CANCER: YOUR YEAR in REVIEW

Flower Time in Borrego

With our recent rains, February may be spectacular

Here is a “Cancer:  Your Year in Review” article, written by Arlene Weintraub, who covers “Pharma and Healthcare” for Forbes Magazine.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/arleneweintraub/2016/01/01/8-milestones-of-2015-in-the-war-on-cancer/

Forbes is heavy to business matters, so it is not surprising that Ms., Weintraub’s piece is equally heavy to discussions of which drugs are in trial, what they do, and what their potentials – for societal value as well as  profit – may be.  The cancers discussed include colorectal, multiple myeloma, thyroid, melanoma, lung, leukemia, lymphoma – and ovarian.  The therapies mentioned include immunotherapy, “personalized treatments” (treatments developed from study of the genetic mistakes involved in the tumor), and use of genetically engineered viruses (!), off-the-shelf T-cells, (that is., not genetically engineered for a particular cancer), and even low-toxicity therapies  suitable for old timers – Jimmy Carter is discussed.   

Ovarian cancer is considered in the context of the ROCA blood test that we have discussed previously.  Nothing new here.

Okay, so if you have a general interest in cancer drug research, read this article – it’s actually pretty interesting.  Another reason to read it might be that you have lots of cash sloshing around in your bank account and are looking for a good investment in the pharma field.  For whatever reason, if you read Ms. W’s essay it would help to know the following:

Checkpoint inhibitor and PD-1.  The immune system is prevented from attacking the body’s own cells by the presence of certain proteins – called checkpoints – on the cellular surface.  Some cancer cells present their cell exteriors festooned with a protein called PD-L1 which prevents the protein PD-1 (our old friend the “programmed death molecule”) from doing its number on the cancer cell.  PD-L1 is a checkpoint, and the plan is to “inhibit” it, to the detriment of the cancer cell.  Got that?  I’m not sure I do.

Mismatch-repair deficiency.  When a cell divides, its DNA must be duplicated.  Something called DNA polymerase does the trick.  Although highly reliable, it makes mistakes.  These mistakes are repaired for the most part by a biochemical repair crew.  If this biochemical repair is somehow “deficient” (an alcohol-intensive party the night before?) some serious errors may sneak through.  Cancer may result.  Interestingly, one approach to cancer therapy involves deliberately disabling the mismatch repair crew.  This operates on the assumption that rapidly dividing cancer cells mean lots of mismatches.  If such mistakes are not repaired, the cancer cell may die.  And, we all agree, good riddance. 

Just a reminder:  If you want to see more blogging about something, Google “Myrl‘sBlog” and use the little question line at the upper left.  For instance, searching for “checkpoint” yielded four entries.  In one of them I appear to be in the act of kicking a lobster.