Cancer - A cure closer thanks to a tiny British company & the result could change lives of millions
Source: Independent UK
Exclusive:
A single-storey workshop on a nondescript business park in Oxfordshire is not the sort of place where you would expect scientific revolutions to take place. But behind the white-painted walls of this small start-up company, scientists are talking about the impossible – a potential cure for cancer.
For the past 20 years, the former academics who set up Immunocore have worked hard on realising their dream of developing a totally new approach to cancer treatment, and finally it looks as if their endeavours are beginning to pay off. In the past three weeks, the company has signed contracts with two of the biggest players in the pharmaceuticals industry which could lead to hundreds of millions of pounds flowing into the firm's unique research on cancer immunotherapy – using the body's own immune system to fight tumour cells.
Immunocore is probably the only company in the world that has developed a way of harnessing the power of the immune system's natural-born killer cells: the T-cells of the blood which nature has designed over millions of years of evolution to seek out and kill invading pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria. T-cells are not nearly as good at finding and killing cancer cells, but the hard-nosed executives of the drugs industry – who are notoriously cautious when it comes to investments – believe Immunocore may have found a way around this so that cancer patients in future are able to fend off their disease with their own immune defences.
"Immunotherapy is radically different," said Bent Jakobsen, the Danish-born chief scientific officer of Immunocore who started to study T-cells 20 years ago while working at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. "It doesn't do away with the other cancer treatments by any means, but it adds something to the arsenal that has one unique feature – it may have the potency to actually cure cancer," Dr Jakobsen said.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-cancer--a-cure-just-got-closer-thanks-to-a-tiny-british-company--and-the-result-could-change-lives-of-millions-8707590.html
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Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)MissDeeds
(7,499 posts)K&R
littlewolf
(3,813 posts)
rurallib
(62,416 posts)
loudsue
(14,087 posts)we never hear another word about it.
HumansAndResources
(229 posts)A "cure" earns a one-time payment. A "treatment" brings in many payments - possibly over years. Chemo drugs are very expensive and very profitable.
One does not have to go out on a limb and claim "evil intent" - it is simply a matter of "return on investment" - and a corporation has One Rule - Maximize Return On Investment. It is not a far-leap from that mandate to less than ideal behavior to ensure that result.
I suggest the "X-Prize" model should be utilized to fill in the gap between business-logic and the need for cures verses endless treatments. This could be set up like a 'lottery' of sorts, where people buy fractional shares in the organizations competing for the prize, similar to lottery tickets. The organization who finds the CURE first, gets the prize, and those who 'bet' on that organization get some portion of the funds the lottery generated - the rest funding the prize to the organization.
Imagine if the general public were discussing what organization had the greatest experts in fields like molecular biology in the same way they discuss what sports-teams have the most promising players. Imagine if they cared as much about people who actually deliver results that save lives, as much as they care about hollywood-actors and sports-players, whose contribution to the public-good is ... dare I say it - bread and circus distractions from things that actually matter?
Dustlawyer
(10,495 posts)Of course, even with insurance I cannot have it, that is for the Mitt Rmoney's of the world.
mwooldri
(10,303 posts)As I read the article, the company concerned appears to have found a way to help the human body (with its own infection fighting defenses) attack cancers. If the human body is given this extra power to fight off cancer on its own then of course it will be beneficial. However cancers can evolve. They can become drug resistant, so another drug may need to be used. The cancer could overcome the bodies' new defense mechanisms.
If this possible treatment did see the light of day, then I don't see how Big Pharma can lose. The chemo drugs would still be needed, though not as much as before. The human immunization boost would be distributed much more widely, so the income lost on the chemo drugs is made up on the immunization boost. It could also be possible that a booster shot may need to be given every X years (like with a number of vaccines) so it wouldn't be a one-shot-cures-all. If my presumtions are accurate, then I think Big Pharma would gain more money by the immunization booster than by the drop in sales for a chemotherapy drug.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)The big media splash is almost always with the initial human trials. The press doesn't care as much by the time they're part of oncologists' arsenals, both because it's "old news" at that point and because "tested treatment option enters regular use" isn't nearly as exciting as "new treatment shown to work."
Also, a lot of treatments are pretty specialized. There's no one thing called "cancer," which means a lot of treatment options are going to be specific to particular types, and even to particular circumstances within that type. "New cancer treatment" is a bit thing in the news, which treats cancer like a monolithic entity, but if a new treatment in practice is only effective with, say, acute myeloid leukemia, it'll be well known within that world but less so the further you get away from it.
These things definitely are seeing use. There's people walking away from cancers now that would have been a death sentence five or ten years ago.
krawhitham
(4,644 posts)
In April 2012, Emily became the first child to have her own T cells — infection-fighting white blood cells in her immune system — genetically engineered to recognize and attack the cancer cells in her body. Doctors removed her T cells through a process similar to blood donation, programmed them to attack her cancer, then grew them and injected them back into her body.
......
On May 10, 2012, tests showed that the T cells had done their job, and Emily was back in remission.
http://www.centredaily.com/2013/06/21/3660882/philipsburgs-emily-whitehead-celebrates.html
Ohio4theWin
(60 posts)They aren't, Dendreon is a company that has had a product called Provenge which has been out for years as an immunotherapy for prostate cancer. Poor research by the writer to miss this fact.
GiveMeFreedom
(976 posts)I read all about cures, near cures, break through, and miracle research. Non have made it my way after 2 1/2 years of fighting the disease. There will be no cure, so says corporate pharma, as there is no profit in curing me, only in killing me ever so slowly and the slower the better. I have kidney cancer, will this work on my cancer? I doubt it. Another carrot to far to reach for. Sure I would love to fly to London and take the cure but I do not have the money, because it all goes to my doctors and pharmacy now. Cure? no, not a cure, just a drug that pharma wants to bury deep.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)I hope you beat this. I agree with you that the profit model used by big pharma has little incentive in one-shot cures compared to drugs one has to take until the end of one's life. But there could be small companies driven by idealists with a different take on this. They may be able to come up with one-shot cures.
dotymed
(5,610 posts)when these idealists sign contracts with big pharma, ideology is replaced by greed.
ForeignandDomestic
(190 posts)If you think Big Pharma and the medical establishment is going to give up that huge cash cow called cancer for the 4-letter word called "cure"....
Not going to happen.....
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)Having lost my mom and my grandfather to colon cancer I feel like a ticking time bomb.
WinstonSmith4740
(3,056 posts)My husband lost his fight with cancer 3 years ago, after a two year bout filled with triumphs and failures. I always had my doubts about the tactic of fighting a disease by destroying a person's immune system, but when the word "cancer" enters the conversation, all you can think of is "I want the newest research and treatment".
I truly hope this goes forward. And I truly, truly hope that this breakthrough doesn't get shelved by big pharma. Considering the potential for ongoing profit (and it's huge) they might just be willing to run with it.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)Just like the 1974 Marijuana study that showed it shrank cancerous tumors. Oop's, can't be found good for us. And now with BIG pharma and all their cancer machines, how will they still suck people dry if the cure was simple and inexpensive?
wordpix
(18,652 posts)Get started:
http://www.worldometers.info/view/toxchem/
Not sure if this statistic is just for the US or worldwide, but clearly THIS is the reason for the cancer epidemic.
More for background: Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber
Hubert Flottz
(37,726 posts)coupled with systematic toxic chemical contamination of our air food and water. Even the mining of coal releases super toxic cancer causing chemicals into the environment. Solar radiation due to the depletion of the Earth's protecting atmosphere, is a source of cancer that promises to worsen, due to still more toxic gasses being released into the atmosphere. It seems to me that a new "cure" for cancer will never wipe out cancer, the way other diseases have been eliminated. If this new drug works the drug companies could make money for a long time, the way things stand today.
My mother and father both had cancer and it is a terrible way to pass away. I wish a cure could be found, that would eliminate putting folks through the suffering they must go through now, to buy a little more time.
wordpix
(18,652 posts)that a drug can ever be a cure.
Hell, there are tens of thousands of chemicals on the market that haven't even been tested as carcinogens or any other type of toxicity, yet they are still allowed to be manufactured, imported, exported, released, stored indefinitely and dumped. 
Hubert Flottz
(37,726 posts)The expense for the "Super-fund" cleanup of the dump-sites and places where the deadly toxins were made and stockpiled, was totally shifted away from the polluters responsibility and totally placed on the backs of the American taxpayer. Heard of any Super-fund clean-up in your neck of the woods lately? Me neither. This area was evacuated by chemical companies like FMC, Monsanto, Union Carbide, Diamond Shamrock, Fike Chemical, most of Dupont and others and now anything found buried here or on the surface of our stream beds are the people's problem to take care of. We have dioxin, PCBs, carbon tetrachloride., formaldehyde, vinyl chloride and who knows what else lurking here in our immediate environment. The cancer rate here is very high, the fish are not safe to eat, the chemical companies have moved most of their operations offshore, along with all those "Good Jobs" and our "Good Neighbors" the chemical industry, have taken the money and run, leaving us the toxic mess. The Chemical Industry here in West Virginia and the Coal Companies, two of the worst polluters on the planet, have raped this state's land and environment for over a hundred years and now the shale fracking outfits are here to try and help finish us off. The decline of the chemical industry here started right after Union Carbide's plant in Bhopal India released MIC into the air and killed and maimed thousands.
wordpix
(18,652 posts)and aren't held responsible for contamination.
In my small town, there was a factory on the edge of a river and the factory was abandoned over 25 yrs. ago. No one knows what was dumped in the ground when it was operating or what's in the bldg. now that it's defunct. The bldg. is in such bad condition it is literally now falling bit by bit into the river. Of course, no one takes responsibility and the town won't take it over, either. Typical of probably thousands of such sites around the state, and this is a mostly Dem state.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Direction. I have read some research has been done on T cells. I have Low blood platelets where my body attacks and my small platelets used in the blood clotting process.
