Educate-Yourself.org-Immortality Protein May Offer Cancer Vaccine

Immortality Protein May Offer Cancer Vaccine

[Editor's Note: This news article is an example of where the public's concepts, ideas, and opinions about cancer are formed: from what they read in the newspapers (or internet news services). This is also where the misinformation, distortions, lies, and omissions about cancer and cancer therapies are created. So many people go into a flight of panic and make rash decisions about their treatment when they are told they have cancer because of the impression they have gleaned from cancer oncologists and newspaper stories. For the past 70 years or so, propaganda from orthodox medicine and their overlords in the pharmaceuticals have been flaying the same dead horse.

They keep telling the public that they are fervently searching for "the cure" for cancer. Well, they're never going discover "the cure", because they don't understand the disease and why it occurs. Orthodox medical science continues to look for a mechanical answer to what they view as a mechanical problem. Today, their propaganda is focused on gene splicing and cancer 'vaccines'. Yesterday, it was isolating the 'virus' that caused cancer. Their methods for treating cancer (surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy) have the WORST track record of ALL cancer therapies (92% failure rate) because they are attempting to address a SYSTEMIC, FUNCTIONAL problem with a mechanical solution. It doesn't work and it never will work. Learn about alternative, natural cancer healing therapies BEFORE you get a diagnosis of cancer and save yourself the grief, the pain, the lies, the money, and -above all- save your life. Telomeres and telomerase is important information to know about for longevity and health, but not in the way that it's being proposed here.]

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000829/sc/cancer_vaccine_dc_1.html
8-30-00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An enzyme that cancer cells use to keep themselves ``immortal'' might provide a target for a universal cancer vaccine, researchers said on Tuesday.

Experiments in mice suggest a vaccine based on the enzyme telomerase might work against a range of cancers, a team at Duke University in North Carolina and Geron Corp. reported.

``The question posed in the study was whether the telomerase-based vaccine can stimulate an immune response from cancer patients, and whether those cells can attack and kill the patient's tumor cells,'' Eli Gilboa, director of the Center for Genetic and Cellular Therapies at Duke, said in a statement. ``The results of this study are the first indication that a more broadly applicable cancer vaccine might be possible.''

The findings, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, are a long way from being of any help to human cancer patients. Researchers say it is one thing to affect cancer in mice and quite another to treat it in people. But the scientists said they were intrigued and had already started testing their ``vaccine'' in human cells.

Cancer is caused by defects in DNA, the basic genetic material. All chromosomes, which carry the DNA, also have little caps on each end called telomeres.

Each time a cell divides, these telomeres become a little more frayed. When they are too worn out, the cell dies. But when cells become cancerous, they produce an enzyme known as telomerase. It can renew the telomeres and lets the cells reproduce out of control, eventually to form a tumor.

Gilboa's team found that the active part of telomerase can stimulate development of immune cells that can kill several different kinds of mouse and human cancers.Many researchers are working on cancer vaccines. But there are many different kinds of cancers, and the cells often have their own specific surface proteins that the vaccines target. These proteins are known as tumor-specific antigens.

``The thinking has been that because every cancer is different -- melanoma, breast, et cetera -- that each cancer has its own specific set of antigens that must be used for a vaccine,'' said Gilboa. ``We're looking for a universal antigen -- one antigen to try to treat every cancer patient.''

Telomerase might do the trick, he said.

'`However, by itself, telomerase is not a strong antigen, so to make an effective, broadly applicable cancer vaccine we will need to optimize and possibly combine it with other universal antigens,'' he added. His team's vaccine stimulated an immune response that slowed tumor growth of melanoma, breast and bladder cancers implanted into mice.

It also worked in human cells in laboratory dishes, they reported. The cells produced immune responses that killed a variety of patients' cancer cells in the lab.

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All information posted on this web site is the opinion of the author and is provided for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as medical advice. Only a licensed medical doctor can legally offer medical advice in the United States. Consult the healer of your choice for medical care and advice.