ROUSE THE SLEEPING IMMUNE SYSTEM, and send it into battle

 

From the cat, the hat, and the background - mid 80s

 

I am running out of original photos.  Can you help?

 

 

-I apologize for delaying an entire week before  posting something new.  Most likely you weren’t too distressed – but I was.  I seem to have taken on about as much as I can handle – Fred Hutch, the Rivkin Center, and now I have agreed to do some writing for the local Cancer Center.  And this blog.   I am busier now than before I retired.  There is quite a difference, though: earlier there were lots of things I had to do; now I have an endless supply of things I want  to do.  If I decide not to do them, I can.  But so far that hasn’t happened.

Dick Ingwall again alerts me to an important article in the NYTimes.  It concerns the use of the human immune system to counter cancer.  You can read it yourself:   http://nyti.ms/10MU3rL

You know the problem.  The immune system has evolved as one way to combat foreign invaders; virus, etc.  These are recognized as “not us” ; presumably the immune cells somehow detect “foreignness”.  How?  Do they read DNA?  Do viruses have DNA? (Yes, they do.)  Heck, another thing I don’t understand.  But, anyway, cancer cells are most definitely “us”; they are not foreign – so the immune system stands by and watches them destroy the body.  Big flaw, it seems to me.

  Obviously a lot of time and money have been spent over the years to rectify this flaw.  Cancers  escape the immune system in two ways: being “self” they masquerade as good guys, and they also act to shut the immune system down.    Drugs targeted at the first problem have been tried already, with limited success.  Now three of the biggest firms in Big Pharma  (Merck, Bristol-Myers and Roche) have drugs targeted at the second piece of the flaw.  (Full disclosure; I have no shares in any of these companies.  I had a fair sized one  in Merck a few years ago and sold it  at a loss.  Don’t take financial advice from me.)  These drugs are in Phase I clinical trials, and seem effective.  However, it is a long haul from Phase I to your local oncologist's medicine chest,  But, anyway, the medical community is excited.  Commented one of my Fred Hutch scientists, “We (cancer researchers) are so used to failure, we get excited very easily.” 

These drugs are targeted on a beautifully named protein, PD-1, which codes for Programmed Death Receptor 1”.  What PD-1 kills is not obvious to me from this article, but “inhibiting” it shrinks melanoma and maybe other cancers as well.

In the end, though, I feel a bit discouraged by this article.  For the most part what is  being discussed amongst cancer researchers are  methods to shrink tumors and/or extend periods of remission.   Extending life by a few months is viewed as a victory.  Come on guys, and (increasingly) girls, don't screw around – what we want are real cures!  As I've said several times before - get cracking!