The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients’ immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer.

Preliminary results from early clinical trials have shown the vaccine can trigger an immune response in patients and reduce levels of disease.

The scientists behind the vaccine now hope to conduct larger trials in patients to prove it can be effective against a range of different cancers.

They believe it could be used to combat small tumours if they are detected early enough or to help prevent the return and spread of disease in patients who have undergone other forms of treatment such as surgery.

Cancer cells usually evade patient’s immune systems because they are not recognised as being a threat. While the immune system usually attacks foreign cells such as bacteria, tumours are formed of the patient’s own cells that have malfunctioned.

Scientists have, however, found that a molecule called MUC1, which is found in high amounts on the surface of cancer cells, can be used to help the immune system detect tumours.

The new vaccine, developed by drug company Vaxil Biotheraputics along with researchers at Tel Aviv University, uses a small section of the molecule to prime the immune system so that it can identify and destroy cancer cells.

A statement from Vaxil Biotheraputics said: “ImMucin generated a robust and specific immune response in all patients which was observed after only 2-4 doses of the vaccine out of a maximum of 12 doses.

“In some of the patients, preliminary signs of clinical efficacy were observed.”

The results are still to be formally published but if further trials prove to be successful the vaccine could be available within six years.

As a therapeutic vaccine it is designed to be given to patients who are already suffering from cancer to help their bodies fight off the disease rather than to prevent disease in the first place.

Cancer cells contain high levels of MUC1 as it is thought to be involved helping tumours grow. Healthy human cells also contain MUC1, but have levels that are too low to trigger the immune system after vaccination.

When a vaccinated patient’s immune system encounters cancer cells, however, the far larger concentration of MUC1 causes it to attack and kill the tumour.

As MUC1 is found in 90 per cent of all cancers, the researchers believe it could be used to combat the growth and spread of a wide range of cancers.

In a safety trial at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, ten patients suffering from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, have now received the vaccine.

Seven of the patients have now finished the treatment and Vaxil reported that all of them had greater immunity against cancer cells compared to before they were given the vaccine.

Vaxil added that three patients are now free of detectable cancer following the treatment.

The findings support research published in the journal Vaccine, which showed the treatment induced “potent” immunity in mice and increased their survival from cancer.

Cancer charities have given the vaccine a cautious welcome, but warned further testing was needed before it could be approved for widespread use.

There are currently a number of other therapeutic vaccines against cancer being tested, but they have met with limited success.

Dr Kat Arney, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “There are several groups around the world investigating treatments that target MUC1, as it’s a very interesting target involved in several types of cancer.

“These are very early results that are yet to be fully published, so there’s a lot more work to be done to prove that this particular vaccine is safe and effective in cancer patients.” …

CONTINUED at The Telegraph.

Medical establishment seeks to chemically castrate ‘aberrant thoughts’.

As part of the headlong rush towards a Brave New World society, the establishment is feverishly pushing pharmaceutical drugs that chemically castrate an individual’s ‘aberrant thoughts’, with the latest proposal claiming that people can be given a drug to “cure” racism.

A study conducted by Oxford University experimental psychologist Dr Sylvia Terbeck into the heart disease drug Propranolol, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, found that the drug “may have the unusual side-effect of combating racism.”

“Volunteers given the beta-blocker, used to treat chest pains and lower heart rates, scored lower on a standard psychological test of “implicit” racist attitudes,” reports the Telegraph. “They appeared to be less racially prejudiced at a subconscious level than another group treated with a “dummy” placebo pill.”

The test subjects were shown images of people of different races along with positive and negative words. They were also asked to rate how “warm” their feelings were to different groups. Results showed that participants on the drug were more likely to be “biased towards being non-racist at a subconscious level” compared to those taking the placebo.

“Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis,” said Co-author Professor Julian Savulescu, from Oxford University’s Faculty of Philosophy.

By arguing that the widespread use of antidepressants like Prozac has established the ethical foundation of using drugs to alter thought patterns and behavior, scientists contend that “manipulating morals” through “pharmacologically-induced altruism” should also be acceptable.

And they’re right – it is acceptable – but only if you wish to create a society along the lines of Aldous Huxley’s fictional scientific dictatorship in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World. In the book, the consumption of the drug soma is universally endorsed by the ‘World State’ in order to destroy individuality, which is frowned upon as a mental illness, and eliminate the need for personal allegiances to religion or anything beyond the state itself.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

A UCSF study shows a popular treatment for a potentially blinding eye infection is just as effective if given every six months versus annually. This randomized study on trachoma, the leading cause of infection-caused blindness in the world, could potentially treat twice the number of patients using the same amount of medication.

“The idea is we can do more with less,” said Bruce Gaynor, MD, assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology. “We are trying to get as much out of the medicine as we can because of the cost and the repercussions of mass treatments.”

In a paper published this month in The Lancet, researchers conducted a cluster-randomized trial, using an antibiotic called azithromycin to treat trachoma in Ethiopia, which has among the highest prevalence in the world. They picked 24 communities and randomized the two treatment options: 12 villages were given azithromycin every six months and the other 12 were treated every 12 months.

“What we found was the prevalence of trachoma is very high at baseline. Forty to 50 percent of the children in these communities have this condition,” Gaynor said. “They are the most susceptible and it can quickly spread from person to person by direct or even indirect contact.”

Researchers tracked both groups and found the prevalence of infection decreased dramatically.

“We found that from as high as 40 percent, the prevalence of trachoma went way down, even eliminated in some villages regardless of whether it was treated in an annual way or a biannual way,” Gaynor said. “You can genuinely get same with less.”

Their finding is significant because of how easily the disease spreads. Trachoma can be transmitted through touching one’s eyes or nose after being in close contact with someone who is infected. It can also be spread through a towel or an article of clothing from a person who has trachoma. Even flies can transmit the disease.

CONTINUED at UCSF.

*Taken from Geekologie.

AIDS: like the shitty entertainment center my neighbor set by the road, nobody wants it. But now scientists believe they’re one step closer to a vaccine after discovering a method of attacking HIV before it’s able to compromise an immune system. Hey, sounds good to me. The sound of myself on voicemail messages?Terrible. Like a witch scraping her nails on a chalkboard to cats dying.

When HIV enters your body, one of the first things that it does is incorporate a special type of cholesterol into its outer membrane. It steals this cholesterol from one of our immune system cells, called a plasmacytoid dendritic cell, or pDC. pDCs are the cells that first recognize the HIV virus, and they’re supposed to instruct other parts of our immune system (like T-cells) to go after it, but once HIV has stolen the pDC cholesterol, it can “reprogram” the pDC cells so that they don’t do their job, screwing up our entire immune system and allowing the HIV to spread.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Business Insider.

A new drug developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could cure nearly any virus.

We’re not kidding.

Though still in its early stages, researchers think that the antiviral treatment — called Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Activated Caspase Oligomerizer (DRACO) — could be successful in combating any number of viral diseases. The treatment works by encouraging infected cells to commit cell suicide.

In preliminary testing, the drug proved effective against 15 different viruses — including H1N1 — yet nontoxic in 11 types of mammalian cells. It even proved capable of saving mice infected with H1N1 influenza.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Yahoo News.

Hundreds of albinos are thought to have been killed for black magic purposes in Tanzania and albino girls are being raped because of a belief they offer a cure for AIDS, a Canadian rights group said on Thursday.

At least 63 albinos, including children, are known to have been killed, mostly in the remote northwest of the country.

“We believe there are hundreds and hundreds of killings in Tanzania, but only a small number are being reported to the police,” Peter Ash, founder and director of Under The Same Sun (UTSS), told Reuters.

“There is belief that if you have relations with a girl with albinism, you will cure AIDS. So there are many girls with albinism who are being raped in this country because of this belief, which is a false belief.”

Around 1.4 million Tanzanians among a population of 40.7 million have the HIV virus that leads to AIDS.

Albino hunters kill their victims and harvest their blood, hair, genitals and other body parts for potions that witchdoctors say bring luck in love, life and business.

“(It is believed) a person with albinism is a curse. They are from the devil, they are not human, they do not die, they simply disappear,” said Ash.

Ernest Kimaya, head of the Tanzania Albino society and a sufferer of the pigment disorder, said social stigma prevented many girls from reporting rape, making it difficult to say how many albinos had been sexually abused.

“These things are taking place underground. Even the albino killings started quietly, before the atrocities were finally exposed in public,” Kimaya told Reuters.

Activists last week reported three murders of teenage albino boys from the same family in northern Tanzania, who were poisoned and their bones later robbed from their graves.

The Tanzanian government says it is determined to halt the macabre killings, but has been widely criticized for inaction.