bone cancer

New drug could extend lives of people with deadly bone cancer

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Mice treated with the med lived 50% longer.

an x-ray of a human pelvis

One in three people with primary bone cancer will die within five years of diagnosis — but a new drug has the potential to help patients live longer without subjecting them to painful or unpleasant treatments.

The challenge: Cancer that starts in the bones is rare, with fewer than 4,000 new diagnoses every year in the US. However, 25% of those cases are people under the age of 20, and because bone cancer spreads rapidly, treatments are often drastic.

“Currently children have to undergo very toxic treatment, which has very unpleasant and sometimes life-long side effects, and sometimes life-changing amputation,” said co-author Alison Gartland from the University of Sheffield.

“It would be a much kinder treatment for children with bone cancer.”Darrell Green

What’s new? Now, Garland and colleagues from the University of East Anglia (UEA) are developing a new bone cancer treatment that they hope will not only be more effective, but also more tolerable for patients.

For their latest study, the team used sequencing technology to analyze bone and tumor samples donated by 19 patients. This led to the discovery that a gene called RUNX2 is activated in bone cancer.

According to the researchers, the protein this gene expresses is not usually required by normal cells, but it does help bone cancer spread, so they developed a drug, called “CADD522,” that blocks its effect.

“We want to save lives and reduce the amount of disability caused by surgery.”Darrell Green

In preclinical trials of mice implanted with human bone cancer, CADD522 increased metastasis-free survival rates by 50%. That means treated animals lived 50% longer than untreated animals before they had to be put down due to effects of their cancer spreading.

“The new drug that we have developed is effective in all of the main bone cancer subtypes and, so far, our experiments show that it is not toxic to the rest of the body,” lead researcher Darrell Green from the UEA told BBC News.

“This means that it would be a much kinder treatment for children with bone cancer, compared to the grueling chemotherapy and life-changing limb amputation that patients receive today,” he continued.

Looking ahead: The drug is now undergoing more testing so that the researchers will have the data needed to seek approval for a clinical trial. 

Many treatments that work in mice don’t translate to people, but Green — who lost a childhood friend to bone cancer — is optimistic about this one.

“Ultimately, we want to save lives and reduce the amount of disability caused by surgery,” he said, “and now we have developed a new drug that potentially promises to do just that.”

World’s First Head Transplant A Success After Nineteen Hour Operation

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A 36-year-old man has undergone the world’s first successful head transplant. The ground-breaking operation took a team of surgeons nineteen hours to complete and has allowed the patient to be cancer-free.

Paul Horner, who was diagnosed with bone cancer five years ago, was on the verge of death when he was approved for the controversial and possibly deadly operation.

Doctor Tom Downey, who was part of the South African team who carried out the operation, told CNN he is thrilled about the results.

“It’s a massive breakthrough,” Downey said. “We’ve proved that it can be done – we can give someone a brand new body that is just as good, or better, than their previous one. The success of this operation leads to infinite possibilities.”

Surgeons at Charlotte Maxexe Johannesburg Academic Hospital inJohannesburg carried out the operation in February but waited until they could confirm it was successful before they made any public statement.

Downey spoke to reporters about the complexity behind the first ever head transplant.

“This procedure is another excellent example of how medical research, technical know-how and patient-centered care can be combined in the quest to relieve human suffering.”

The operation was led by Professor Myron Danus and took place on February 10th of this year.

“Our goal is for Horner to be fully functional in two years and so far we are very pleased by his rapid recovery,” said Danus. “Before the operation, Horner’s body was riddled with cancer and he had less than a month to live. We were fortunate enough to find a donor body; a 21-year-old man who has been brain dead from a serious car accident that happened in 2012. The boys body worked just fine, but his brain was not functioning whatsoever, and there was absolutely no chance of recovery.” Danus continued, “We received approval from the young man’s parents to use their sons body to do the operation. They were extremely happy their son could save a life even in the vegetated state that he was in.”

Doctors say Horner has made an 85% recovery; walking, talking and doing the normal things a healthy individual does.

The Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, nicknamed Joburg Gen is an accredited general hospital in Parktown, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. It has 1,088 beds. The hospital’s professional and support staff exceeds 4,000 people.

Even though Horner lives in the United States, the first-of-its-kind operation had to be done overseas in a location where the medical guidelines are not as strict.

Watch the video. URL: https://youtu.be/5_sCUM0PfOk