There is so much promise on the horizon, so many novel therapies, drugs and treatments, many in clinical trials. Below are therapies that we’re excited about. Some of these have received funding from Cancer-a-Gogo.
IF YOU ARE AWARE OF A NASCENT THERAPY OR EXCITING CLINICAL TRIAL, PLEASE CONSIDER CONTACTING US SO THAT WE MAY ADD YOU TO THE LIST. GOOD NEWS AND FRESH HOPE IS EXACTLY WHAT’S NEEDED FOR MILLIONS OF CANCER SUFFERERS ABOUT THE WORLD.
- Dr. Sam Cheshier CD47 antibody program.
CD47 is a protein that acts as a “don’t-eat-me” signal to immune cells called macrophages. Blocking this “don’t-eat-me” signal inhibits the growth in mice of nearly every human cancer tested, with minimal toxicity.
Click here to learn more - Dendritic Cell Vaccine: Dr. Duane Mitchell, MD., PH.D.,
(Co-Director of the Preston A. Wells Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy and Director of the UF Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Program) has helped pioneer a potentially curative adoptive T cell therapy combined with dendritic cell vaccination for brain tumors, a huge step in immunotherapy verses traditional chemotherapy and radiology.
Click here to learn more - Nanotechnology. Dr. Mauro Ferrari:
“iNPG-pDox is alphabet soup for a new therapy that has been demonstrated to completely cure metastases to the lungs and liver in laboratory animals with triple-negative breast cancer. As reported in a primary article in Nature Biotechnology, and in commentaries in Science magazine, on Science Friday and in many other reports throughout the world, iNPGpDox has completely cured about 50% of the animals, and increased the survival of the other 50% by what in human years would be several years.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Alex Huang of the Huang Lab
at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Dr. Huang’s laboratory is interested in applying both classical and cutting- edge immunological techniques to study aspects of anti-tumor immune responses, immune – host – pathogen interaction, T cell-mediated memory immunity, and chemokine – receptor biology.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Jim Olson:
TUMOR PAINT & NOVEL THERAPY TO INCREASSE SURVIVAL IN GROUP 3 MEDULLOBLASOMA BY 20%. Dr. Jim Olson, the brilliant researcher responsible for discovering TUMOR PAINT (a molecule which lights up brain tumor cancer cells) recently devised a therapy that has proven to increase survival rates of Group 3 High Risk Medullo patients by an additional 20%.
Click here to learn more - Cornell researchers have discovered potent cancer-killing proteins
that can travel by white blood cells to kill tumors in the bloodstream of mice with metastatic prostate cancer. “The therapy is remarkably effective in vivo and shows several advantages, such as no toxicity and getting good results with very low dosages,” said senior author Michael King, the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Professor in Cornell’s Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering.
Click here to learn more - Memorial Sloan Kettering: Renier Brentjens Lab.
The Renier Brentjens Lab at MSK is focused on developing novel treatment approaches for certain leukemias and lymphomas utilizing the patient’s own immune system. Specifically this work involves the genetic manipulation of patients’ immune cells to recognize and kill their own cancer cells. This is a promising form of gene therapy.
Click here to learn more - UCLA: Dr. Linda Liau. Brain Tumor Vaccine.
Our nearly two decades of research in brain tumor immunotherapy has led to the development of the one of the very first personalized brain cancer vaccines, DCVax-L, which is now being tested in multi-center clinical trials around the world.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Robert Gatenby. Moffit Cancer Center.
Our ability to understand and exploit the tumor cell’s evolution is our greatest advantage and so, rather than letting the cancer use evolution to defeat our therapy, we focus on using evolutionary dynamics to increase the efficacy of our treatment. For example, by using small but strategically timed doses of drug, we can apply evolutionary dynamics to indefinitely control even very aggressive cancers in mice with a single chemotherapy agent.
Click here to learn more - Care Oncology Clinic.
The Care Oncology Clinic provides treatments that may complement and enhance standard of care therapy. Treating cancer in combination with your existing treatment may increase its effects. The Care Oncology Clinic is a leading London cancer clinic, providing treatments that are well understood with low side effects, thereby offering an improved quality of life.
Click here to learn more - Carl H. June, M.D.
University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine reported that 27 out of 29 patients with an advanced blood cancer saw their cancers go into remission or disappear altogether when they received genetically modified T-cells that were equipped with synthetic molecules called chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs.
Click here to learn more - UCSF attenuated measles vaccine to fight Medulloblastoma, Dr. Sabine Mueller.
We have been using an attenuated, modified measles virus as a potential therapy for medulloblastoma. Because medulloblastoma tumors cells express the receptor for the virus at high levels, we are able to kill tumor cells with the virus while sparing normal tissue. We have shown that measles virus can cure animals with human medulloblastoma implants in the brain.
Click here to learn more - The Anticancer Fund.Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer in children and adolescents. Despite intensive chemotherapy and surgery, standard treatments which have not changed in more than 30 years, the five-year survival is still below 70%.
Click here to learn more - Notable Labs.Screens thousands of FDA-approved drugs against the patients own cancer cells to identify drug combinations that can be immediately prescribed by their doctor without a clinical trial.
Click here to learn more - SCRIPPS: Scientists at The Scripps Research Institutesay they have recruited an unexpected ally in the mortal struggle against cancer: The very cells of the cancer itself. In lab experiments, a team led by Richard Lerner, M.D., turned leukemia cells into normal immune cells with up to 80 percent efficiency. What’s more, these “natural killer” cells seek out and destroy their unchanged cancerous brethren.
Click here to learn more - MD Anderson NK cells.
A multidisciplinary team at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is developing new treatments for young children with brain tumors. One promising approach is to deliver the patient’s own natural killer (NK) cells to the tumor. These immune cells can be removed from the patient’s blood, multiplied 2,000-fold in the laboratory and infused back into the patient at the site of the tumor, where the NK cells unleash an immune assault on the cancer.
Click here to learn more - Johns Hopkins. Dr. Eric Raab and Gregory Riggins
are pioneering the use of Palbociclib PD-1 and Mebendazole to treat brain cancers.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Matthias Gromeier – Duke Cancer Institute
Duke Cancer Institute: targeting cancer with oncolytic polioviruses (PVS-RIPO). Dr. Matthias Gromeier Lab. PVSRIPO is a genetically engineered poliovirus that we are using as an ‘oncolytic virus’ targeting the most malignant and deadly form of brain tumor, glioblastoma (GBM). PVSRIPO works by killing some tumor cells, which forcefully engages the patients’ immune system and sets up an immune response against the tumor.
Click here to learn more - Khalid Shah, MS, PhD – Harvard, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital have discovered a way of transforming stem cells into a cancer-killing machine. Through genetic engineering, the stem cells were able to produce and secrete toxins harmful only to the poisonous brain cancer cells, without touching the healthy cells.
Click here to learn more - Project GENIE.
Memorial Sloan Kettering has embarked on a revolutionary initiative, called Project GENIE (Genomics Evidence Neoplasia Information Exchange), which aims to gather, store, and analyze massive amounts of genomic data taken from tumors. By aggregating data from cancer patients worldwide, Project GENIE will provide a comprehensive pool of information to be shared among its investigators.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Shawn Hingtgen – University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pharmacy researchers turn skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells that destroy brain tumors known as glioblastoma – a discovery that can offer, for the first time in more than 30 years, a new and more effective treatment for the disease.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Charles Swanton – Swanton/Quezada Laboratories
The laboratory is exploring the common mutations present across all tumour cells in a patient at every site of disease that may act as flags to alert the immune system to destroy the whole tumor rather than parts of the tumour. The laboratory is finding ways to utilise the immune system to combat these common flags on the cell surface using T and B immune cell approaches.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Salman Hyder, University of Missouri
Standard treatment for prostate cancer can include chemotherapy that targets receptors on cancer cells. However, drug-resistant cancer cells can emerge during chemotherapy, limiting its effectiveness as a cancer-fighting agent. Researchers at the University of Missouri have proven that a compound initially developed as a cholesterol-fighting molecule not only halts the progression of prostate cancer, but also can kill cancerous cells.
Click here to learn more - Ryder Gwinn at Swedish Medical
Sound Surgery – Surgeons can now operate deep within the brain using focused beams of ultrasound, ushering in a new era of faster, safer, incision-free treatments.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Stan Riddell – Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Dramatic remissions seen in immunotherapy trial of blood cancer patients, experimental; living T-cell therapy shows promise for treating advanced disease, making immunotherapy a ‘pillar’ of cancer care.
Click here to learn more - Gdovin Team laboratory, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Matthew Gdovin
This lab is researching a therapy that uses a drug and a specific wavelength of light that activates the drug. Combined, this type of drug + light therapy is called, “photodynamic therapy.”
Click here to learn more - HSV G207, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Gregory K. Friedman, M.D.
We are using HSV G207 because it has been shown to be safe in Phase I trials in adults with brain tumors and some adults responded to the treatment.
Click here to learn more - IMPACT (IMproving Patient Access to Cancer Clinical Trials) by Lazarex Cancer Foundation
At Lazarex Cancer Foundation we improve the outcome of cancer care, giving hope, dignity and life to end stage cancer patients and the medically underserved by providing assistance with costs for FDA clinical trial participation, identification of clinical trial options, community outreach and education.
Click here to learn more - Dr. Charles Cobbs – The Swedish Neuroscience Institute
in Seattle is a comprehensive clinical and research program focused on novel cutting edge treatments for malignant brain tumors. Clinical trials are now in progress to use focused ultrasound technology to treat neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, as well as brain cancer and other cancers. (Focused ultrasound is currently an FDA-approved treatment for uterine fibroids.)
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