A Nanoparticle Cancer Vaccine Effective Against Multiple Varieties of Cancer
The most important projects in cancer research are those that might produce therapies effective against many different types of cancer. There are too many varieties of cancer and individual tumors can evolve too rapidly for the research community to achieve its goals by working on highly specific therapies. To defeat cancer within the next few decades, the aim must be to produce broadly effective therapies, targeting common mechanisms and vulnerabilities shared by many or all cancers. There projects cost the same as more narrowly applicable approaches, but are much more cost-effective for the results they might produce. Th...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 26, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
An Approach to Deliver Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells to Solid Tumors
The approaches to cancer therapies that we should pay attention to are those capable of targeting many different types of cancer. The only practical way to meaningfully accelerate progress towards robust control of cancer as a whole is for the research community to prioritize treatments that have a much broader impact for a given investment in development. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) methods, in which T cells are engineered to direct their attention towards markers that identify cancer cells, can plausibly be adapted to many different cancers with minimal cost. Given that, they are a step in the right direction towards...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 25, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 24th 2017
This study identified 1,497 genes with significantly different expression at different ages. Gene sets with a defined age-associated expression pattern provide information about molecular processes with altered activity during aging and provide a valuable diagnostic tool for determining individual biological rate of aging and predicting risk of age-associated disease, as demonstrated in follow-up analyses. On a gene-by-gene basis, differential expression alone is insufficient to distinguish between genes that play a causative role in aging and genes that merely respond to the altered physiological environment in an aging o...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 23, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Blocking CD47 Reverses the Progression of Fibrosis
Expression of the cell surface marker CD47 helps to protect cells from destruction by the immune system. It is abused by a variety of cancers, and thus blocking CD47 is the basis for a line of research into cancer therapies that might be broadly effective. Other researchers have found that this same approach might help to reduce the size of atherosclerotic plaques, so it seems that it isn't just cancerous cells in which excess CD47 is preventing beneficial destruction. Here, researchers discover that the cells making up the scar tissue of fibrosis are similarly protecting themselves with CD47, and blocking its activity cau...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 18, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
After the American Health Care Act
BY JOHN IRVINE
We asked THCB’s editors and bloggers for their reactions to Friday’s news. Here are their reactions.
DANIEL STONE, MD
The late UCLA Professor Richard Brown, once commented that the Clinton healthcare initiative failed because the status quo was everyone’s second choice. Some of that logic applies to today’s failure to vote on the AHCA. Additionally, no one ever lost money betting against the rollback of an established entitlement program.
The Republicans opponents of the ACA have not yet faced the fact that the reason coverage is so expensive is because the care is so expensive. You can’t ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 26, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized John Irvine Source Type: blogs
When anyone can be a cancer doctor
Earlier this month, a mourning widower stormed the office of the physician who had been providing life-saving cancer therapy to his young wife which failed. He shot and killed him. Or did he?
Before judging, let’s examine the facts associated with this case.
1. Juan Gonzalez, BCND was not a medical doctor. In fact, his “doctorate” was awarded via a naturopathic program. He did not possess, nor was required to possess a medical license to administer cancer therapy.
2. If the alleged complaints filed against this individual are true, he advised against high-quality, evidence-based therapy for a cancer.
3. Reports sugge...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 24, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/ashley-sumrall" rel="tag" > Ashley Sumrall, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Cancer Source Type: blogs
New Radiology Society: World Conference on Interventional Oncology is Expanding Interventional Radiology, Reflecting a Growing Subspecialty Need
There is an undoubtedly growing interest in interventional oncology. The burgeoning field, which only took root about a decade ago, is based on the practice of minimally-invasive procedures and therapies on patients who require little recovery time. The practice usually focuses on cancer treatment through image diagnosis — via x-ray, MRI, PET scan, CT scan, or ultrasound. In response to the surge of attention, the board of directors for the World Conference on Interventional Oncology (WCIO) has recently established The Society of Interventional Oncology, a nonprofit association dedicated to advancing the field’s missio...
Source: radRounds - March 1, 2017 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Will Trump's Leadership Picks Smack Down Health Care? - A Drug Company Lobbyist, an Entrepreneur Who Wants to Weaken Drug Testing, and a Mysterious Billionaire Who Settled Fraud Charges
President Trump in hisinauguration speech promised to reach out to " struggling families " and to benefit " American workers and American families, " and promised all Americans " you will never be ignored again. " Yet the Trump transition team, and now presidential administration continues to consider individuals for health care policy leadership roles remarkable for theirconflicts of interest, which often did not merely arise from small financial transactions but from their roles as corporate insiders, and in some cases, association with dubiously ethical practices. They are particularly unremarkable for their...
Source: Health Care Renewal - January 27, 2017 Category: Health Management Tags: conflicts of interest Covidien Donald Trump executive compensation fraud Medtronic revolving doors Source Type: blogs
A Future of Combination Therapies that Transform Cancer Cells into Senescent Cells, and then Suppress and Destroy Them
In conclusion, we believe that pro-senescence therapy for cancer is a promising new therapeutic strategy and that in the future novel, therapies based on senescence induction in cancer will be the standard of care for the treatment of cancer patients. (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - January 21, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
A Sizable Portion of the Damage of Chemotherapy may be due to Cellular Senescence
Now that much more attention and funding is turning to cellular senescence as a cause of aging, a fair number of new discoveries are being made regarding the specific links between age-related disease and the growing presence of senescent cells in old tissues. Some of them seem almost obvious in hindsight, connections that researchers should have long assumed to be likely, such as senescent foam cells accelerating the progression of atherosclerosis. Now that senescent cells can be cleared effectively in the laboratory, proof of these connections is comparatively simple to obtain, and so the evidence is piling up month afte...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 13, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Investigating the Mechanisms of Piperlongumine
The present candidate senolytic drugs that produce selective destruction of senescent cells, done as a means to prevent their contribution to the aging process, all arrive from the cancer research community, where they have been tested for their ability to destroy cancerous cells. Piperlongumine is no exception. Here researchers explore more its likely mechanisms, with a focus on the outcome of increased oxidative stress in the cell due to reduced levels of the antioxidant glutathione, among other possibilities. Recent research suggests, however, that increased oxidative stress isn't the mechanism by which cells are pushed...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 4, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
$360,000 Given or Pledged to SENS Rejuvenation Research at the End of 2016
The last SENS rejuvenation research fundraiser of 2016 ended a couple of days ago, with the donations from hundreds of supporters going to the SENS Research Foundation in order to support ongoing scientific programs aimed at bringing an end to aging. Aging is a medical condition with root causes, just like any other, and effectively addressing those causes will allow degenerative aging to brought under control, halted, and reversed. That is the difference between the medicine of yesterday, which didn't have any great impact on the causes of aging, and the medicine of tomorrow, which will. Still, it isn't a sure thing for a...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 2, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
A Look Back at 2016 in Longevity Science
Well, another year passes and here we are again, one step closer to the defeat of aging and age-related disease. Ours is an era of revolutionary progress in biotechnology, and it is starting to show. The past year was characterized by both significant fundraising and significant progress towards the clinical translation of the first complete SENS rejuvenation therapy: clearance of senescent cells from aged tissue. This is hopefully the first of numerous other SENS therapies based on repair of molecular damage to arrive over the next few years. I recently updated my predictions for the near future, looking over the parts of...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 31, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs
Chimeric Antigen Receptor Therapy Continues to Perform Well in Lymphoma Patients
We report here the safety, efficacy, and correlative studies of apheresis product, KTE-C19, and in vivo effects from the phase 1 portion of ZUMA-1.
As of August 2016, the median follow-up time was 9 months. Nine patients were enrolled in the study. Two patients experienced adverse events due to disease progression, discontinued the study, and never received KTE-C19. Seven patients received conditioning chemotherapy and KTE-C19. Patients ranged from 29 to 69 years of age and had received two to four prior lines of therapy. Three were refractory to second-line or later lines of therapy, and four patients had relapsed ...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 30, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
A Conservative View of Senescent Cell Clearance Research and Development
Today I thought I'd point out publicity materials for recent research from yet another group involved in the search for senolytic drugs to clear senescent cells from the body. The position taken is conservative - at least in part - but that is the style of the formal scientific community. Excitement in print is not the done thing. Nonetheless, it is becoming something of a challenge to hold a very conservative position on clearance of senescent cells as one of the foundations for rejuvenation therapies at the present point in time. It takes some rigor to stand up and say that this may still all go nowhere, and much more ne...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 30, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
