New treatment for ALL

The therapy, which will be marketed as Kymriah, works against acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it:

Historic 'living drug' gets go-ahead - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41094990

Revolutionary new CLL drug developed in Leeds

25/09/2015

A revolutionary new cancer drug designed by researchers in Leeds could change the way the disease is treated.

What makes it different is this drug doesn't require chemotherapy - it's an oral drug which has today been licenced for the NHS by NICE - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

The treatment, for Leukaemia patients, could pave the way for a new methods of tackling the condition.

Stan Petrov's Leukaemia still headline news

Its a sad fact that illnesses such as Leukaemia never get a great deal of press coverage unless it affects a well known public figure.

Last week Aston Villa player Stan Petrov was diagnosed with Acute Leukaemia and simply Googling either his name or the word " Leukaemia" will return hundreds of web pages of info relating to his battle against his newly diagnosed illness. But why does it only seem to be that when stars such as Stan are affected that the media sit up and take notice? What about the thousands of other "normal" people, many of them children, who are, and have been fighting their own battles for many years,....why don't the press appear to hold their lives in such high esteem.... are they less valuable than Stan? Less news worthy?

This post is not against Stan, far from it,  i wish him the very best of luck in his battle. This post is aimed squarely at the media who only appear to give a damn...or space in their papers, to the subject of illnesses such as Leukaemia if it is deemed to sell their product.

How much exposure have they given recently  to the ongoing search for new bone marrow donors by the Anthony Nolan charity? How much backing have they given to Sir Ian Botham and Geoff Thomas in their support of the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research charity? Yet they pick up a story such as Stans and milk it simply to make money for themselves....how hollow and pointless is that?

Papers reach millions and they have the power to influence many into action.....yet how many so far have encouraged people to sign up to become bone marrow donors? how many have suggested fans make a donation to fund research into Leukaemia Research? THAT is the point that the media is not making, and for Stan and many thousands like him, that literally could be the difference between life and death.

.

An amazing breakthrough in Leukaemia treatment may be available in 5 years.

.

A simple injection to cure Leukaemia could be produced within five years after a remarkable breakthrough by a British research team.

They believe they have found a way to trigger the body's immune system to beat a disease which kills 4,000 people a year in this country. The same techniques may eventually be advanced to treat other cancers, such as breast and lung, they say.

The breakthrough follows six years of research, funded by the Leukaemia Research Fund, at London's Hammersmith Hospital and Imperial College School of Medicine.

It involves two strands, firstly to 'label' the cancerous cells, and secondly to mass-produce immune cells outside the body which can then be injected to search and destroy the malignant ones. In the future, the researchers hope to use the technique to 'wake up' a patient's own immune system to destroy malignant cells without using donor cells.

Dr Hans Stauss, a tumour immunologist at Imperial, said: 'The possibilities for new treatments are enormous.' The first trial of the injection is about to begin on ten patients.

The 'labelling' was achieved by identifying a single gene which is over-active in leukaemia cells. It is referred to as WT-1. For the second strand, the researchers took white blood cells from healthy donors and isolated the few that mounted the fiercest response against tumour cells in the laboratory.

By cloning them, they were able to produce unlimited supplies of peak performance immune cells, called T-cells. In tests, the engineered immune cells specifically destroyed leukaemia cells and ignored normal cells of the same type.

'That's the beauty of the approach,' said Dr Stauss. 'It is so specific at destroying cancer cells.' He hopes to further develop the technique for after-care to ensure there is no recurrence of the cancer .The timescale is about five to six years before we see it widely used,' said Dr Stauss.

'The principle can be applied to almost all forms of leukaemia. What makes the work even more exciting is that our findings can also be applied to solid cancers, such as breast or lung cancer, where there is similar over-activity of WT-1.'

Lord Winston, director of research and development at the Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust, said: 'To the best of our knowledge this is the first time in the world that anyone has identified a target which allows T-cells to selectively destroy cells that cause leukaemia.

'Such a breakthrough underlines the vital importance of long-term academic research in the production of new and desperately needed treatments.'

Every year 5,000 cases of leukaemia are diagnosed in Britain and 4,000 victims die. It can be either acute, with rapid degeneration, or chronic, a slowly progressive form of the disease.

In both cases the bone marrow of the patient produces large numbers of abnormal, fast- dividing cells which inhibit the body's ability to produce blood. Chemotherapy is the recognised treatment. Sometimes bone marrow transplants are needed

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15039/Breakthrough-leukaemia.html#ixzz1XSo8sx31


.

New drug type developed to kill lymphoma cells

.
Scientists have developed a new type of drug designed to kill non-Hodgkin lymphoma tumour cells.

The breakthrough could lead to potential non-toxic therapies for cancer patients. The researchers, including Dr. Ari Melnick, of Weill Cornell Medical College, Dr. Alexander MacKerell, of the University of Maryland and Dr. Gilbert Prive, of the University of Toronto, have identified a drug that targets an oncogene known as BCL6. BCL6 functions as a master regulatory protein. “It’s a protein that controls the production of thousands of other genes. Because of that, it has a very profound impact on cells and is required for lymphoma cells to survive and multiply,” said Melnick. BCL6 causes the majority of diffuse large B cell lymphomas, the most common form of non—Hodgkin lymphoma. Currently, about 60 percent of diffuse large B cell lymphomas can be cured with chemo—immunotherapy, said Melnick. “The hope is that we can improve that to a higher percent, and in the long term reduce the need for chemotherapy,” he added.

Traditional cancer drugs target enzymes, which have small pockets on their surfaces that can be blocked with molecules. Until now, pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to create drugs that target a protein like BCL6 because they function through a different mechanism involving interactions with cofactor proteins involving extensive protein surfaces. “And because the real estate covered by these interactions is so large, the drug companies have viewed these as being not druggable targets,” said Melnick.

The researchers could identify a “hot spot” on BLC6 that they predicted would play a critical role in protein interactions. They showed that their BCL6 inhibitor drug was specific to BCL6, and did not block other master regulatory proteins. The drug had powerful lymphoma killing activity and yet was non-toxic to normal tissues. “This is the first time a drug of this nature has been designed and it shows that it’s not actually impossible to target factors like BCL6,” he said.
Emerging data from other investigators suggests that BCL6 is important in many other tumor types, including forms of leukemia. The study has been published in a recent issue of Cancer Cell.

.

Leukaemia Boys Dream trip to Eurodisney treat becomes a nightmare.

An east Belfast father has told how he was forced to fork out more than a thousand pounds to get
his eight-year-old son home for a vital leukaemia appointment after a treat holiday to Eurodisney turned into a travel nightmare.

The journey home ended up lasting three days and hours of negotiations with staff. Sydney Harvey from Gilnahirk said at one stage he feared his family might have to spend Christmas in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
Mr Harvey took his wife Wendy and three children, including little Ryan to Eurodisney last Monday. They were due to return to Belfast International Airport on Thursday, but their journey home turned into three days waiting around airports.

To read more: Please visit the website of the Belfast Telegraph by clicking HERE

Drug apartheid hits victims of leukaemia in England (daily Mail Online)

Leukaemia sufferers in England will be denied potentially life-saving drugs freely available in Scotland.


The proposal to ban English patients from getting the medication on the NHS has been branded 'stupid and heartless'.
Doctors and campaigners say the Government rationing body's measures will worsen the postcode lottery, with patients north of the border able to get dasatinib and nilotinib that could add years to their lives.

The preliminary guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence affects patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia.


Although the drugs cost £30,000 a year, only a maximum of 300 patients a year are likely to need them.

They have failed to respond to treatment with another drug, called Glivec, or become resistant to it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1235589/Drug-apartheid-hits-victims-leukaemia-England.html#ixzz0aFrwPuV4








Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1235589/Drug-apartheid-hits-victims-leukaemia-England.html#ixzz0aFred1Vq

Scientists hail new leukaemia drug breakthrough

A NEW wonder drug has been hailed as a breakthrough in the treatment of leukaemia.
Scientists said Mabthera can almost double the chances of remission - where abnormal cells can no longer be found in the blood or bone marrow.
It has also been shown to stop the disease in relapsed patients and seems to work best when added to standard chemotherapy.
The drug was most effective in treating chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, known as CLL .
More than 2000 cases a year are diagnosed in the UK.
Researcher Professor Andrew Pettitt of the Royal Liverpool University Hospital said: "The goals of treatment are to shrink the disease to the point where we cannot detect it, and maximise the length of time before the cancer returns.
"This new treatment will give many patients the opportunity of living longer."

(Source: Daily Record December 8th 2008)