HER 69th

My beautiful Linda, a long time ago

 

Today is Linda’s 69^th birthday.  Wow, what a party we would have had!  As it is, her dear friend Florence and I are going to have dinner and talk about her.  I may even have a second Cadillac margarita in her honor!

Some of you may want to place something on her Memorial Page at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.  To go straight to her individual Memorial, just click on http://getinvolved.fhcrc.org/site/TR?pg=fund&fr_id=1050&pxfid=2861  However, be warned – the “donate” button is not working correctly. I tried to give her a little birthday present through the Hutch, and was sent instead to the general fund.  I want contributions in her name to go to the proper place; we are closing in on $20,000.  I will bug them about it after this holiday weekend grinds to its end.

Thanks to all you loyal readers of this blog; you do Linda a great honor. 



 



JOINT OPENERS. No, not that kind of joint.

At the Welburn gourd farm

She turned these things into works of art

 

I find this both interesting and encouraging.  I am fighting my way through one small part of the Hutch group’s SPORE application.  As you may know, SPORE is short for Special Program on Research Excellence.   A successful SPORE application equates to a large amount of money (from NIH), for a long period of time.  We had a SPORE, which ran out, and our first attempt at a renewal was rejected.  This is something of a “Hail Mary” touchdown pass.  If we get it, we thrive; if not, we probably cease to exist.

The thicket of technical terms I am bushwhacking through concerns a way to enhance the efficacy of standard chemotherapy in ovarian cancer.  It seems that the cells comprising a solid tumor adhere tightly to one-another, thus making it difficult for chemo drugs to penetrate.  Our group has fashioned a “Joint-Opener” (JO), which transiently pries the cancer cells apart, thus allowing even large-molecule drugs to enter more efficiently.  Works in mice, including mice given human tumors.  Works in monkeys.  Doesn’t seem to have any great toxicity (in fact, none at all).  A cure it definitely is not, but it is progress.  The way I look at it, in this business we take what we can get.



BACK AT WORK, filled with anticipation

Early Married Days

Evidently, our skinny phase

The cat is Whiskers

 

I am back at work for both of my  ovarian cancer programs, after a hiatus of nearly a month.  They both have things for me to proof-read.  These documents tend to be – for an outsider like me – tortuous, murky, and baffling, so I have to read them practically word by word.  This makes me pretty good at catching printing errors – but, of course, rather poor at editing.  But I do my best.

Next month I am going to attend a conference on ovarian cancer research, held at Seattle University under the auspices of the Rivkin center.    I intend to come back enlightened.  I am on pins and needles awaiting talks like the following:

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition driven by transcriptional feedback loops contributes to intertumoral molecular heterogeneity in the metastasis and relapse of epithelial ovarian cancer Ruby Yun-Ju Huang, MD, PhD • Cancer Science Institute of Singapore & National University of Singapore

Yes, I am being cynical.  I may skip this one – but others promise to be at least partially comprehensible.  I am sure to learn things.  Anyway, the conference cost me next to nothing – and they serve free breakfasts! 





MORE GEMS OF "WISDOM"

Linda reads to Simon Hunsinger

She made that quilt

 

From time to time I run on tidbits of fact or speculation that I want to pass along, but that are too meagre to merit their own blog – so I append them as Comments on some relevant previous entry.  This probably means that most of you never see them.  This is my excuse for offering you the following list of “GEMS OF “WISDOM” YOU WOULD BE SORRY TO MISS”

Two comments on the use of aspirin to prevent cancer, under ASPIRIN REALLY IS THE WONDER DRUG,

2/21/14:  http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/02/linda-and-carolyn-pose-in-front-of.html 

I continue to ask “Why isn’t it used more?”, and the medical profession continues to ignore me.

 More on drug company economics, under ORPHAN DRUGS, 5/3/14
http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/05/orphan-drugs.html

…in which I almost feel sorry for Big Pharma which is, I admit, hard to do.

And cancer economics, under CANCER SCIENCE MARCHES ON, 8/8/14

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/08/cancer-science-marches-on.html

 And even more on funding of cancer research, in THE TRUTH IN SMALL DOSES, 6/7/14

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/08/cancer-science-marches-on.html

 Remember all those bugs crawling all over inside your body?  Well, the truth about them gets stranger and stranger.  From MICROBES MAKETH MAN, 11/18/12

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2012/11/microbes-maketh-man.html

 And you should take a look at the last comment under TO WALK IN BEAUTY , 5/21/14

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/05/to-walk-in-beauty.html

because I give you one version of that particular Navajo prayer.  There are several.

 

Some comments on relative susceptibility to BRCA and OVCA.

http://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2015/11/familial-cancer-risk-assessment-breast-and-ovarian-cancer.html 

 

 

 

 

 





NEW OVARIAN THERAPY

CHRISTMAS TIME, A LONG TIME AGO

Clockwise from my beautiful wife:  Daughter Karen; Linda's mother, Marion; Carolyn's younger son, Eben; Daughter Kristen; and me.

Carolyn must have taken the picture.

 

My “hits” on this blog have fallen from 40-50/day a few weeks ago to 4 yesterday and zero so far today.  Obviously I had better get cracking.  I have two subjects in mind; I will inflict one on you now & the other in a few days.

I have written several times about how our shared ignorance of cancer science worked to prevent Linda and me from finding advanced, experimental therapy, therapy that might have saved, or at least prolonged, her life.  (She did get into one “trial”, called “dose dense”.  This consisted of having chemo every two weeks instead of every three.  Big deal.)  Well, now I know lots of things that I wish I had known back then.  I just learned about another this morning.  Here it is:

http://abc30.com/health/new-treatment-turns-up-heat-on-ovarian-cancer/266317/

The article is heavy to anecdotal evidence.  It relates how one woman who was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer is still alive, and flourishing, after five years.  She was the recipient of a treatment called HIPEC, which acronym was never defined in this short article.  It consists of (1) undergoing a complete surgical “debulking”, removing the tumor and, in her case, most all the organs of the body that I have ever heard of, (2) having warm chemotherapy drugs inserted directly into her peritoneal cavity, and presumably somehow sloshed around, followed by (3) the normal course of chemo therapy.  It is working for her, and I am happy for that.  It seems to have been used successfully in several other types of cancer.  Apparently there is a phase 2 trial going on right now to test if it will help lots of other ovarian patients.

Everyone who reads this blog should keep this therapy in the back of his or her head.  It may turn out to be very important.  One hopes.

I should warn you not to click on the video that accompanies this article.  If you do, and if your experience is anything like mine, you will have to wade through some extremely annoying advertisements.



EBOLA AND US

Linda and Mitzi

She later ran off with the big orange tomcat next door.

Mitzi, that is - not Linda

 

It would be difficult for anyone not physically located on an asteroid to be unaware of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.  As of today (8/9/14) at least 1000 people have died, in five separate countries.  Many more are infected.  Currently, under the best of circumstances  one’s likelihood of surviving an Ebola infection is less than 50%.  What to do?

Well, other than quarantine and hospital care, there’s not much in the weapons arsenal at present.  If only there was a drug that would kill the nasty little wormlike monster.  Well, there is, but there are problems.

A tiny company called Mapp Pharmaceuticals, from San Diego, has something they call ZMapp.  They make the stuff somehow using tobacco plants.  (Hooray!  Finally tobacco is good for something.)  Doses of ZMapp have been given to two white American medical workers, who contracted the virus in the line of duty.  As of this moment they are both alive, and one claims to be doing well.     

So, inevitably, the question is asked: “How come the drug went to white Americans, and not to Africans?”  Well, in its magisterial way, the NY Times has provided an answer.  Here it is:

http://nyti.ms/1ona4Ao.

Here are some facts that must be considered.  First, there is damned little ZMapp in existence.  (Mapp Pharma has only nine employees, and I suspect that tobacco doesn’t grow well in San Diego.  If only the company was located in Humboldt County & marijuana would work as well as tobacco!)    It will take so long to manufacture a significant supply of the drug that the Ebola outbreak should already have run its course.  Also, ZMapp has not been clinically tested – in fact; it hasn’t even properly finished the obligatory preliminary animal trial.  Imagine what would happen if Mapp Pharma gave the stuff to a bunch of Africans, most of whom then died.  Actually, you don’t have to imagine – something very similar happened to Pfizer in 1996, with dire consequences.

The ethical question of how to dole out the drug apparently is sufficiently perplexing and important that the World Health Organization has summoned a group of medical ethicists to discuss it. 

So, anyway, the question is “fraught”, whatever that means.  What do you think?



CANCER SCIENCE MARCHES ON

 

Carolyn and Linda

Sand spit near Pt. Townsend

Pretty windy, I suspect

 

I have neglected this blog for the past week or so.  Linda’s sister Carolyn was visiting and I felt justified in goofing off.  Together with Linda’s very good friend Florence, we drove my indomitable jeep up to Twin Lakes in the North Cascades, east of Mt. Baker.  Bright sunshine, glorious scenery, and not a bug in sight!  Thank you, Lord!

But now Carolyn is gone, and my excuses disappeared with her.  Fortunately, the NY Times furnishes some interesting material, part of which I will discuss now.

Well, to get the thick biology out of the way, it appears that scientists at Cambridge University (the one in U.K.) have found proof that mutation of a third gene, PALB2 by name, contributes to susceptibility to breast cancer.  “Third”, because BRCA1 and BRCA2 already are well understood to be bad actors in the breast cancer field (also ovarian, as you probably already know).  The BRCAs are “double strand repair genes”, which means that they code for proteins that stitch the DNA molecule back together when, during cell division, it incorrectly breaks in two.  PALB2 seems to contribute to this process, in ways that I don’t understand.  I wonder if this new gene also is important in ovarian cancer.

An interesting tidbit: men get breast cancer, too, although not often – and the BRCAs and PALB2 are contributing factors.   

And then, at the end of the article arfrives the almost inevitable statement that screening for BRCA and PALB mutations in “normal” women is not recommended, although it is for women with a well defined family history of this disease.  The stats for breast-cancer probability in mutation-carriers quoted in the article make this a no-brainer.  It is just too bad that there isn’t enough wealth sloshing around so that screening the general population would be feasible.  But, heck, if we spent that much money on the war on cancer there wouldn’t be enough left over to fight the war on terror, or any other wars, for that matter.  That would be a hell of a fix!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/health/gene-indicator-breast-cancer-risk.html?_r=0