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: How
breast cancer avoids immune system detection.
“The team broke
the data down into different groups and identified seven clusters of breast
cancer patients based on the immune evasion mechanisms that breast cancer uses
to avoid detection. Some of the types even used a combination of ways to hide
from the immune system.”
The idea of breast
cancer cells hiding from the body’s immune system brought to mind a movie I saw
in the mid-70s called “Thief In The Night”. In it, life was going on fine and
dandy for the Christian Church when suddenly, all the Christians disappeared in
an even called the Rapture of the Church. At that point, becoming a Christian
(the disappearance of their Christian friends made some people realize that
what they’d said was TRUE…) but at the cost of their lives (sort of like
becoming a Christian in several Muslim countries now).
A Biblical figure
called the Anti-Christ appeared – sort of out of nowhere, from whence the title
of the movie comes, which was lifted from the Bible: 1 Thessalonians 5:2 “For
you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a
thief in the night.”
The upshot of this
is that breast cancer is NOT like other cancers. It’s sneaky.
It is a thief – I don’t
think even the most devout atheist would argue that breast cancer is a thief
that steals life, love, peace, and joy. At least at first.
Why were they
sifting through the data? Because the majority of breast cancers have proven resistant
to immunotherapy – “…also called biologic therapy…a type of cancer treatment
that boosts the body's natural defenses to fight cancer. It uses substances
made by the body or in a laboratory to improve or restore immune system function.
Immunotherapy may work by stopping or slowing the growth of cancer cells.” It creates
a double problem – any cancers that travel from the original breast cancer site
and lodge elsewhere causing metastatic cancers – are also untreatable with the
newer immunotherapies.
The end result for
this team of researchers: “Knowing more about breast cancer tumors and how they
work will give oncologists more tools to treat patients, whether it is with
yet-to-be developed immunotherapy drugs or the traditional combination of
chemotherapy and radiation, researchers said. It may also help researchers
design clinical trials for potential drugs…Cancer treatment isn't as
personalized as it should be…We've been trying to understand what's really
going on with these tumors and how they operate. That way doctors can
ultimately better treat their patients.”
If researchers can
design new “security systems” in the body to protect it from both breast cancer
and for blocking breast cancer cells from invading other parts of the body,
then we can better prevent this “life-thief” from stealing more from us.
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