Category Archives: Cancer Research

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Cold Sore Virus Could Hold Key to New Cancer Treatments

Cold Sores Are a Cure For Cancer?
Can the Cold Sore Virus be a Cure For Cancer?

“We’re trying to give cancer a cold sore,” is how Dr. Timothy Cripe, a pediatric oncologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, explains his team’s research on viral therapy. Viral therapy uses altered forms of common viruses, such as the herpes simplex virus that causes cold sores, to fight cancer. When injected into cancer tumors, viruses trigger the body’s immune system response and serve as bull’s eyes, allowing immune system cells to find and attack the tumors. To date, most viral therapy has focused on adult cancers. Dr. Cripe and his colleagues are among the first to research its potential to fight childhood cancers.

Earlier this year, research findings presented at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Switzerland showed promising results using modified herpes simplex virus to target liver and colorectal cancer cells. Scientists were successful in creating a genetically modified herpes virus that killed cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. One of the biggest problems with the most prevalent traditional cancer treatments — chemotherapy and radiation – is that they cast too wide a toxic net, killing both healthy and cancerous cells which can cause patients to suffer traumatic side effects.

Herpes simplex virus “doesn’t replicate in normal, healthy cells, so our hope is that it will help fight cancers without causing side effects in the rest of the body” Dr. Axel Mescheder of German biotech company MediGene said in a statement issued at the conference.

Viral therapy has the potential to join other successful, non-toxic cancer treatments such as targeted cell therapies and cancer vaccines in expanding the treatment horizons of immunotherapy.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Dendritic Cell Vaccines Are Changing Cancer Treatment Focus in the U.S.

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Cancer Vaccine
Cancer Vaccine

“When Angelina Jolie learns she has a breast cancer gene, we don’t know what else to do, so we cut her breasts off,” Dr. Susan Love, president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, recently told USA Today. “We have to be looking for the cause.  I worry that we don’t, that we’re paying too much attention to the treatment, which comes with a huge cost.”

Interviewed about the new U.S. push to develop a breast cancer vaccine, Dr. Love was voicing the frustration many feel about the focus of U.S. cancer research and treatment. Appearing to lag their European peers, U.S. cancer researchers are only now recognizing the importance of immunotherapy in treating cancer. Jumping on the bandwagon, many U.S. university centers are exploring immunotherapy’s holistic, non-toxic approach to cancer treatment and beginning to offer trials of dendritic cell vaccines. Issels already has more than half a century of clinical experience with immunotherapy and years of proven experience using dendritic cell vaccines.

At the University of Pennsylvania, doctors recently began testing personalized cancer vaccines made with the patient’s own immune cells. As noted in the USA Today article, in the Pennsylvania test women with an early cancerous condition called ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are being inoculated with an immunotherapy vaccine following surgical removal of breast tumors. It is hoped that the vaccination will prevent tumor recurrence; but trial participants will have to wait years before they know if the vaccine is effective.

At Issels you don’t have to wait. We already have a unique track record of long-term cancer remission results using cancer vaccines in integrative immunotherapy.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Tumor Microenvironment Holds Key to Cancer Prevention and Treatment

Laboratory microscope
Cancer Advancements at the Tumor Microenvironment Level

The importance the tumor microenvironment plays in the development and metastasis of cancer is turning a new page in cancer research, treatment and prevention. As scientists work to unlock cancer’s genetic code, they are developing new understandings into how cancer cells communicate and the switches that turn tumor development on and off. At the core of many new discoveries is the complex relationship between cancer tumor cells and the microenvironment in which they develop.

European cancer researchers were early to recognize the importance of the tumor microenvironment. According to a 2010 Italian study, “Microenvironment components play a pivotal role in the regulation of the angiogenic switch and in cancer progression.” (Angiogenesis is the growth of new blood vessels necessary for tumor growth.) The Italian study concluded:

“The comprehension of biological and molecular mechanisms involved in the relationship between tumor cells and the microenvironment could unveil new therapeutic and preventive approaches to cancer.”

Within two years, European cancer researchers were conducting clinical applications of cancer therapies that targeted the tumor microenvironment, which a 2012 Belgian study called “an essential ingredient of cancer malignancy.” According to researchers at the Laboratory of Tumor and Development Biology at the University of Liège:

“The malignant features of cancer cells cannot be manifested without an important interplay between cancer cells and their local environment. … Thus in the clinical setting the targeting of the tumor microenvironment to encapsulate or destroy cancer cells in their local environment has become mandatory.”

One thing that distinguishes Issels Integrated Oncology from other U.S. cancer treatment programs is our use of integrative immunotherapy to specifically target the cancer tumor microenvironment.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Research Initiative Broadens Search for a Breast Cancer Vaccine

Test tubes in a laboratory
Research Initiative Broadens Search for a Breast Cancer Vaccine

Cancer researchers are exploring multiple avenues in their quest to develop a preventative vaccine for breast cancer. As noted in our previous post, vaccines typically target a specific virus or bacteria which has complicated development of breast cancer vaccine.

Unlike the smallpox virus or polio virus which provided researchers with a clear target for vaccine development, breast cancer appears to have multiple causes, only some of which may be viral or bacterial. For example, the human mammary tumor virus (HMTV) is found in 40% of breast tumors. While HMTV’s role in tumor development is not yet understood, at best future development of a HMTV vaccine would have the potential to prevent fewer than half of breast cancers.

Despite the complexities, development of a breast cancer vaccine is a top priority among cancer researchers who are tiring of chasing treatments without addressing the cause of breast cancer. Voicing the frustration many members of the cancer community share, Fran Visco of the National Breast Cancer Coalition told USA Today that in the U.S. “the vast majority of research dollars [are spent] on the next treatment for breast cancer. But we only see incremental benefits from all of these treatment drugs.”

To spur research, NBCC has launched the Artemis Project, a breast cancer vaccine initiative. Some of the more promising research under way is attempting to define the tumor environment, such as the role infections and proteins play in tumor development. Once again, traditional medicine is following in the footsteps of Issels’ founder. Issels Integrative Oncology already offers dendritic cell vaccines and cell therapies that target the cancer tumor microenvironment.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Search Is on for Preventative Breast Cancer Vaccine

Cancer Vaccine
Searching for a Breast Cancer Vaccine

Searching for a vaccine to prevent breast cancer, traditional Western medicine is once again following in the footsteps of renowned cancer specialist Dr. Josef Issels, founder of Issels Integrative Oncology. Since the development of a preventative cervical cancer vaccine, scientists have been searching for vaccines that could be used to prevent other common cancers, including breast and prostate cancer. A common problem has been lack of a clear target.

Vaccines typically target a specific virus or bacteria, but scientists have not been able to isolate a single specific cause for breast cancer. Certain viruses are known to cause cancer. Human papillomavirus (HPV), for example, has been directly linked to cancers of the cervix, head and neck, vulva, vagina, penis and anus; and liver cancer can be caused by the virus Hepatitis B. While there are a number of different cancers that attack the breast and scientists speculate that breast cancer is likely to have multiple causes, the human mammary tumor virus (HMTV) is evident in 40% of all breast tumors. HMTV also seems to play a significant role in inflammatory breast cancer, a rare but deadly form of the disease.

The relationship between breast cancer and HMTV is not fully understood, but the virus has given cancer researchers a target for the development of a breast cancer vaccine that would spare women from subjecting their bodies to mastectomy, chemotherapy or radiation. Numerous vaccine initiatives are currently in progress, but personalized cancer vaccines that tap into the patient’s own immune system, like those already available at Issels appear to offer the greatest potential.

Next time: Vaccine initiatives

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Issels Cancer Vaccines Offer Non-Toxic Cancer Treatment Alternative

Sick Young Woman Lying in Bed --- Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis
There are non-toxic treatments for cancer. Find out what we do

Chemotherapy and radiation can be so toxic to the human body that some cancer patients choose to halt treatment rather than live through one more day of pain and misery. Traditional medicine’s standard cancer treatment weapons — chemotherapy and radiation — work by flooding the body with aggressively toxic chemicals or battering it with caustic radiation. The problem is that while these traditional cancer therapies do kill cancer cells, they also kill healthy cells, weakening and even damaging the body. For many cancer patients the physical and emotional cost of chemotherapy or radiation is simply too great. Alternative cancer therapies offer effective non-toxic cancer treatment options that work with the body to battle cancer.

Issels autologous cancer vaccines are prepared from the patient’s own blood to be non-toxic and immediately compatible with the patient’s system. Our cancer vaccines work with the body’s immune system to strengthen the patient’s natural immunity against cancer cells. Every day we are exposed to all sorts of bacteria, viruses, pollutants, diseases and other potentially hazardous elements. As these agents invade our bodies, our immune system goes on the attack, producing disease-fighting antibodies. These antibodies remain in the blood stream, our immune system responds and creates a powerful barrier to future exposure.

Issels cancer vaccines work in much the same way. Prepared from the patient’s own blood, Issels autologous cancer vaccines intensify immune system response and enhance the body’s ability to fight cancer.