MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING

              A COLD CHRISTMAS DAY

Thank God for rich people!

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The object of today’s sermon is Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital and research facility, located in New York City.

Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) came into existence in the late 19^th century, funded in large part by one of that era’s richest men, John Jacob Astor.  (When I was a kid, my mother would often describe somebody extremely well dressed as “being as dressed up as Astor’s horse.)  The Sloan Kettering part arose in the mud-29^th century when Alfred P. Sloan and Charles Kettering, both General Motors big-shots, funded a cancer research facility and attached it to Memorial Hospital.

The result: either the nation’s best, or second best (if you’re from Houston) place to be if you have cancer.

Well, MSK has just published results of their effort to use immunotherapy to destroy solid tumors.  Here is their press release:

http://www.newswise.com/articles/memorial-sloan-kettering-researchers-build-a-new-model-of-genetically-engineered-immune-cells-that-may-combat-solid-tumors-in-the-future

Briefly, what these folks have done is to combine CAR T therapy with a drug that acts as a checkpoint inhibitor.  (And you faithful readers of this blog know what those things are, right?).  With their usual hilarious creativity they have named this treatment as “armored CAR”.  Whatever: if it works they can call it anything they please.

So, of course, this work is still in the mouse-model stage, although some mention is made of human trials.

Soiunds good.  The fact that this paper is big stuff is attested to by the journal it appeared in:  Nature Biotechnology.  Get a paper into a Nature journal and you’re tenured for sure.