A new therapy for pancreatic cancer reduced the tumor growth rate in patients in a pilot trial and in a separate study, kept the remote mouse tumors altogether. The treatment, reported in today's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , rallies "killer" immune cells to fight the devastating cancer.
Less than 1% of pancreatic cancer patients live more than 5 years after diagnosis. "There are no successful medical treatment," says Wolff Schmiegel, a gastroenterologist at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. In the hope of improving this grim statistic, the group moved to exploit the Schmiegel ability of the immune system to recognize certain cancer cells as enemies by the developer carpet proteins, such as the receptors for epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which stud their surfaces. A cancer cell with a lot of EGFR antibody which attracts many lock onto receptors;. the antibodies, in turn, attract the killer cells that destroy tumor cells increasing the number of receptors on tumor cells, the researchers reasoned, would enhance the effectiveness of what is called the immunotherapy, in which antibodies are administered designed to attract killer cells.
thereFour years Schmiegel and colleagues found they could increase the levels of EGFR on the cell surface of pancreatic cancer by adding a protein of tumor necrosis Factor- a (TNF- a ) to cells in culture. In their latest work, the researchers injected human pancreatic cancer cells in mice, which quickly developed tumors. Treatment of these mice with TNF a and EGFR antibodies have kept tumors from growing larger, like those of control mice Eightfold inflated.
In a second study, the team Schmiegel treat 26 patients at similar stages of pancreatic cancer with TNF- a and a variable amount of the antibody. The tumors of patients receiving more antibodies increased by less than 10% on average, while those in patients receiving the lowest dose more than doubled in size. Patients receiving the high dose also lived more than twice as long on average as those in the lower dose, but this result was less reliable because of the small number of patients.
The therapy offers hope for pancreatic cancer patients, said immunologist Hilary Koprowski of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who says he is "cautiously optimistic" that the treatment will prove a hit long term. "I wish there was no difference in survival rates" between the lower and higher dose groups, he said. Schmiegel now working towards the next stage -. A study with more patients who could provide more reliable information on the survival time
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