Interesting Cancer Research

I'm amazed by some of the innovative cancer research that goes on in Cancer Centers around the world. I sometimes think, "Now what would make anyone try to find a cancer cure from that?"

As a writer and teacher, I know that great ideas don't just pop out of thin air -- they come from previous work that others have done, conversations that sometimes have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and wide reading. I admire researchers who make those connections between things that seem unrelated.

(And I love students who are a little "out there," and make connections between things that seem completely unconnected. Not downright crazy, just a little "off." They offer new perspectives on things. It's fun to try to follow their thoughts and see how they made the connections that they made, and then to help them explain the connections to other people).

Anyway, here's some recent cancer research that comes from people whose writing teachers probably thought they were a little "off."

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The first article is called "Cooking Cancer with Nanotechnology." Very cool stuff. The research builds on previous research with monoclonal antobodies like Rituxin, the NHLer's best friend. I wrote about something similar before. In this treatment, tiny carbon tubes are coated with the antibody. The antibody seeks out and attaches itself to the cancer cells, and is then heated by infrared light (like the kind used in remote controls). The light, which has little effect on normal tissue, heats the attached carbon tune, which kills the cancer cell.

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The next article is called "Accidental Fungus Leads to Promising Cancer Drug." The title about says it all. The article describes a type of treatment called angiogenesis therapy. It's based on the idea that if you cut off the blood supply for a tumor, you can kill it off. The drug described in the article was created accidentally by some angiogenesis researchers who were trying to grow blood vessel cells in their lab. A fungus infected the samples, and they saw that it had properties that inhibited blood vessel growth. They've been trying to perfect the drug for twenty years, and they think they have it right now -- minimal side effects.

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Yet another: "Chemotherapy Resistance Overcome In The Lab Using Re-Purposed Malaysian Folk Medication" This treatment is a little less traditional in its orgins, but promising. Plus, one of the principle researchers is from Boston University. It describes a drug that is used to re-sensitize tumors to chemotherapy. Some tumors learn to fight off the effects of chemo, and this drug lowers their resistance so the chemo can start working again. This group of researchers focuses on finding new uses for previously known drugs (re-purposing), and are fond of playing with natural cures. This one comes from folk medicine used for generations in Malaysia, though not previously used for cancer treatment. Very interesting stuff.

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This last one has the very unspecific title "Cancer Cure in Mice to be Tested in Humans", though it probably gnerated the most excitement in my online support group. It works sort of like a stem cell transplant, in which undeveloped blood cells are injected into cancer patients so they grow into new, cancer-free blood cells. This treatment also involves injecting donated blood cells into cancer patients, but they are specific, mature white blood cells called granulocytes. White blood cells are responsible for cleaning up bacteria, viruses, and other bad things from the blood, and when they're done cleaning up, they die. (Lymphoma involves white blood cells that don't know how to die, so they keep cleaning up stuff that doesn't need to be cleaned, which causes problems.) The granulocytes have a way of cleaning up cancer cells. Some speculate that we all "have cancer," in a sense -- abnormal cells are always being made in our bodies -- but granulocytes clean them up before they develop into tumors. People with blood cancers can't clean up the abnormal cells. Apparently, injecting granulocytes from another source can overcome that resistance.

As the article discusses, this approach has worked very well in experiments with mice, and may be tested on humans soon.

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We Follicular NHLers love these kinds of research, because they give us more vines to swing from (if you remember the Tarzan comparison). We're especially excited about the non-chemotherapy approaches: if we do need to continue trying new treatments because the lymphoma keeps returning, the less toxic therapies take less of a toll on our bodies.

So when you're done hugging whatever Canadian you dug up last week, find someone with a slightly weird perspective on life and give him or her a squeeze, too.

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I'll be away all next week, so postings will be limited. I may have something interesting to tell you by mid-week, so look then, but don't panic if I'm not posting. Soon after I get back, I'll have my next PET/CT scan, with a follow-up visit with Dr. R a week after that, so I'll have more updates in a couple of weeks.