link deleted

I searched the National Cancer Institute website for clinical trials that might pertain to this - found nothing. Maybe someone will have better luck. Unfortunately, the author mentions nothing readily identifiable in the article.

If you go to the main page of OCF, click the search box upper right and type in "Immunotherapy" this comes up:

http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/searchresults.htm?cx=015422755131303034108%3Ao3fylifwmag&cof=FORID%3A11&q=Immunotherapy&sa=Search
The article mentions that -
<<Biological therapy (sometimes called immunotherapy)>>

Hope this helps -

Also you can pm the original poster directly !

I would appreciate it if people would refrain from putting up articles from general news sources that have no trial attribution, no names of the primary investigators, institutions, agencies, the funders of the trial etc. in them. We have no way of knowing what this is, if it is bogus or whatever. There isn't a piece of traceable information in the story.

These kinds of things need to be passed by the admins first so we can locate the trial for you (if there is one). More than that with many people gleaning the clinical trial register and hundreds of other sources for important oral cancer news, anything of value that can be verified appears daily on the OCF news feed which you should all subscribe to if you are really that interested in staying up to date on everything. It's FREE.

Brian

Thanks for keeping the forum based on facts not wishful thinking. I've been intrigued by Immunotherapy and have seen the writeups on the American Cancer Society web site and other medical journals. They uniformly conclude that while the idea of using one's own immune system to fight cancer is tempting, so far, immunotherapy hasn't been shown to work on oral cancer although it is being tested on some other cancers.
It's important that people who turn to OCF not think there is really any alternative to radiation, chemo and surgery at this time, if they want to survive. Thank you
Charm

Some of the new possibilities with cancer treatment are in the very pre-clinical stages, using mouse models or cells in a petri dish. Many of these (like the grape seed extract) are VERY encouraging for the future - but only some of these will pan out in actual human patients.

OK, here is the story with a link to the real research article for those so inclined. I put in the OCF news feed today as well.

http://oralcancernews.org/wp/queensland-researchers-make-cancer-treatment-breakthrough/

The article states that NP cancer is related to the Epstein Barr Virus (EPV) which gives this immunotherapy a target
[quote]�The presence of EBV in the cancer cells gives the body�s immune system a definite target to help battle the NPC, resulting in few side-effects,� Professor Khanna said.[/quote]

I get the possible future application on targeting HPV in a similar manner but most drugs or therapy that work on one virus don't work very well on another virus. I noticed that the doctor was also careful to note that he saw the future application of this immunotherapy to be as an adjunct to concurrent radiation and chemotherapy.
While I knew that EBV caused NP cancer as well as mononucleosis, my understanding was that it's not genetically significant for any other head and neck cancer patients. According to this NIH Medline study from 2004:.
[quote]In the overwhelming majority of head and neck cancers in this North American cohort, EBV did not appear to contribute to growth of a dominant clonal population with integrated EBV genome and was unlikely to be a genetic etiological agent in tumor development. The low quantities of EBV detected in a minority of head and neck cancers may be related to the presence of EBV genome in rare lymphoid or epithelial cells adjacent to the primary head and neck cancer
[/quote] NIH: EBV-head & neck cancer
So IMO, it's undoubtedly a breakthru for NP but not yet for the rest of our cancers.
Charm

Charm noted:

"most drugs or therapy that work on one virus don't work very well on another virus."

True - but the body of knowledge, techniques and equipment that got to that breakthrough is now available to researchers in related fields. And it's ecouraging to those working in the field: doctors aren't fond of having to nearly do in their patients with the treatment to have a decent chance of a cure.

Here's another encouraging story on Science Daily - a new methodology for in vitro studies of cancer:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120111103906.htm

Maria

Wow: that study ties in well with the Slate article on the problems with using mice tumors. The 3 D model makes perfect sense. But I wonder how encouraging this story is to researchers who are stuck using the standard Petri dishes due to grant constraints and realistically won't have access to the 3 D model.
I'm also not sure how encouraging these far off in the future "breakthrus" are to patients who are even less fond of being nearly done in by TX than their doctors.
I don't think I will see any successful alternatives to radiation & chemo come to fruition in my lifetime although I certainly hope that I am wrong.

Charm

I guess I am more optimistic as I have just had my own medical miracle - going from being severely depressed and barely able to walk with RA/Lupus three months ago to an almost normal riding lesson this morning. I am very lucky. My miracle drug is an anti-malerial - someone discovered that it just happened to work for inflammation/auto-immune disorders.

Future breakthroughs are encouraging from the standpoint of recurrence: they would be among the first to get a crack at the therapy in a phase I or II trial, or in a special exemption for non-trial use of our highly theoretical breakthrough therapy.

Another horrid disease - Altzheimer's - is better understood today than it was a year ago. But this doesn't help my father-in-law who is suffering from it right now.

But, yes, I do think you are wrong and you will see a breakthrough for OC in your lifetime.

Maria

Congratulations. I do believe in miracles. Glad one happened to you. I hope all these new approaches work also. We will just have to wait and see.
Charm

http://oralcancernews.org/wp/lab-made-tissue-picks-up-the-slack-of-petri-dishes-in-cancer-research/

We had it up a while back. hate to keep saying it, but the news feed from OCF doesn't miss much.