New drug for colo-rectal cancer has 100% success in clinical trial
Dr Andrea Cercek, from Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses a recent small drug trial in which 14 test subjects with advanced colo-rectal cancer were given a new med called dostarlimab and all 14 went into remission. Dr Cercek says it was as if the tumors just vanished and the treatment had very low toxicity. The drug helps because it repairs a genetic condition in many of these cancer cells in which they lack the gene for an enzyme that repairs damaged DNA. It basically enables the immune system to recognize and fight the cancer. The therapy takes about 6 months. There is hope that this therapy can be used in other similar cancers (in which the body lacks the needed enzyme) such as stomach, bladder, and pancreatic cancer.
Tiny Shape-Shifting Microrobots Can Locate Cancer Cells. With Magnets?
"Today, most patients enrolled in chemotherapy treatment receive
cancer-killing drugs either orally or intravenously. But both methods
come with undesirable side effects. The new method could reduce these,
and also lend new applications to 3D-printed robotic animals. Such tiny
creatures are guided to their goal (in this case, cancer cells) via
magnets, and release the drug payload once they enter the acidic
environment immediately surrounding the tumor."
For more on this see this article.
Princeton team disables long-targeted gene behind spread of major cancers
"This discovery has its roots in 2004 research in which Princeton
scientists identified a gene implicated in metastatic breast cancer,
called metadherin, or MTDH. A 2009 paper by cancer biologist Yibin Kang
then showed the gene was amplified and produced abnormally high levels
of MTDH proteins in around a third of breast cancer tumors, and was
central to not just the process of metastasis, but also the resistance
of those tumors to chemotherapy."
"Subsequent research continued to shed light on the importance of the MTDH gene, demonstrating how it is critical for cancer to flourish and metastasize. Mice engineered to lack the gene grew normally, and those that did get breast cancer featured far fewer tumors – and those tumors that did form didn't metastasize. This was then found to be true of prostate cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, liver cancer and many other cancers."
“In the two papers we are publishing back-to-back today, we identify a compound, show it is effective against cancer, and show that it is very, very effective when combined with chemotherapy and immunotherapy,” says Kang. “Even though metastatic cancers are scary, by figuring out how they work – figuring out their dependency on certain key pathways like MTDH – we can attack them and make them susceptible to treatment.”
Using sound waves to destroy cancer | Christine Gibbons | TEDxDetroit
A new treatment for cancer is presented here, called Histotripsy, which
uses sound energy delivered by ultrasound to destroy cancerous tumors.
Using sound to create heat to kill tumors has been tried, but this is a
new approach that actually uses the sound to create mechanical forces.
These mechanical forces are more precise than heat and lead to less pain
and faster recovery. This concept is illustrated at 3:38
