[zx10guy]

Thank you for your sentiments on cancer.

Being a two time cancer survivor, I have been exposed to many of these break through stories through the now 7 years of being on this awful journey. I've learned to not get excited unless a particular therapy reaches phase 2 trials. Even phase 1 provides a little hope. But when a particular break through has only been demonstrated in a lab or in animal tests, I don't get excited at all.

What they're talking about has been done with other immunotherapy techniques. Look up the TIL treatment currently being done at NIH. 60 Minutes did a story on this and the person they profiled in the story is a member of a colon cancer support forum I'm a part of. She started a long running and large thread there detailing her experience with information about TIL. In a nut shell, the doctors did a genetic analysis of her tumor and then modified her immune cells to target her specific tumor cells.

Many people don't understand cancers are different among each type of cancers and within a category of cancer, you have many differences within. This is what makes cancer so hard to treat because no one person really has the same type of cancer even though they're in the same category. For a solid tumor cancer such as colon cancer, there are so many genetic variants which if one has a specific genetic mutation would make specific drugs either effective or ineffective. If you're KRAS Wild, then Erbitux is a drug option but if one is KRAS Mutant, Erbitux is totally ineffective. If your MSI-high, then you have immunotherapy options. But if your MSS, then the current immunotherapies will not work at all. And unfortunately, most colon cancer patients are MSS. There are also other mutations tracked with colon cancer such as BRAF.

This is why you're seeing buzz word statements being thrown around by many advertisements called targeted cancer treatment or individualized cancer treatment. More patients are going through genetic testing to see what mutations are present in their tumors so targeted therapies can be created to treat that person's specific cancer. The insidious issue with cancer is what you learn in your biology class with genetics. Because of the fast replication rate of cancer cells, eventually cancer cells mutate to adapt and work around any drug treatment. This is why immunotherapy is such a hot area of research. And to put things in perspective, the main line drug used to treat colon cancer is still 5FU. 5FU is a DNA scrambler that affects fast replicating cells....ie cancer cells. But unfortunately, cells in the GI tract are also of this type of profile hence all of the nasty side effects. 5FU was created, if I remember correctly, back in the late 40s. This should tell you how daunting finding a cure for cancer is.