Hi James,
Glad you got your thread started. Immunotherapy sounds an excellent idea. I don't think it is in the main stream for cancer treatment at the moment.
I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that if you used it for lung cancer for example then the problem was it also attacked the healthy tissue. As soon as I heard that I thought, hang on, for prostate cancer that would be no problem at all.
I think as of yet immuntherapy treatments are not quite here. Could you accidentally give some one an autoimmune disease if you got this wrong? If you are using a virus to deliver the genetic instructions, could it be transmitted to some one else by accident? So I think a lot of testing needs to be done before this will be a reality.
(Ed. Please do not take any of my reservations as anti science. I only site them as things to consider. I do not for one second think mad scientists will release a virus capable of replicating which destroys prostate in healthy people. )
Having said that if it does become a reality. Having your own immune system constantly on the watch and destroying metastatic cells rather than doctors trying to scan and then treat them would be a game changer.
By all means ask at the onco meeting and let us know what he says. I suspect for the time being it will be stick with the hormone treatment which at the moment is working well for you.
Edited by member 21 Mar 2021 at 20:38
| Reason: Added bit about not being anti science
|
User
I think you have misread the date - the report was on stage 2 trials and was published in March 2020 but the trials didn't go ahead because the company (a trading arm of Oxford uni) was diverted to COVID vaccine research.
There are other immunotherapy options more developed than this one anyway, but immunotherapy is only thought to be effective for a small sub-sect of men with particular genetic faults. Worth you asking the onco about possible referral but I am not sure you will fit the criteria.
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." Soren Kierkegaard
|
User
No. The item comes from our own website. The link is:-
Home>About us>News and Views>Prostate Cancer Vaccine
The item is dated 18 March 2021. There is a full description (which I tried to summarise in my first post) and a list of 26 volunteers for any future trials. I recommend looking at it.
As to Dave+'s query about auto-immune side effects, I am no sort of immunologist but this is the technique used by the Oxford University start-up to generate the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, which is at last generally acknowledged to be safe and effective.
Anybody know any real immunologists?
User
Today I had my second oncology appointment. The news was mostly good: my PSA is down from 2.2 to 0.7, so my cancer is still responding to Decapeptyl, however the biopsy gave a Gleason score of 9. The Registrar wasn't worried by that; as long as PSA stayed low the treatment would continue, with the addition of Enzalutimide to beef it up.
The business of the visit having been dealt with, did I have any questions. I asked about cancer vaccine therapy. He looked blank, so I tabled the information I had collected on the Oxford/AstraZeneca/Vaccitech work (more on that later). He read it politely, noted the prostate cancer trials were only at levels 1 and 2 and said it sounded promising for the future; but my treatment would continue along the existing pathway.
Of course he was right, but I am not giving up. In my innocent, lay-person's need-to-know I am seeing what else I can find out - and report back here.
User
Thanks for the update James. Psa is looking good. Wonder therapies always seem to be ten years away, one day they will get here. Cancer will be something in the history books like leprosy or bubonic plague.
|
User
I'll drink to that, Dave; but we may have to wait a while.
Since my last post I have been trawling the net and started a program of self-education. While this continues I have come to some interim, outsider's conclusions.
1. There was a lot of cancer vaccination activity ten years ago - most of which died away without obvious explanation. PCa was prominent because it was and is so widespread.
2. The only current major centre of activity is Vaccitech - a company spun off by Oxford to develop the technique used to produce the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. They passed that over to AZ and are now going to go on with three other projects using the same technology - one of these being PCa. Nottingham Trent University is advertising for PhD students in this area but it looks very small scale.
3. There are a number of differences between vaccines for a virus and for cancer. A virus is foreign tissue and our immune system will identify it as such and go after it - but not fast or hard enough in many cases, and a bit of help from a vaccine goes a long way. A cancer cell starts out as one of the normal host cells and the immune system ignores it until it changes enough on the surface to look foreign. This varies with the cancer and some - like pancreatic cancer - grow faster than the immune system. Bastards!
I'll keep going. Anyone else with information or insight please chip in. I am guessing that a nunber of clinicians trawl these pages - feel free, people.
User
Hi James, some sort of immunotherapy will undoubtedly be the game changer for defeating all C. Alas I fear it will be sometime yet before it arrives and probably too late for the likes of us. I do remember reading (and cant for the life of me remember where) of a small (very) initial trial (I think it was in California?) involving immunotherapy treatment for met Lung C which at the time showed a pretty amazing response in 8 of the 10 test subjects after 12 months. Just wish I could remember where and when I read it so I could do some digging.
On a different note, what is the regional capital of the South West? Exeter or Bristol presumably? Pretty sure it's not Torbay area 😀😀
Good luck to everyone coping with the insidious big C |
User
There may be clinicians who look at these pages - I know that our urologist does - but no clinician responds to threads or makes comments, I'm afraid.
I do still think that if you are interested in alternative / emerging treatments, you would be better looking at the work on immunotherapy rather than vaccine / immunology. Immunotherapy is here and available (to men with the right kind of prostate cancer at a sufficiently advanced stage) whereas as a potential vaccine is still pie in the sky. At this point, you don't seem to meet the criteria for immunotherapy though. More relevant to you might be cryotherapy or green light laser treatment, if you can afford to pay. Pre-Covid, you could instead have considered travelling to the US for focal laser treatment but who knows how long it will be before that is possible again.
Edited by member 24 Mar 2021 at 18:10
| Reason: Not specified
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." Soren Kierkegaard
|
User
That's pretty good research on your behalf. Research seems to go in fads and phases. I guess something looks promising and all the researchers jump on the band wagon, it is probably easier get funding when it is looking like it will be main stream, but then they all stumble in to an insurmountable block. A decade later things move on the block is no longer insurmountable and things move forward again.
You have identified the big problem with cancer which is that it starts from our own cells. That is why any treatment for cancer is so unpleasant, because in attacking the cancer a lot of ordinary cells get caught as collateral damage.
My comment about autoimmune disease, was alluding to the fact that if you train the immune system to attack cancer cells there may be collateral damage.
Edited by member 25 Mar 2021 at 17:20
| Reason: Not specified
|
User
You people play an important in exposing my lack of understanding, and so leading me towards the light. If, as LynEyre says, immunotherapy in general is the way forward then I should be reading more widely. I take the point that vaccination is only one strategy of many, and not necessarily the most potent.
Unfortunately, my education and work experience has been confined to the physical sciences. Now that the Crab has got it's claws into me I must give up Quantum theory and Bell's Inequality and get a whole new shelf of books. My first wife was a medical student when we married in the sixties. She used to read out hilarious extracts from her Immunology textbook (Cats don't race, though they could). I imagine textbooks are more expensive nowadays, and not very humorous.
While I get started on my studies I'll keep an eye on Vaccitech who publish monthly reports simple eniugh for venture capitalists. Otherwise I hope to learn enough soon enough to make a difference, or at least occupy my mind. It helps that I find my medical situation interesting in itself. Long may that continue.
User
Hi,
As Lyn said above this gene therpy is in the trials stage and only works on the 20 percent of men who have the right defective genes.There is a stage 3 study going on in Uk and worldwide called the Triton 3 trial of a new drug called rucaparib.Google it and you will get all the info.
Regards
Norm
User