Cancer News and Discussions

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Vitamin D Alters Mouse Gut Bacteria to Give Better Cancer Immunity
April 25, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Aalborg University in Denmark, have found that vitamin D encourages the growth of a type of gut bacteria in mice which improves immunity to cancer.

Reported today in Science, the researchers found that mice given a diet rich in vitamin D had better immune resistance to experimentally transplanted cancers and improved responses to immunotherapy treatment. This effect was also seen when gene editing was used to remove a protein that binds to vitamin D in the blood and keeps it away from tissues.

Surprisingly, the team found that vitamin D acts on epithelial cells in the intestine, which in turn increase the amount of a bacteria called Bacteroides fragilis. This microbe gave mice better immunity to cancer as the transplanted tumours didn’t grow as much, but the researchers are not yet sure how.

To test if the bacteria alone could give better cancer immunity, mice on a normal diet were given Bacteroides fragilis. These mice were also better able to resist tumour growth but not when the mice were placed on a vitamin D-deficient diet.

Previous studies have proposed a link between vitamin D deficiency and cancer risk in humans, although the evidence hasn’t been conclusive.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1042147

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Regulating Cholesterol Levels Might be the Key to Improving Cancer Treatment
April 30, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) A team of researchers from Aarhus University has made a remarkable discovery that could improve cancer treatment and the treatment of a number of other illnesses.

The key lies in regulating cholesterol levels, which can help make existing treatments more effective.

"We’ve identified a new mechanism that can regulate a crucial immune pathway in the fight against cancer, and this gives us a deeper understanding of how we can activate the body's own defence against the disease," explains Professor Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen from the Department of Biomedicine and one of the last three authors of the study.

Special focus on an essential protein

The researchers have focused on the so-called STING protein, an important element of the immune system's defence against cancer cells.

By manipulating cholesterol levels, the researchers were able to improve the function of the STING protein, thereby opening up new ways of bolstering the body's natural defences against cancer.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1042990

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Pan-cancer analysis uncovers a new class of promising CAR T–cell immunotherapy targets
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05- ... class.html
by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Targeting anti-cancer therapy to affect cancer cells but not healthy cells is challenging. For chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T–cell immunotherapy, where a patient's own immune cells are re-engineered to attack cancer cells, many solid and brain cancers lack an effective target.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have identified 156 potential targets through a comprehensive analysis paired with an experimental validation in vivo. The findings were published today in Nature Communications.

"We discovered targets for cancer immunotherapy, which hopefully can be translated in the future into curative approaches," said co-corresponding author Stephen Gottschalk, MD, St. Jude Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy chair.

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Congress voted against funding a cure for cancer just to block a win for Biden

Some Republicans, refusing to give President Joe Biden a 'win,' voted against the renewal of funding for cancer research. Vote for those who do not politicize Americans' health.

Dr. Thomas K. Lew | Opinion contributor

I’m afraid I have some bad news.

As a hospital doctor, I’ve gotten pretty good at delivering bad news. Still, it never gets any easier. It certainly was not easy the day I told my 53-year-old patient, a devoted father of two, that his stomach pains were not from gallstones as everyone had assumed. Whenever a doctor says “bad news,” our minds often jump to that terrible “C”-word we fear: cancer. Unfortunately for my patient, I diagnosed him with a deadly form of cancer: cholangiocarcinoma. Over the next year, I would watch him deteriorate as he was readmitted with complication after complication.

Cancer affects everyone in some way, shape or form. Whether personally or through a family member or friend, the stress and heartbreak of a cancer diagnosis is immeasurable. Which is why I was so surprised when I read that Congress would not be renewing investments in the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative dedicated to curing cancer.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/v ... 525016007/

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Unearthing the Atomic Fingerprints of Cancer
May 6, 2024

Extract:

(Eurekalert) Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder and Princeton University have, for the first time, employed a tool often used in geology to detect the atomic fingerprints of cancer.

In a case of medicine meets earth science, the researchers discovered that cancer cells may be made from a different assortment of hydrogen atoms than healthy tissue. The findings could give doctors new strategies for studying how cancer grows and spreads—and may even, one day, lead to new ways to spot cancer early on in the body.
….
She (CU Boulder geochemist AshleyMaloney) explained that in nature, hydrogen comes in two main flavors, or isotopes. Some hydrogen atoms, called deuterium, are a little heavier, while others, usually just known as hydrogen, are a little lighter. On Earth, hydrogen atoms outnumber deuterium atoms by a ratio of about 6,420 to one.
…
Fermenting yeast cells, the kind that resemble cancer, contained roughly 50 percent fewer deuterium atoms on average than the normal yeast cells, a startling change. Cancerous cells exhibited a similar but not quite as strong shortage in deuterium.

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1043529

For a technical presentation of the results of the study as presented in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310771121

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Test-at-home kit for cancer patients approved for use

13 hours ago

A new device to help reduce the time cancer patients spend in hospital has been given regulatory approval.

The Liberty allows patients to take blood tests - and upload the results - at home, and without supervision.

Its users say it allows them to cut down on draining hospital visits, while clinicians suggest it could boost NHS productivity.

After being trialled at the Christie, in Manchester, the device will now be deployed at 12 NHS sites.

However, Cancer Research UK says it has so far only been trialled on a small number of people. More work is needed before we know whether it can be used more widely in cancer care, the charity says.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68972855

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HPV vaccine stops 90% of cervical cancer cases

49 minutes ago

Giving teenagers the HPV vaccine is cutting cases of cervical cancer by 90%, figures for England show.

Scientists say it works so well that this type of cancer could be eradicated in the near future.

The study shows the vaccine is most effective when offered to Year 8 students - those aged 12 to 13.

The vaccine also provides protection against genital warts by preventing human papillomavirus (HPV) infections.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2x2en4lpro

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Research explains new method to engineer immune cells that could treat multiple cancer patients

by Linda Wang, University of California, Los Angeles

Immunotherapies have revolutionized cancer treatment by harnessing the body's own immune system to attack cancer cells and halt tumor growth. However, these therapies often need to be tailored to each individual patient, slowing down the treatment process and resulting in a hefty price tag that could soar well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient.

To tackle these limitations, UCLA researchers have developed a new, clinically guided method to engineer more powerful immune cells called invariant natural killer T cells, or iNKT cells, that can be used for an "off-the-shelf" cancer immunotherapy in which immune cells from a single cord-blood donor can be used to treat multiple patients.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05- ... ancer.html

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New lung cancer pill produces “unprecedented” results in human trial
By Paul McClure
June 03, 2024

Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. A trial of a new anti-cancer drug has found that five years after treatment, 60% of patients with a very common form of the disease are still alive, and the cancer has not progressed.

The protein anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) helps control cell growth. It’s made by the ALK gene, which can be rearranged by some cancers, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), causing the cancer to grow and spread. One of the two main types of lung cancer – the other is small cell lung cancer – NSCLC accounts for around 80% to 85% of lung cancers, with ALK-positive tumors occurring in about 3% to 5% of those cases. ALK-positive NSCLC is typically more aggressive and seen in younger people with a light or non-smoking history.

https://newatlas.com/medical/lung-cance ... nib-trial/

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Phase III trial shows lorlatinib highly effective against ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06- ... ighly.html
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress

A large team of medical researchers and doctors has found via phase III clinical trial that the ALK inhibitor lorlatinib is highly effective for treating non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

In their paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the group describes the history of the drug and how well it has performed in treating cancer patients over five years of testing.

Prior research has shown that a protein called anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) is responsible for controlling cell growth. It is produced by the body and directed by the ALK gene. Prior research has also shown that mutations to the ALK gene can result in the development of NSCLC, which is more common in younger people and is typically more aggressive than small-cell lung cancer.

Several years ago, researchers at Pfizer began working on the development of an ALK inhibitor, reasoning that such a drug would prevent the spread of NSCLC. That led to the development of a drug called lorlatinib, which is also known as Lorbrena

.

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Promising Possible Universal Cancer Treatment
June 4, 2024 by Brian Wang

Two years ago, Nextbigfuture highlighted Maia Biotechnology, which might have the most promising treatment for all cancers. They poison cells that express the telomerase enzyme which indicates cancerous activity. The drug treatment is called Thio. 90% of cancers express telomerase enzyme.

Brian Wang interviewed Antiaging expert Aubrey de Grey. Aubrey told Nextbigfuture that his favorite company and approach for a broadly applicable treatment for cancer is at Maia Biotechnology.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/06/p ... tment.html

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Immunotherapy before surgery very successful in treating colorectal cancer, trial finds
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06- ... ancer.html
by Netherlands Cancer Institute

A short course of immunotherapy was found to be highly effective in a subset of patients with colon cancer. The treatment, which consisted of two cycles of immunotherapy prior to surgery, was effective in almost all patients. In two-thirds of patients, there were no longer any live tumor cells at the time of surgery. The patients' immune systems had cleaned up the cancer cells.

These discoveries were made as part of the NICHE-2 trial at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Patients with colon cancer with a specific genetic makeup, known as mismatch-repair deficient (dMMR) or microsatellite instable (MSI), were treated with one cycle of ipilimumab and two cycles of nivolumab. In 95% of patients, the tumor was either complete or almost completely gone, which was measured as 10% or less cancer cells found at the time of surgery. In 68% of patients there were no live cancer cells.

"This specific type of colorectal cancer contains a high number of DNA errors, which means that the tumor cells are more easily detected by the immune system. The immune system only requires a small incentive to successfully target the tumor cells," medical oncologist Myriam Chalabi says, explaining the success of the treatment. Equally important, none of the patients had developed metastases in the average of two years that they have been followed so far.

The first signs of success were observed quite early on after Chalabi initiated the NICHE trial. She says, "We wanted to investigate what immunotherapy could do for people with non-metastatic colon cancer. We witnessed something that rarely ever happens: Every single patient in the study responded well to the new treatment."

Four years ago, Chalabi and her colleagues published the results of the trial involving the initial 20 patients with this type of colorectal cancer. "Back then we had treated 20 patients with mismatch-repair deficient tumors, and all had benefited from the treatment. We had never seen anything like it and knew that if we could show this in a larger group of patients, this treatment could be a game-changer." That led to the development of NICHE-2, the current study that was published.
Neoadjuvant immunotherapy

Immunotherapy given before surgery is known as neoadjuvant immunotherapy. It is intended to prevent cancer from spreading or returning, and in cases of larger tumors, to make surgery easier. The main idea behind treating before surgery is that the immune system can interact with more tumor cells and more of the DNA errors that these tumors have, as well as more immune cells, which makes it more effective in attacking the cancer cells.

Chalabi remarks, "Now, more than two years after treatment, none of the patients saw recurrence even though many had high-risk tumors. The results are unprecedented. The efficacy as well as the side-effects are much better compared to chemotherapy before surgery, a treatment that only works in 1 out of 20 patients."

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New Lung Cancer Treatment Boasts 'Unprecedented' Trial Results
The experimental drug is capable of preventing lung cancer progression for far longer than any other treatment in history.
By Adrianna Nine June 11, 2024

A new lung cancer drug is poised to help patients stave off disease progression and potentially improve their life expectancies. An analysis of a five-year phase III clinical trial reveals that the drug, lorlatinib, prevented the spread of lung cancer in 60% of participants—a vast improvement over existing treatments.

Lung cancer is the world's leading cause of cancer-related death, claiming an estimated 125,000 lives per year in the United States alone. Because the disease's early stages are usually unmarked by noticeable symptoms, lung cancer often isn't diagnosed until it has metastasized—or spread—to other areas of the body. By then, a patient's prognosis isn't great: Only 3% to 8% of people live longer than five years after their lung cancer has metastasized.

https://www.extremetech.com/science/new ... al-results

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Safer virus helps eliminate cancer in mouse study

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06- ... mouse.html

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Swimming Microrobots Deliver Cancer-fighting Drugs to Metastatic Lung Tumors in Mice
June 12, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed microscopic robots, known as microrobots, capable of swimming through the lungs to deliver cancer-fighting medication directly to metastatic tumors. This approach has shown promise in mice, where it inhibited the growth and spread of tumors that had metastasized to the lungs, thereby boosting survival rates compared to control treatments.

The findings are detailed in a paper published on June 12 in Science Advances.

The microrobots are an ingenious combination of biology and nanotechnology. They are a joint effort between the labs of Joseph Wang and Liangfang Zhang, both professors in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
To create the microrobots, researchers chemically attached drug-filled nanoparticles to the surface of green algae cells. The algae, which provide the microrobots with their movement, enable the nanoparticles to efficiently swim around in the lungs and deliver their therapeutic payload to tumors.

The nanoparticles are made of tiny biodegradable polymer spheres, which are loaded with the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin and coated with red blood cell membranes. This coating serves a critical function: it protects the nanoparticles from the immune system, allowing them to stay in the lungs long enough to exert their anti-tumor effects. “It acts as a camouflage,” said study co-first author Zhengxing Li, who is a nanoengineering Ph.D. student in both Wang and Zhang’s research groups. “This coating makes the nanoparticle look like a red blood cell from the body, so it will not trigger an immune response

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1047532

For a presentation of study results as published in Science Advances: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn6157

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Ultrasensitive liquid biopsy tech spots cancer earlier than standard methods

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06- ... ancer.html

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Nano-immunotherapy developed to improve lung cancer treatment
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06- ... tment.html
by Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital have developed a new nanomedicine therapy that delivers anticancer drugs to lung cancer cells and enhances the immune system's ability to fight cancer.

The team showed promising results for the new therapy in cancer cells in the lab and in mouse lung tumor models, with potential applications for improving care and outcomes for patients with tumors that have failed to respond to traditional immunotherapy. Their findings are published in Science Advances.

"Nanoparticles have been used for years to deliver targeted medication to tumor cells, while immunotherapy has also had a paradigm-shifting impact on how we treat cancer, by stopping cancer cells from evading our immune system," said lead author Tanmoy Saha, Ph.D., an instructor of medicine and researcher in the Division of Engineering in Medicine at the Brigham.