The one person I knew who was afflicted with brain cancer was a musician in Rhode Island and he was widely-loved. Medicine could not save him but the latest research shows there may now be a way of being able to combat such cancers. (Science Daily: Malaria drug successfully treats 26-year-old brain cancer patient)
I wrote a song for his wife at the time and this article absolutely will not be used to pimp the song but it's a measure of the impact from the loss.
After her brain cancer became resistant to chemotherapy and then to targeted treatments, 26-year-old Lisa Rosendahl's doctors gave her only a few months to live. Now a paper published January 17 in the journal eLife describes a new drug combination that has stabilized Rosendahl's disease and increased both the quantity and quality of her life: Adding the anti-malaria drug chloroquine to her treatment stopped an essential process that Rosendahl's cancer cells had been using to resist therapy, re-sensitizing her cancer to the targeted treatment that had previously stopped working. Along with Rosendahl, two other brain cancer patients were treated with the combination and both showed similar, dramatic improvement.
- SD
A comment from her doctor:
"Lisa is a young adult with a very strong will to live. But it was a high-risk, aggressive glioblastoma and by the time we started this work, she had already tried everything. For that population, survival rates are dismal. Miraculously, she had a response to this combination. Four weeks later, she could stand and had improved use of her arms, legs and hands," says paper first author Jean Mulcahy-Levy, MD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital Colorado.
- SD
'Miracle' is a big word for scientists to throw around and they won't do that casually.
In demonstration of the newness of this approach and the seriousness with which it is being taken:
The science behind the innovative, off-label use of this malaria drug, chloroquine, was in large part built in the lab of Andrew Thorburn, PhD, deputy director of the CU Cancer Center, where Mulcahy-Levy worked as a postdoctoral fellow, starting in 2009. Thorburn's lab studies a cellular process called autophagy. From the Greek "to eat oneself," autophagy is a process of cellular recycling in which cell organelles called autophagosomes encapsulate extra or dangerous material and transport it to the cell's lysosomes for disposal. In fact, the first description of autophagy earned the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for its discoverer, Yoshinori Ohsumi.
- SD
We can't tell from the article how soon this might be a generally available therapy but it may not be so long.
Research accompanying these results in patients implies that the addition of autophagy inhibition to targeted treatments may have benefits beyond glioblastoma and beyond only BRAF+ cancers. Because chloroquine has already earned FDA approval as a safe and effective (and inexpensive) treatment for malaria, the paper points out that it should be possible to "quickly test" the effectiveness of adding autophagy inhibition to a larger sample of BRAF+ glioblastoma and other brain tumor patients, and also to possibly expand this treatment to other likely mutations and disease sites.
- SD
We have no clever punchline but we do have this.
Lisa recently bought a new wheelchair so that she could spend more time at the mall. She also applied for a handicap sticker to make it easier for her to visit a nearby park with food trucks. "She wants to get out and do more. She continues to have what she feels is a good quality of life," Mulcahy-Levy says.
- SD
Lisa is a young lady who was previously given only months to live. 'Miraculous' does not seem inappropriate.
I wrote a song for his wife at the time and this article absolutely will not be used to pimp the song but it's a measure of the impact from the loss.
After her brain cancer became resistant to chemotherapy and then to targeted treatments, 26-year-old Lisa Rosendahl's doctors gave her only a few months to live. Now a paper published January 17 in the journal eLife describes a new drug combination that has stabilized Rosendahl's disease and increased both the quantity and quality of her life: Adding the anti-malaria drug chloroquine to her treatment stopped an essential process that Rosendahl's cancer cells had been using to resist therapy, re-sensitizing her cancer to the targeted treatment that had previously stopped working. Along with Rosendahl, two other brain cancer patients were treated with the combination and both showed similar, dramatic improvement.
- SD
A comment from her doctor:
"Lisa is a young adult with a very strong will to live. But it was a high-risk, aggressive glioblastoma and by the time we started this work, she had already tried everything. For that population, survival rates are dismal. Miraculously, she had a response to this combination. Four weeks later, she could stand and had improved use of her arms, legs and hands," says paper first author Jean Mulcahy-Levy, MD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital Colorado.
- SD
'Miracle' is a big word for scientists to throw around and they won't do that casually.
In demonstration of the newness of this approach and the seriousness with which it is being taken:
The science behind the innovative, off-label use of this malaria drug, chloroquine, was in large part built in the lab of Andrew Thorburn, PhD, deputy director of the CU Cancer Center, where Mulcahy-Levy worked as a postdoctoral fellow, starting in 2009. Thorburn's lab studies a cellular process called autophagy. From the Greek "to eat oneself," autophagy is a process of cellular recycling in which cell organelles called autophagosomes encapsulate extra or dangerous material and transport it to the cell's lysosomes for disposal. In fact, the first description of autophagy earned the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for its discoverer, Yoshinori Ohsumi.
- SD
We can't tell from the article how soon this might be a generally available therapy but it may not be so long.
Research accompanying these results in patients implies that the addition of autophagy inhibition to targeted treatments may have benefits beyond glioblastoma and beyond only BRAF+ cancers. Because chloroquine has already earned FDA approval as a safe and effective (and inexpensive) treatment for malaria, the paper points out that it should be possible to "quickly test" the effectiveness of adding autophagy inhibition to a larger sample of BRAF+ glioblastoma and other brain tumor patients, and also to possibly expand this treatment to other likely mutations and disease sites.
- SD
We have no clever punchline but we do have this.
Lisa recently bought a new wheelchair so that she could spend more time at the mall. She also applied for a handicap sticker to make it easier for her to visit a nearby park with food trucks. "She wants to get out and do more. She continues to have what she feels is a good quality of life," Mulcahy-Levy says.
- SD
Lisa is a young lady who was previously given only months to live. 'Miraculous' does not seem inappropriate.
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