Could Improve Gene Therapy

for Brain Cancer

Science (Aug. 11, 2010) — An ingredient in the venom of the “deathstalker” scorpion could help gene therapy become an effective treatment for brain cancer, scientists are reporting. The substance allows therapeutic genes — genes that treat disease — to reach more brain cancer cells than current approaches, according to the study in ACS Nano.

Miqin Zhang and colleagues note that gene therapy — the delivery of therapeutic genes into diseased cells — shows promise for fighting glioma, the most common and most serious form of brain cancer. But difficulties in getting genes to enter cancer cells and concerns over the safety and potential side effects of substances used to transport these genes have kept the approach from helping patients.

The scientists describe a new approach that could solve these problems. Key ingredients of their gene-delivery system are chlorotoxin, the substance in deathstalker scorpion venom that can slow the spread of brain cancer, and nanoparticles of iron oxide. Each nanoparticle is about 1/50,000th the width of a human hair. In tests on lab mice, the scientists demonstrated that their venom-based nanoparticles can induce nearly twice the amount of gene expression in brain cancer cells as nanoparticles that do not contain the venom ingredient. “These results indicate that this targeted gene delivery system may potentially improve treatment outcome of gene therapy for glioma and other deadly cancers,” the article notes.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Study Suggests

Science (July 28, 2010) — Current research suggests that taking morphine can block new blood vessel and tumor growth. The related report by Koodie et al, “Morphine suppresses tumor angiogenesis through a HIF1?/p38MAPK pathway,” appears in the August 2010 issue of the American Journal of Pathology.

Morphine is currently the gold standard of analgesics used to relieve severe pain and suffering. Angiogenesis, or new blood vessel growth, is critical for tumor progression from dormant to malignant. Morphine is commonly used to treat cancer pain, but the effects of morphine use on new blood vessel and tumor growth remain controversial.

Using a clinically relevant morphine dose in a mouse model of Lewis lung carcinoma, researchers led by Dr. Sabita Roy of the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, MN examined the effect of morphine use on new blood vessel growth in tumors. They found that chronic morphine use decreased levels of tumor angiogenesis in a manner dependent on the opioid receptor. This effect was mediated by suppression of signaling induced by low oxygen concentrations, leading to a reduction in the levels of pro-angiogenic factors. Therefore, morphine may not only serve as an analgesic for cancer patients, but may also inhibit tumor angiogenesis and growth.

Koodie et al conclude that “morphine is a potential inhibitor of tumor growth, through the suppression of tumor cell-induced angiogenesis and hypoxia-induced p38 MAPK activation of HIF-1. In addition to its analgesic potential, morphine can be exploited for its anti-angiogenic potential in cancer pain management; these findings support the use of morphine for cancer pain management.”

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

5 Vaccinations You Should Never Get

Pharmaceutical companies haven’t been shy about sticking generations of Americans with round after round of vaccines to prevent even obscure illnesses. Trust me, kids have a better chance of tap dancing on the moon with Elvis than dying from rubella.
Of course, Big Pharma has decided not to limit their junk vaccines to the children’s market.
Over the past several years in particular, drug companies have aggressively marketed vaccines for adults, using scare tactics to get otherwise sane people to roll up their sleeves in droves. Many of these vaccines are useless, and some are downright dangerous. These five vaccinations are theworst of the worst.
1. Human Papillomavirus (HPV)––Gardasil

One of the biggest designer vaccinations that Big Pharma is shoving down our throats thesedays is the HPV vaccine, Gardasil. This vaccine is needless and, history has shown, dangerous.
Yet women are paying $360 a pop to be injected with it.
The most frustrating part of this whole sham is that Gardasil’s manufacturer, Merck, has drawn on the aid of cancer––medicine’s greatest boogeyman––in order to sell its product. Merck would have us believe that by inoculating against HPV, we’ll stop cervical cancer, at which point Gardasil becomes the “cure for cancer.” This is such a load of bull that we’re going to need a backhoe todig our way out.
According to FDA reports made public through the Freedom of Information Act (that means the government wasn’t volunteering this information, by the way), Gardasil has been linked with a variety of dangerous and even deadly side effects.1 Just since September 2007, the vaccine has been linked to 10 deaths from blood clotting, arrhythmia, and at least one allergic reaction. The vaccine has further been linked to 10 spontaneous abortions and six instances of Guillain-BarreSyndrome, a disease that causes the immune system to attack the nervous system, and which maylead to paralysis.
The FDA report further included evidence of nearly 150 instances of serious injury that resultedfrom the vaccine, and a multitude of outbreaks of warts on the genitals, face, hands, and feet. Thesewarts are most likely caused by the HPV virus and are a condition that should have been avoided through the use of the vaccine.
And while these side effects certainly haven’t affected every patient, the effects are so serious that no sane person should want to subject themselves or their children to this injection. This isespecially true when prevention is as simple as keeping your pants on.
You see, the “dirty” little secret about HPV is that it’s a sexually transmitted disease. Want to avoid HPV?

Skip the shot and get some condoms.

2. Shingles––Zostavax

Another useless vaccine with a major corporate push is the shingles vaccine Zostavax. The only reason more people don’t get it is that many insurance companies won’t cover it. You know why? It costs up to $200 per shot, and it’s an unnecessary preventative for a disease that is completely treatable and not very serious.
My recommendation is that you boost your immune system with zinc and vitamins C and E, then hang around with some kids in your family when they have the chicken pox (more on that later).
Merck––which manufactures Zostavax and also brought us Gardasil––has no clue about the long-term effects of the vaccine. The study on long-term effects conducted for FDA approval only lasted 42 days, so there is no real data on negative consequences of Zostavax over periods of several years. If you take the vaccine, understand you’ll be signing yourself up as a guinea pig in a human drug trial.
The irony here is that the whole shingles “scare” is probably the result of over-fanatical efforts by drug companies to vaccinate children against chicken pox. At least one study has shown that repeated exposure to children with chicken pox increases the immune system’s resistance to shingles.2 Essentially what this means is that by helping our youngsters suffer through their chicken pox, we were building our immunity to shingles.When kids stop getting chicken pox, we start getting shingles.
So, in a sense, Zostavax is a drug-company cure (and a very unproven one at that) for a problem caused by the drug companies.

3. Influenza

Yearly flu shots have become standard operating procedure for people of all ages. The CDC practically mandates an annual inoculation for children aged 6 months to 19 years, adults over 50,and even pregnant women. Each fall, when the colder weather forces us to huddle together for warmth,the CDC passes the warning that your family, friends, and colleagues are all little more than flu incubators. Millions rush to their doctors, hospitals or clinics to get their shots.
But here’s the big news: the flu vaccine doesn’t work.Year to year, the makers of the flu vaccine make a guess about which flu strains will be the most prevalent and then mix them accordingly.
There is currently no system in place to track the effectiveness of the vaccine and to use this data to compile the next flu vaccine. The process is arbitrary enough that they might as well stick some sugar water in a syringe and cross their fingers.
For the elderly and the very young in particular, I can’t recommend exposing potentially weak immune systems to the flu for no net gain.
As always, I recommend building a more powerful immune system with safe natural methods and staying away from jab-happy MDs when the cold months are upon us.
4. Whooping cough

Lately, the mainstream media has been harping on individual cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, as if a global pandemic is waiting around the corner. Big Pharma has their lapdogs pushing out statistics that reveal hundreds of thousands of deaths from whooping cough each year.

The truth is, this is a global statistic that is accounted for by the prevalence of the disease in third world countries without the medical resources to cure a cold, let alone whooping cough. There are only a handful of deaths attributed to this disease in the United States each year, and most of those are infants––some of whom are too young to get the vaccine.
So why is the CDC now pushing for every person to be immunized in infancy and then receive five more booster vaccinations as they advance into adulthood and old age? You have almost no chance of getting whooping cough as an infant, and you have even less chance as an adult. At $60 per booster plus the initial cost of childhood vaccination, the CDC wants us to spend $300 over the course of our lifetimes on a useless vaccine.
We are not living in the barely tamed wilderness of yesteryear.We are living in a modern society with appropriate sanitation, better nutrition, and access to health care that limits the spread of disease and treats diseases like whooping cough with ease. In the modern age, unless you plan on traveling to the third world, there is no need to go injecting yourself with a “weakened” strain of a disease that you may never encounter, and can be easily cured of if you do happen to get it.

5. Measles, Mumps, Rubella, & Chicken pox––ProQuad

Now that I’ve taken time to tell you about the dangers of some of Big Pharma’s adult vaccines,
I am going to sound the alarm for the little ones in your family. If the CDC and pharmaceutical companies have their way, every child born in the United States will get jabbed with enough needles to leave them looking like a voodoo doll; and all this before their second birthdays. The ProQuad vaccine is a cocktail of vaccines that includes the traditional measles, mumps, and rubella, plus a dose of chicken pox that is five times what a child would get in a regular vaccination.
Time has shown that toddlers given the ProQuad injection were twice as likely to have a seizure as toddlers who received MMR and chicken pox vaccinations separately. The seizure data has even caused a government advisory panel on vaccines to step back from recommending ProQuad as their method of choice.
These new horrors only add fuel to the fire that should burn down the vaccination regime. This dangerous all-in-one is a prime example of how impersonal assembly line medicine is doing more harm than good.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

MONTREAL (UPI) — Canadian researchers say the risk of miscarriages is 68 percent higher in women who took antidepressants during pregnancy.

Researchers from the University of Montreal said they recommend doctors discuss with their patients the risks and benefits of antidepressant therapy during pregnancy.

The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, involved 5,124 women who were part of a large population-based group of pregnant women who had clinically verified miscarriages and a large sample of women from the same registry who did not have a miscarriage.

Of those who miscarried, 284, or 5.5 percent, had taken antidepressants during pregnancy.

Antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — especially paroxetine and also venlafaxine — were associated with increased risk of miscarriage as were higher daily doses of either antidepressant. A combination of different antidepressants doubled the risk of miscarriages.

“These results, which suggest an overall class effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are highly robust given the large number of users studied,” Dr. Anick Berard, the study’s senior author, said in a statement.

However, stopping antidepressant medication can result in a depressive relapse that can put mother and baby at risk, Bernard added.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha

WASHINGTON (UPI) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced approval Thursday of a new therapy for certain men suffering advanced prostate cancer.

The FDA said the drug, Provenge (sipuleucel-T), allows patients to use their own immune system to fight the disease. The drug is indicated for the treatment of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body and is resistant to standard hormone treatment.

“The availability of Provenge provides a new treatment option for men with advanced prostate cancer, who currently have limited effective therapies available,” said Dr. Karen Midthun, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

Provenge is an autologous cellular immunotherapy, designed to stimulate a patient’s own immune system to respond against the cancer. Each dose of Provenge is manufactured by obtaining a patient’s immune cells from the blood, the FDA said. The immune cells are then exposed to a protein that is found in most prostate cancers, linked to an immune stimulating substance. After that process, the patient’s own cells are returned to the patient to treat the prostate cancer.

Provenge, administered intravenously in a three-dose schedule given at about two-week intervals, is manufactured by the Dendreon Corp. in Seattle.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 8th June 2010

Drug boosts survival

in major skin cancer study

The skin

The skin:

• protects us from injury
• cools us when we get too hot
• prevents us from becoming dehydrated.

The skin has two main layers.

• Epidermis: The top or outer layer.

Contains three different kinds of cells:

• 1. basal cells
  2. squamous cells
  3. melanocytes – produce a dark pigment called melanin, the substance that gives skin its colour.

• Dermis: The layer underneath the epidermis.

Contains the roots of hairs, glands that make sweat, blood and lymph vessels and nerves.

Skin cancer

Skin cancer develops when a cell in the skin goes through a series of changes that make it a cancer cell.

Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation in sunlight is the main factor that causes skin cancer cells to become cancer cells.

Skin cancers are named after the type of cell they start from. These are:

• basal cell cancer
• squamous cell cancer
• melanoma.

Science (May 27, 2010) — Nottingham scientists have been given the green light to test a vaccine which they hope could reverse, and even cure malignant melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer.

Scancell Holdings plc, led by Professor Lindy Durrant of the University’s Division of Clinical Oncology within the School of Molecular Medical Sciences, believes the new vaccine, which targets tumour cells without damaging healthy tissue, could be successful in treating patients with malignant melanoma.

Incidences of malignant melanoma have more than quadrupled over the past 30 years and in the last 25 years rates of malignant melanoma have risen faster than for any other cancer. It is now the most common cancer in younger adults aged 15 to 34, which may be linked to risky associated behaviour such as exposure to the sun on foreign beach holidays and the use of tanning booths. Every year, most of the 2,000 skin cancer deaths result from malignant melanoma.

Professor Durrant said: “Up until now, early diagnosis has been a crucial factor in the successful treatment of this disease. In the early stages it can be cured by completely removing the skin melanoma by surgery. However, in cases where it has not been picked up until further down the line, we have found that chemotherapy and radiotherapy simply do not work, although new compounds are being tested.

“It is still at a very early stage and impossible to predict the outcome of the clinical trial but if our results from the lab are replicated in patients I think we have a good chance of dramatically improving the chances of successful treatment — we are hoping that the vaccine will cure between 10 and 20 per cent of patients with malignant melanoma.”

Testing for the new SCIB1 vaccine has been given approval by the Gene Therapy Advisory Committee and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and clinical trials are due to start shortly at Nottingham City Hospital and centres in Manchester and Newcastle.

It will initially be given to patients who are suffering from advanced malignant melanoma which has spread to other parts of the body.

The new vaccine works by activating the body’s own natural defence systems — it contains DNA and genetic material from tumours meaning it ’switches’ on the specific immune cells that target melanoma. This means that it targets only the cancer and not the surrounding healthy tissue.

The team of scientists believe that, in principle, new vaccines based upon the same principle could also be used to target other types of cancer tumours, such as breast and prostate.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 28th May 2010

Targets Breast Cancer Stem Cells

Science (July 13, 2008) — A gene that is overexpressed in 20 percent of breast cancers increases the number of cancer stem cells, the cells that fuel a tumor’s growth and spread, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The gene, HER2, causes cancer stem cells to multiply and spread, explaining why HER2 has been linked to a more aggressive type of breast cancer and to metastatic disease, in which the cancer has spread beyond the breast, the researchers say.

Further, the drug Herceptin, which is used to treat HER2-positive breast cancer, was found to target and destroy the cancer stem cells. “This work suggests that the reason drugs that target HER2, such as Herceptin and Lapatanib, are so effective in breast cancer is that they target the cancer stem cell population. This finding provides further evidence for the cancer stem cell hypothesis,” says study author Max S. Wicha, M.D., Distinguished Professor of Oncology and director of the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The cancer stem cell hypothesis says that tumors originate in a small number of cells, called cancer stem cells, and that these cells are responsible for fueling a tumor’s growth. These cells represent fewer than 5 percent of the cells in a tumor. Wicha’s lab was part of the team that first identified stem cells in human breast cancer in 2003.

In the current study, researchers found that breast cancer cells overexpressing the HER2 gene had four to five times more cancer stem cells, compared to HER2-negative cancers. In addition, the HER2-positive cells caused the cancer stem cells to invade surrounding tissue, suggesting that HER2 is driving the invasiveness and spread of cancer.

The researchers then looked at the drug Herceptin, which is used to treat HER2-positive breast cancer. They found Herceptin reduced the number of cancer stem cells in the HER2-positive breast cancer cell lines by 80 percent, dropping it to the same levels seen in HER2-negative cell lines.

When HER2 was not overexpressed in the cell cultures, the researchers found, the cancer stem cell population did not increase. Nor did Herceptin have any effect on the HER2-negative cells, which is consistent with how Herceptin is used in the clinic.

“We are now studying what pathways are activated by HER2 overexpression. Our hope is that we could develop inhibitors of these pathways that might be effective in targeting cancer stem cells in women whose tumors do not overexpress HER2 or those who are resistant to Herceptin,” says study author Hasan Korkaya, Ph.D., a U-M research fellow in internal medicine.

Breast cancer statistics: 184,450 Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and 40,930 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. About 20 percent of breast cancers are considered HER2-positive.

Additional authors: Amanda K. Paulson, a U-M undergraduate student, and Flora Iovino, a U-M research fellow in internal medicine.

Funding: National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute at the U-M Medical School.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 6th May 2010