I have just returned from a very exhilarating experience, the John Hopkins Cancer Symposium, sponsored by Erwin and Stephanie Greenberg. In brief, all of us would be elated to learn about the incredible breakthroughs that are not only accomplished by John Hopkins, but other global cancer institutions. Because National Institute of Health’s funding has shrunk in recent years, much of the state-of-the-art breakthroughs evolve from private donations. In brief, we are all benefiting from discoveries in genetics, epigenetics, immunotherapy, and drug development.
In speaking to the physicians at John Hopkins and at Moffitt Cancer Center, I learned that providing them with $100,000 can have a monumental impact. It is my hope that CTAC 2019 can provide such funding to our participating institutions.
Dr. William Nelson, M.D. and Ph.D. wrote in Pillars of Progress that today’s cancer research builds on historical progress. “Discoveries that created genetic blueprints for cancer are becoming simple and safe blood tests that detect cancer in the very earliest stages. Epigenetic research is proving opportunities to use drugs that reset cancer cells to normal cells. Decades of immunology research is now harnessing our body’s own natural defenses to defeat even the most aggressive cancers. Technologies like proton radiation therapy are giving us new ways to safely go after difficult-to treat cancers. Proton Radiation is a type of radiation therapy that uses streams of protons (tiny particles with a positive charge) to kill tumor cells. This type of treatment can reduce the amount of radiation damage to healthy tissue near a tumor.
Kellie Smith and Franck Housseau of John Hopkins developed a technique called Manafest that has the ability to scour immense amounts of data to reveal the unique biochemical signatures in each patient’s cancer that alert the specific immune T cells in that person’s cancer. Manifest can be used to guide therapy, helping oncologists to personalize immunotherapies by using drugs that will unleash an immune attack against individual cancers.
Microbiome: Cindy Sears has developed a way to effectively screen and ultimately prevent a certain type of colon cancer. Specifically, patients with an inherited form of colon cancer harbor two bacterial species that collaborate to encourage the development of the disease.
New Drugs: Dracon Pharmaceuticals is working closely with John Hopkins to develop cell-metabolism-targeted drugs. This drug cuts cancer cells of the nutrients that feed them, starving the cancer cells and provides more energy for the cells that go to work to beat the cancer.
John Hopkins is using immunotherapy before surgery in lung cancer. The immunotherapy shrinks tumors, brings immune cells to the cancer site and kept the cancer from coming back.
John Hopkins is conducting a study that uses a pancreatic cancer vaccine to see if it can generate an immune response before surgery to shrink tumors and make them more amenable to surgical removal. It brings cancer-killing T cells to pancreatic tumors with drugs that block two immune checkpoints
Breast Cancer: Because immunotherapy has only had a modest benefit to cure breast cancer, John Hopkins is doing clinical tests to combine immunotherapy drugs with other known inhibitors. They are also conducting clinical trials to predict the course of a given breast cancer and predicting its outcome. John Hopkins is also conducting research on better ways to detect breast cancer and prevent it.
John Hopkins Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute started the first of its kind multidisciplinary approach to better understand bladder cancer and improving its treatment. Survival rates doubled among immunotherapy patients.
Thoracic Center of Excellence received a grant to study the resistance of limited stage small cell lung cancer to a combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The goal is to find the causes and possible treatment for the causes and possible treatment for chemo radiation resistance and find new ways to target treatment resistance.
Originally published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
