Spermbots: The Future of Targeted Cancer Treatment?

Alternative Cancer Treatments
Alternative Cancer Treatments

One of the greatest challenges in targeted cancer therapy is achieving accurate delivery of the beneficial agent directly to the cancer cells you wish to affect. Researchers at the Institute for Integrative Nanoscience in Dresden, Germany are working on a novel solution to the problem. They are attempting to turn sperm cells into cancer treatment delivery agents.

The Germans were trying to build biobots, microscopic robots that could be controlled and directed from outside the body while surviving inside the body without damaging or being rejected by their host. After experimenting with numerous biologic materials, Discover Magazine recently reported that the researchers found a winner in sperm – specifically, the sperm from bulls (yes, the farm animal).

Strong and agile, modified sperm, called “spermbots” by the Germans, were able to deliver the propulsion the scientists desired. The ability to direct the sperm cells’ movement was achieved by exposing the sperm cells to a magnetic field in the laboratory and then using magnets to provide directional guidance. As explained in Discover Magazine, “It’s like a remote-control robot where the sperm start the engines and the researchers provide the navigation.”

While the research appears to have the greatest immediate potential for developing an in vivo, or inside the body, alternative to in vitro fertilization; the German scientists believe that human sperm cells could someday be used to deliver medicine and other beneficial agents directly to the body’s cells, potentially opening a new pathway for the delivery of advanced targeted cancer therapies. Even more boldly, they imagine a day when spermbots might be directed to “drill” into cancerous cells and actually cure cancer!

New Study: Many U.S. Lung Cancer Patients Are Undergoing Unnecessary Treatment

Lung Cancer
Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. for both men and women, killing more than 150,000 people a year. According to the American Lung Association, lung cancer is responsible for 28% of all cancer deaths, surpassing the combined fatality rate of the next three most common cancers: colon, breast and prostate cancer.

The high threat of fatality has made aggressive treatment of all lung cancers standard practice in the United States. A new study that is being labeled “provocative,” by the American press, indicates that many lung cancer patients have endured painful surgery, chemotherapy and radiation needlessly. According to the Duke University Medical Center study, nearly 1 in 5 lung tumors detected by CT scans are too slow-growing to warrant treatment, much less the radical treatment that has become standard procedure among practitioners of Western medicine.

As Dr. Len Litchtenfeld of the National Cancer Institute explained to USA Today, the Duke study suggests that for every 10 lives saved by CT lung cancer screening, about 14 people will have been diagnosed with a lung cancer that does not require radical treatment. What that means is that 3 out of every 5 people diagnosed with lung cancer are likely to suffer through the pain, suffering, worry and expense of cancer surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments that may be unnecessary.

For patients with slow-growing lung cancers, the study suggests that refusing to undergo invasive treatments would not alter the patient’s health or life expectancy in any noticeable way. Integrated immunotherapy offers many lung cancer patients a welcome, non-toxic treatment option. Visit our website to find out more about our non-toxic cancer treatments.

Immunotherapy: The Living Drug

Immunotherapy Cancer Treatment
Immunotherapy Cancer Treatment

Discussing the targeted gene therapy that has produced such amazing results with leukemia patients (see our previous post), researchers referred to the body’s immune system as a “living drug.” While oversimplifying the immune system’s complex role in fighting cancer, the description is a useful one, particularly for people brought up in the culture of Western medicine.

Driven by the pharmaceutical industry, Western medicine has evolved a largely external approach to medical practice. In treating cancer, traditional practitioners emphasize surgery, chemotherapy and radiation; treatments that are performed on the body and treat the body as either a foe or passive player in the treatment process.

But the body is far from passive. As respected practitioners of science-based alternative cancer treatments know from years of clinical experience, the body is an extremely active participant in fighting disease and maintaining health. Tasked with protecting the body from harmful invaders, the body’s own immune system is cancer’s most potent foe. Immunotherapy puts this “living drug” to good use, optimizing the immune system’s ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells and repair the damage they cause.

If traditional medicine looks outside the body for cures, then integrated immunotherapy might be considered an internal approach to the practice of medicine. Immunotherapy works with, not against, your body, working from the inside to boost the strength and response of your body’s own natural defense system.

Integrated immunotherapy is not a new approach. Issels alternative cancer treatment centers have been practicing integrated immunotherapy with excellent results for more than half a century. But Western medicine is only now beginning to recognize the body’s amazing power to heal itself.

Gene Therapy Shows ‘Unprecedented Success’ Against Blood Cancers

Gene Therapy
Gene Therapy

Advanced genetically-targeted treatments are proving to be remarkably successful against leukemia and other blood cancers. Here’s what the Associated Press had to say:

“In one of the biggest advances against leukemia and other blood cancers in many years, doctors are reporting unprecedented success by using gene therapy to transform patients’ blood cells into soldiers that seek and destroy cancer.”

In tests by six different research groups, blood cancer patients who received gene therapy showed survival rates that researchers called “stunning.” In one study, all but three of the 27 patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia achieved complete remission with targeted genetic therapy. While a few of those patients have since relapsed, the therapy success rate remains impressive.

Before undergoing genetic immunotherapy, these leukemia patients had undergone chemotherapy and stem cell or bone-marrow transplants without success. If additional tests achieve similar results, researchers believe eventual approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration may be possible.

The gene therapy that has the U.S. research community cheering involves a blood filtering process that removes T-cells from the patient’s blood, adds a targeting gene and returns the cells to the patient by transfusion. Called “a living drug” by researchers, the altered T-cells multiply in patient’s body, strengthening the patient’s immune response and ability to fight cancer.

While being heralded by traditional Western medical practitioners as “new,” Issels , an alternative cancer treatment center, has been using similar advanced genetically-targeted cancer therapies as part of our individualized integrative immunotherapy program for years. Our non-toxic autologous vaccine program employs a similar blood transfusion mechanism to boost the body’s immune system response.

Immune Cells May Hold Key to Brain Cancer Treatment

Immune Cells
Immune Cells

The immune system is your body’s natural protective force. When cancer cells develop or when foreign substances invade your body, your immune system goes on the attack, sending specialized cells to target these “foreign” invaders.

Highly specialized immune system cells called microglia protect the brain. While examining brain cancer tumors in diseased mice, Canadian researchers found deactivated microglia. When these cells were reactivated, the mice lived two to three times longer than untreated mice with the same type of brain tumor.

A joint effort by research teams at the University of Calgary Hotchkiss Brain Institute and Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute, the discovery may eventually lead to new immunotherapy treatments for brain cancer, although researchers say additional research is needed before clinical trials can be contemplated. The Canadian study focused on glioblastoma tumors, the deadliest form of brain cancer. Fifteen months is the median survival rate for glioblastoma patients. Even with currently available treatments, fewer than one in 20 pass the five-year survival mark.

In Medical News Today (MNT), study author V. Wee Yong, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Neuroimmunology, explained that inactivated microglia are a normal result of the battle between immune cells and cancer cells. Over time, aggressive tumor cells can overwhelm the brain’s immune system, deactivating its defender cells. Reactivating these cells can “tip the battle in favor of the brain to suppress the tumor,” Yong said.

The Canadians used a highly caustic drug to restore function to the brain’s immune cells. Issels cancer treatments strengthen and enhance immune system function using non-toxic integrated immunotherapy to avoid the destructive side effects of harsh drugs.

How Do T-Cells Help Fight Cancer?

T Cells
T Cells

Cancer cells appear to a well-functioning immune system as “foreign” cells. When cancer cells develop the immune system swings into action, using a dual action force to knock them out just as it does with foreign invaders. First your immune system launches innate responders like Natural Killer Cells to seek out and attack these cells (see our previous post). Your body’s first line of defense against cancer cells, viruses, bacteria and other harmful substances, Natural Killer Cells are the equivalent of the immune system’s Seal Team 6.

Adaptive responders like T-cells provide the immune system’s second wave of defense. Like an army’s occupying force, T-cells support Natural Killer Cells and other immune system “specialists” to provide your body with continuous, long-term protection.

Like Natural Killer Cells, T-Cells are a type of lymphocyte that originates in the bone marrow. T-cells eventually migrate to the thymus from which they get the “T” in their name. A specialized organ of the immune system, the thymus straddles the trachea and is located in the lower neck below the thyroid gland. In the thymus, T-cells undergo their final stage of maturation and receive their marching orders.

There are several different types of T-cells, each tasked with playing a specific role in helping with the recognition, attack and destruction of cancer cells and harmful invaders.

Issels Autologous Vaccine stimulates the formation and activation of T-cells. When used in conjunction with Issels integrative immunotherapy, autologous vaccines can strengthen and enhance your body’s immune system response to cancer cells. Visit our website to find out more.