Word: lungfuls
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...Researchers at Stanford University have harvested dendritic cells from advanced-cancer patients, exposed the cells to potent growth factors, added tumor-specific proteins to sensitize them and reintroduced the mixture into patients as a vaccine. Of 12 patients with advanced colorectal and lung cancer, two watched their tumors shrivel away, and another is still tumor free a year after receiving the vaccine...
...that act as sentries to warn against invaders of all kinds. Scientists at California-based Cell Genesys, for example, have taken tumor cells from a number of cancers, genetically engineered them to pump out a hormone that stimulates production of a host of immune cells, and vaccinated late-stage lung-cancer patients with the mixture to boost chances that dendritic cells would sound the alarm against the tumors. In the latest study, three of 22 patients saw their tumors disappear completely, and four saw them stop growing...
...currently studying its effect on noninherited colon cancers. And because the receptor for COX-2 is overexpressed on a range of human cancer types, the hope is that COX-2 inhibitors may be useful in preventing a wider range of cancers, including head and neck, bladder, non-small cell lung and breast cancers...
...Eventually, the goal is to detect precisely which molecular processes have gone wrong in an individual patient's cancer. Rather than being identified as lung cancer or breast cancer or kidney cancer, tumors will be tagged as EGFR positive, for example, or COX-2 positive. "The dream," says M.D. Anderson's Mendelsohn, "is that if Mrs. Smith gets a breast biopsy, we'll be able to say, 'Here are the four genes that are abnormal in her tumor,' pull open a drawer, pick out the antibodies or small molecules designed against the abnormal products of those genes, and give...
Those are only two drugs that keep EGF from doing its job. Gleevec, which reversed Reiter's and Ferber's leukemia so dramatically, is another; so is Tarceva, a drug from OSI Pharmaceuticals in Uniondale, N.Y., which is showing promise against some lung tumors as well as head and neck cancers. Neither of these compounds keeps EGF from docking with cells; instead, each worms its way inside the cells, where it intercepts growth messages percolating in from the surface. Astra Zeneca, headquartered in London, is testing a similar compound, Iressa, against some lung, stomach and prostate cancers...