability to target a broad array of advanced-stage cancers. A recent Phase 1 Vaxinia, a genetically modified smallpox virus, has been previously shown to be effective against a broad range of cancers in laboratory and animal models. This clinical trial conducted by Laboratory studies suggest that Vaxinia may be Medical News Today, “The particular importance of CF33/ Vaxinia is that this virus is designed to target all types of cancers. It is one of the first of a new generation of therapeutic viruses that would be much more potent than prior viruses, and it is potentially more selective for cancer while able to spare normal tissues.” MNT, “We are keen to revolutionize cancer therapy, and no longer are we satisfied with incremental improvements in survival, we want to cure patients. By making cancer into one disease and having a targeted agent to obliterate it, that’s the holy grail of cancer therapeutics!” As oncolytic viruses replicate, they can disintegrate and kill infected tumor cells. When tumor cells burst, they release tumor proteins o...

Immunotherapy is a promising strategy to treat cancer by stimulating the body’s own immune system to destroy tumor cells, but it only works for a handful of cancers. MIT researchers have now discovered a new way to jump-start the immune system to attack tumors, which they hope could allow immunotherapy to be used against more types of cancer. Their novel approach involves removing tumor cells from the body, treating them with chemotherapy drugs, and then placing them back in the tumor. When delivered along with drugs that activate T cells, these injured cancer cells appear to act as a distress signal that spurs the T cells into action. “When you create cells that have DNA damage but are not killed, under certain conditions those live, injured cells can send a signal that awakens the immune system,” says Michael Yaffe, who is a David H. Koch Professor of Science, the director of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. In mouse studies, the researchers found that this treatment could completely eliminate tumors in nearly half of the mice. Yaffe and Darrell Irvine, who is the Underwood-Prescott Professor with appointments in MIT’s departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, and an associate director of the Koch Institute, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Science Signaling. MIT postdoc Ganapathy Sriram and Lauren Milling PhD ’21 are the lead a...

Katie Pope Kopp, 64, of Parkville, Mo., at Union Station in Kansas City this week. Kopp underwent a new form of experimental CAR T-cell therapy that used the CRISPR gene-editing technique to treat her non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The cancer has been in remission for over a year. Barrett Emke for NPR hide caption toggle caption Barrett Emke for NPR Katie Pope Kopp, 64, of Parkville, Mo., at Union Station in Kansas City this week. Kopp underwent a new form of experimental CAR T-cell therapy that used the CRISPR gene-editing technique to treat her non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The cancer has been in remission for over a year. Barrett Emke for NPR Katie Pope Kopp went through round after round of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant to treat her non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But nothing could beat it. "I went back to get a PET scan in May of 2020, and that's when they found that my non-Hodgkin's had blown back up, which was very disappointing," says Kopp, 64, of Parkville, Mo. She was originally diagnosed five years ago. Victor Bartolome suffered through decades of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, too, to keep his blood cancer at bay. Eventually, his doctors told him he had run out of options. "That was devastating. Imagine having what you think is your last hope pulled out from under you," says Bartolome, 74, of Santa Barbara, Calif. But then Kopp and Bartolome heard about something new: In the last few years, some doctors have started using the gene-editing technique CRISPR to try to mo...

The trial, conducted by researchers in the Netherlands, caps off a stunning decade of progress in the treatment of The new approach, called TIL therapy, uses “These are immune cells that are found in the tumor, trying to kill the tumor, but obviously not doing a good enough job because the tumor is growing,” said Dr. Patrick Hwu, the president and CEO of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. To supercharge the cells, they’re taken to a lab where they’re multiplied until they number in the billions — an army now formidable enough to take on the tumor. How TIL held up The new clinical trial included 168 patients with advanced melanoma, nearly all of whom had already tried and did not respond to a first-line treatment called anti-PD-1-therapy. (Before Wednesday’s publication, the results were In the trial, half of the patients got TIL therapy and the other half got an immunotherapy drug called ipilimumab. Following treatment, patients were tracked for a median time of 33 months. Those who got TIL therapy had a 50% reduction in disease progression and death, compared to those who were treated with The therapy didn't work in all of the participants. Just under half, 49%, of the TIL patients experienced at least partial remission — meaning a decrease of least 30% in their metastatic tumors — compared with 21% of patients who got ipilimumab. More surprising was that 20% of the TIL patients had complete remissions — all their tumors disappeared — a result that was “better t...

News breaks in the cancer arena all the time. Sometimes it’s big — like word that a breakthrough drug has increased survival for a Young Children Receiving Platinol Are More Prone to Hearing Loss Than Older Ones What’s New Children younger than 5 who receive the drug Cancer. Research Details Researchers examined previously collected data from 368 Canadian patients with childhood cancer (140 of whom were younger than 5, and 288 of whom were older) who received Platinol and had at least two hearing tests during the course of their treatment. Seventy-five percent of the younger children developed Platinol-induced hearing loss (CIHL) versus 48 percent of their older peers. Hearing loss also occurred at faster rates in the younger children, affecting 27 percent of them three months after starting Why This Matters This is not the first study to link Platinol to hearing loss in children, but it is one of the first to examine whether age and dosing play a role. While more research is needed, parents and caregivers might wish to discuss if more frequent hearing testing makes sense during a child’s cancer treatment so that counseling and rehabilitation can start as early as possible. App Data Underscores COVID-19 Vaccine Safety for Those Undergoing Cancer Treatment What’s New The majority of patients receiving Research Details Researchers analyzed data from 1,069 patients with a variety of cancers, including people with Why This Matters Cancer treatment can reduce immune response, m...