Steven Rosenberg has pioneered first clinical protocols of the adoptive cell transfer for treatment of advanced stages of cancer.

In 1988 he published results of the first adoptive cell transfer (tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes = TIL) protocol used in 20 patients with metastatic melanoma.

So what has changed over the past 20 years?
You go to read and find out!

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) using autologous tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes has emerged as the most effective treatment for patients with metastatic melanoma and can mediate objective cancer regression in approximately 50% of patients.

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Pangea Day 2008 is coming on May 10!
Do not miss this remarkable event!

I’m really thrilled by this genius idea. Definitely will participate.

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Cancer Research Blog Carnival (CRBC) is on!
Welcome to the May 2, 2008 (#9) edition!

I would like to start with the news from one of the top cancer research conferences - American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which was held on April 12-16 in San Diego, California.

Kamel at BayBlab presents AACR Mini-Carnival about some reports from conference.

Charls Daney at Science and Reason reviews about TOR signaling and ovarian cancer, including report from AACR.
Researchers from Yale University identified ovarian cancer stem cells for the first time. The same team in the preclinical study shows that the drug NV-128, developed by Novogen, induces the death of ovarian cancer cells by halting activation of mTOR pathway.

Read more about advances in cancer stem cells, reported at AACR, on ScienceDaily - The Role Of Cancer-initiating Cells In Diagnosis And Treatment

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This question ask everybody who choose scientific path in the life. Jonathan Yewdell - professor immunologist at NIH give a lot of very good advices and tips for young biomedical scientists in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.

Biomedical research has never been more intellectually exciting or practically important to society. Ironically, pursuing a career as a biomedical scientist has never been more difficult. Here I provide unvarnished advice for young biomedical scientists on the difficulties that lie ahead and on how to find the right laboratories for training in the skills that you will need to succeed.

Cartoon by Alexander Dent

Making discoveries is the most important part of being a scientist, and also the most fun. Young scientists need to develop the experimental and mental skill sets that enable them to make discoveries, including how to recognize and exploit serendipity when it strikes.

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Readers, if you have some amount of money (I doubt it, but anyway) and thinking where to invest, read this or just read this post.

Recent RegenMed Industry report, published by Canadian MaRS Venture Group in December 2007, available now on MaRS blog.

After 30 years of research, many regenerative medicine technologies are in development and approaching commercialization.
The main force driving the growth of the regenerative medicine market is both compelling and well known: demographic trends are putting pressure on healthcare. The U.S. alone spent an estimated $2.2T, or 16% of GDP, on healthcare in 2006 – a number that is expected to reach $4.1T by 2016. In this context, it is not surprising that the current market for regenerative medicines is $3.6B and growing. Conservative estimates suggest that the global market for regenerative medicine will reach between $11.5B to $20B by 2010 with a projected CAGR of 27.5%. U.S. sales of commercially available stem cell therapies alone were already $10M in the first half of 2007.

I like this model from the Report:

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I’m continuing stories about leukemic stem cells (LSC) because it’s “the billion dollar question” according Michael Clarke, and maybe a new hope for leukemia patients to live a normal life without relapses.

It was proposed by John Dick group at University of Toronto that acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) arises from a specific minor population of cells - leukemia initiating cells (LIC) in humans.

All of LIC studies are based on well done experimental xenotransplantation assay. Researchers take human leukemia samples, sort out candidates for LIC, and transplant them into the immunodeficient mice, which are not able to reject human hematopoietic cells. The LIC or cancer stem cells, the cells that make transferable disease in a serial transplant (from one mouse to another and further), have an ability to self-renew. So, Dick and collegues show that only CD34+/CD38- cells, sorted from human AML sample can transfer disease from mouse to mouse, but not other populations. It seems like it’s not the case for human lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) - the most common hematological malignancy in childhood. A new study, from Japan, published online in Leukemia journal, shows that in B-cell ALL progenitors as well as stem cells could initiate and transfer disease.

This study is complementary to recently publish work, identifying LIC for ALL. Both studies used CD34+/CD38-/CD19+ cells like an LIC. CD19 - is common B-cell marker. Authors found that both CD34+/CD38+/CD19+ (progenitor) and CD34+/CD38-/CD19+ (stem) cells initiate B-ALL. Both populations equally caused malignant diseases in primary and secondary recepients.

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