Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Ed Yeates reportingIn the all out war against cancer, what are the clever killers that will knock out the disease? Researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute have some very encouraging news -- a way to attack cancers and perhaps wipe them out!
We're highlighting three unique cancer killers, beginning with one that is the first of its kind.
Cancer has gotten away with all it does over all these years because it fools the immune system into believing it's not a villain, that it's OK to be in the body. Now, the masquerade is over, thanks to a new trigger for the immune system to see what the cancerous cells really are and attack and kill the natural way.
Some researchers believe even when a few of the body's immune cells penetrate a tumor, cancer has cleverly found a way to convert those cells to the bad side. But the Huntsman Cancer Hospital at the University of Utah is about to begin clinical trials on something that hopefully will outwit the villain.
Instead of traditional chemotherapy, how about an actual cancer vaccine that's injected just under the skin and alerts the body's own immune system to turn and attack the cancer.
"What this therapy does is sort of reactivate or wake up those cells and let them know, hey this really isn't a normal cell, it really shouldn't be here in the first place, and let's it go ahead and attack and kill it," Dr. Randy Jensen said.
The vaccine will be used only on brain tumors in these first trials. But in theory, if it works, it might have application for other cancers as well.
Imagine, instead of a tumor growing and spreading throughout the body, the immune system identifies what up until now has been hidden markers on the cancer cell and attacks.
Dr. Jensen hopes the immune system can be hyped up to do this but not so much so it doesn't know when to tune itself down when the war is over. "This technique or this approach, I think, is really going to be the future. Whether this particular way of doing it is going to be the end all, I'm not sure, but I sure hope that it is," he says.
Another clever killer might return to clinical trials after a long hiatus. It's an orphan drug that sort of blows up brain tumors like TNT and was used on only three patients in the country. In this case, the TNT is radiation molecules that the drug diffuses only to tumor cells.
Jerod Swan was one of the few patients who received this treatment. He'd had numerous surgeries to remove as much of his brain tumor as possible, with bad side effects. "Every time I did, I lost a little bit more. After about a year and a half, I had lost about half my vision, and finally I really couldn't even talk at all," Swan says.
But the Huntsman group used the so-called TNT approach to finish off his tumor. Not far from his home in Inko, Idaho, Swan now has a job in Pocatello, and he's been cancer free for more than five years.
"It's excellent. It's almost unheard of. There are very few cases like that," he said.
Our last clever killer is the scorpion. What researchers found is rather ingenious. Dr. Jensen explains, "They found a small piece of the toxin that for some reason seems to have some affinity for tumor cells."
Again, attach a radiation molecule and let the piece from the animal travel like a beautiful spear to penetrate only the tumor.
They're three clever killers - among many now being tested - but three we find most intriguing. If researchers are ever to clip cancer where it really counts they've got to find ways to beat it at its own insidious masquerading game.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com
