From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…
Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast
cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites,
journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and
share them with you. Today:
Effect of
neoadjuvant chemotherapy on tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and PD-L1 expression
in breast cancer and its clinical significance
Whew!
In plain English?
Neoadjuvant: sometimes
doctors will use chemo to shrink tumors they’ve discovered BEFORE they do
lumpectomies or even radical mastectomies. They’re discovering that not only
does the chemo shrink the tumors, they also seem to boost the body’s own
immunity response.
Some other terms I
came across in reading the article I linked to below:
Immune markers: Cluster
of Differentiation (abbreviated as CD) is a method used to identify and
investigate the outside of certain molecules that are targets on cancer cells
for chemotherapy. CD molecules can act in many ways, often acting as receptors
or molecules that turn receptors on that are important to the cell. When a cell
gets a certain set of signals, the behavior of the cell can change. Other CDs
cause cells to stick together.
Tumor infiltrating
lymphocytes: white blood cells (the ones that fight infections) that, when they
increase makes it more likely that a breast cancer patient will STAY cancer
free.
Programmed death
ligand 1 – (the PD L1 in the title of the article) an increase in this protein
ALLOWS cancer cells to grow by stifling the production of cancer-toxic cells in
the area around a tumor.
The cells that
fight cancer secrete cytotoxins – “cell poisons” – that exert anti-tumor activity
by causing a response that destroys chemo-damaged cells. That may then lead to
your own immune system kicking in to fight the cancer. The balancing act comes
from the possibility that the chemo that damages the cancer cells MIGHT kill
the lymphocytes that are supposed to kill the tumor cells…
So, all together:
current research is studying the effect of shrinking tumors with chemotherapy
making it so that there will be LESS surgery, and that when there IS surgery,
it’s not as invasive. As well, the use of neoadjuvant therapy can also
stimulate the body’s own immune system – but there is a fine line between
initiating your own body to protect itself and destroying that same defense
system.
We’ll see how far
we can get in the future – there may conceivably come a time when at the first
sign of certain types of breast cancer, doctors start the tumor-shrinking
therapy, followed by the removal of what remains, and the “hyper-activation” of
the body’s own defenses to complete the treatment.
Now THAT will be a
brighter tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment