You’ve just had an x-ray and are discussing the results with your doctor. The air in the office fills with complicated words after you hear “lung cancer” from your physician. You don’t hear anything else. Not hearing or understanding anything else is part of the shock and a normal reaction. But when you can think or when you have...
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Fourteen people no longer have stage 2 or 3 rectal cancer because of an experimental use of immunotherapy. Enrolling in a clinical trial has, for the past 25 months and counting, spared them from surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, which are the standard treatments for colorectal cancer. [1] Fourteen people may not sound like many, but it...
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Immunotherapy – the “new” treatment for cancers – actually began in 1891 with William B. Coley, a bone sarcoma surgeon. As a young doctor, Coley watched as a 17-year old girl (who had had her forearm amputated because of bone cancer) died of metastatic sarcoma ten weeks after her surgery. This tragedy started Coley on a quest to...
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New: Thanks to InVideo, we have a video version of the post below. Check it out at bottom of the post. Incredible immunotherapy responses in some cancers, but not in others, have puzzled the research community. What is it about some cancers that allows the immune system to be activated? Why are some cancers able to evade the immune system even when...
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In 1904, a physician wrote about a patient with leukemia who went into remission when he got the flu. Though the patient was not cured, it was a ray of hope at a time when there were no treatments for leukemia. Other cases were reported throughout the years of people with Burkitt’s Lymphoma and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma going into remission when they...
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“Always trust your gut. Don’t leave your treatment in the hands of someone that you don’t trust or that does not seem like a team player. Yes, they are all smart—even brilliant—but read, read, read, and question them at every corner and challenge the standard of care. Exercise, healthy eating, learning the ropes of insurance, mediation/prayer...
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This past week a big announcement came from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Steven Rosenberg, the leading authority on immunotherapy, a treatment he pioneered that uses a person’s own immune cells to fight cancer, told the world about Judy Perkins. In 2003 at age 38, Judy was diagnosed with stage 0 breast cancer. “At the time I was...
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In It’s All In Your Gut, A High Fiber Diet and the Immune System, we introduced the microbiome that lives in our body. It helps with our digestion and makes the short-chained fatty acids (SCFAs) that are important to our immune system. Now several recent studies are looking at bacteria in the bodies of people with cancer. Specifically, these...
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“I’m barely 27 and if it were not for immunotherapy and cancer research, I would not have seen 25.” So starts Stefanie Joho speech at a 2017 Congressional Hearing called “Progress in Immunotherapy: Delivering Hope and Clinical Benefit to Cancer Patients.” When Stefanie was 22, she was diagnosed with a very aggressive Stage II...
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Last summer we provided a series of posts on oncology basics. Oncology Basics: Preparing for ASCO covered some of the history of oncology. In Understanding Cells, we reviewed what is newly understood about cells–it’s way beyond what you learned in high school biology. DNA with lots of animated videos also explained some of the basics...
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Oncology Basics 2016 continues with a look at the immune system and immunotherapy. As described in a previous post, one of the regulators of cell division and proliferation is the immune system. Harnessing the power of the immune system to attack and destroy cancer cells is a promising area of oncology research. Immune System Cells Below is a graphic to...
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