A student with advanced cancer addresses his peers: ‘Be gallant, be great, be gracious, and be grateful’

“Be gallant, be great, be gracious, and be grateful.”

That was the message that Jake Bailey, a senior at Christchurch Boys’ High School in New Zealand, told his peers in a recent speech after he was diagnosed with advanced cancer. In fact, Bailey did not know until the last minute whether or not he’d be allowed out of the hospital to attend the ceremonial event in between intense chemotherapy sessions.

Now the student’s words are reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world after his inspirational speech created a sensation online. Bailey spoke at an awards ceremony at Christchurch Boys’ High School, where he serves as “senior monitor,” or senior class leader.

Seated in a wheelchair, Bailey told his peers that he’d written a speech before learning he’d been diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma, a cancer that grows rapidly in the lymph system.

“They said you’ve got cancer,” Bailey said. “They said if you don’t get any treatment in the next three weeks you’re going to die. And then they told me I wouldn’t be here tonight to deliver that speech. But luckily that speech isn’t about what is to come. It’s about what an amazing year it’s been.”

Headmaster Nic Hill said that Bailey’s speech has motivated countless notes of appreciation and said that despite the grim diagnosis the student’s prognosis is good.

“Jake Bailey is an inspiration,” Hill wrote on the school’s Web site. “I couldn’t have more respect for Jake as a leader and someone who has inspired people throughout the world. Jake’s many attributes will help him through this battle and we’ll be with him every step of the way.”

Bailey told his classmates that he at first was intimidated by the prospect of serving as senior monitor, responsible for leading his peers. But he told them that he found “moral strength” in their friendship.

“Here’s the thing: none of us get out of life alive,” Bailey told them. “So be gallant, be great, be gracious and and be grateful for the opportunities that you have, the opportunity to learn from the men who have walked before you and those who walk beside you.”

After Bailey’s emotional speech, students in the audience spontaneously honored him with a traditional maori haka dance as a sign of respect for the ailing student. Bailey responded by whispering “Thank you.”

Source from :https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/11/10/a-student-with-advanced-cancer-addresses-his-peers-be-gallant-be-great-be-gracious-and-be-grateful/

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How scorpions became an unlikely ally in the fight against cancer

           Jim Olson is a paediatric oncologist whose research is being talked about around the world thanks to some innovative thinking – and scorpions. Based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, he leads a team whose biggest success is “tumour paint”, a drug that attaches to cancer cells, lighting them up so it is easier for surgeons to operate successfully.

The paint was developed from chlorotoxin found in scorpion venom and is currently being tested in clinical trials. So excited was Olson, 52, by this discovery that he had the knot of bonds at the centre of the chlorotoxin molecule tattooed on his upper arm. Decorating his office are framed photographs of his patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital, who are clearly the motivation for his work: he is driven by a desire to tell more parents their children will survive.

His quiet, unassuming manner belies the passion and energy with which Olson approaches life – both at work and in his leisure time when he cooks, cycles and kayaks (his team won a national title in 2012) with gusto.

He remains close to many of the families he meets and is a tireless campaigner, successfully using social media and crowdfunding to publicise and raise money for his research.

Your biggest success is “tumour paint”, which makes cancer cells easier to spot during brain surgery and is now in five human clinical trials. How was this developed?
We had a patient who had brain tumour surgery in 2004, which left much of her tumour behind because the surgeon thought it was normal brain and didn’t want to paralyse her. When we realised how much was left behind and the problem for the surgeon not being able to easily distinguish cancer from normal brain, we committed to developing a technology that would light up the cancer. We focused on the scorpion toxin chlorotoxin, because what was thought to be the target of that molecule was present on brain tumour cells but not on brain cells. I figured that if there was ever a creature that could get a molecule into the brain, it would be the scorpion because they need to paralyse their prey. So we grew a human tumour on the back of a mouse; we connected the toxin (from the deathstalker scorpion) to a fluorescent tag and injected it into the mouse, and a couple of hours later the cancer was brightly glowing. It was a very exciting day.

As well as lighting them up, can this scorpion molecule also deliver chemotherapy drugs to tumours?
This wouldn’t be the right molecule to do that because a fair amount of it also goes to the liver and the spleen. If we put a toxin on it, it would also wipe out those normal organs. Through our current research we’ve identified a different molecule from a different organism – a grasshopper – that goes to cancer but much less to the liver and spleen. That’s the foundation for our future work.


Does tumour paint work for other cancers?
 
In prior work, the tumour paint molecule, known as BLZ-100, lit up a variety of cancers in dogs. Now scientists at Blaze Bioscience [the spin-off company co-founded by Olson which is running the ongoing human clinical trials] have reported that in skin cancer patients, the BLZ-100 signal was present in nearly all cases of confirmed cancer and was absent in most cases where the pathologist determined that the skin lesion was not cancer.

What is the difference between tumour paint and fluorescent imaging with 5-ALA that is approved for use in Europe but not the United States?
 
With 5-ALA surgeons can often get a better resection and patients a better outcome than without it. It does have some limitations. When there’s a brain tumour and the blood-brain barrier (which keeps nasty things out of our brain) is disrupted, the 5-ALA will get in there and light up that area. The challenge is that sometimes there are parts of the tumour where the blood-brain barrier is not interrupted, it’s intact, and so those don’t light up with 5-ALA. We set out to find a molecule that crosses the blood-brain barrier so it could light up tumours either way, whether the blood-brain barrier is intact or not, and where the drug actually binds to each cancer cell and goes inside the cancer cell and makes them glow so that surgeons can see cell by cell. We hope it will be much more accurate.

What drives your work?
 
Each week when I go to clinic, I ask myself: “What are we going to do today that I don’t want to be doing in 20 years, and how can my lab play a role in changing that?”

Why did you decide to go into paediatric oncology?
 
I took care of a little girl who passed away. Her parents told me that my words with them made her death as beautiful as her birth and that through the conversations we’d had, they’d learned that a life could be seven years long or 70 years long and what mattered was the beauty of what occurred during that time. I thought I had something to offer when the medicine didn’t go the way you wanted it to.

There are many photographs of children you have cared for in your office. How do you cope with the emotional side of your work?
 
I realised early on that I was going to suffer and be in pain when these kids passed away or weren’t doing well whether I chose to compartmentalise it or not. I decided to go all in and fully love each kid and each family and to become part of that family the day we meet. You can take extraordinary ups and downs when you are part of a family. I stay close to many of them.

Do you have children?
 
I’ve got two daughters, 21 and 17. They are both wonderful writers, activists and feminists. My older daughter is head of the animal rights group at the University of Washington so you’d think there’d be a big clash, but she did a TEDx talk last year and she wove our work together. My team tries to minimise the use of animals and importantly we’re very open to using alternatives when the alternatives are useful and accessible. Her point is that similar investments should be put into finding alternatives to animal testing as to continuing the status quo. We have very good and respectful conversations.

Is it frustrating that it takes so long to bring a new drug to market?
 
Well, it is – take tumour paint as an example. My own mother had a cancer that would definitely have benefited from it and it was too early to use it. It started in the skin on her face and went back into her brain. It ended up spreading extensively and that could have been avoided if it had been understood that they hadn’t got it all and had gone a little bit deeper. She’s doing fine now, two years later. I love my patients in the same way, so every week when we have kids, and we can’t use it yet… These things just take time though. The reality is that if things move forward too fast you can have really serious safety problems. I don’t get frustrated because frustration doesn’t help you move forward.

How do you fund your research?
 
Most innovative ideas are really hard to get approved through peer review [and therefore funded by grants] … so the families stepped up by doing chilli cook-offs, golf tournaments and auctions and they’ve raised over $10m since the late 90s. In 2013 we launched Project Violet. We’re well past $5m with that.

Tell me about Project Violet.
 
We decided to build a platform where we could identify other similar molecules [to the tumour paint molecule] that plants and animals use for protection in nature, and find a way to create hundreds of thousands of variations of these that could be used for screening for human diseases. I realised that to do this we were going to need to build a team of experts. We launched Project Violet so we could use social media and the public domain to co-operatively build these libraries of drug candidates. I launched that in my TEDx talk in June 2013 and since then we’ve been able to support, or partially support, 33 scientists. For a year around that, volunteers from Amazon here in Seattle helped us build our website and our social media presence.

Violet was a little girl who had a type of brain tumour that I’ve not yet had a child survive. She knew she was going to die. She decided to donate her tissue when she died to help other children. Also, some of these molecules we’re working on come from the violet plant.

Any other research successes?
 
One day, I realised I was prescribing medicines with no idea whether the cancer would be resistant to that drug. So, I hired two bioengineers and we created a technology where needles are exerted through the skin into a tumour and as the needles are withdrawn they leave behind tracks of different drugs. You let those drugs be present around the tumour cells a day or so, then take out the tumour and cut across-wise to the needles and see which ones work and which don’t. If a drug doesn’t kill any cancer cells when they are bathed in it, it certainly isn’t going to get any better when you give that drug as an IV or by mouth. I think this is going to revolutionise cancer and drug development.

Source from : http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/01/scorpions-cancer-jim-olson-tumour-paint-deathstalker-brain-tumours

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Mother, daughter battle same type of cancer in West Texas

In this photo taken on Monday, 12, 2015, Kristol Veach, left, and her mother Maria Reyes are accompanied by Veach's daughters Ava and Aubrey as they enjoyed an outing to the The Fountains at Farah, in El Paso, Texas. On June 2, Veach was officially diagnosed with HER2-positive invasive ductal carcinoma — the most common form of breast cancer. The El Paso Times reports it is the exact same type of cancer her mother, Reyes, was diagnosed with six years earlier. (Victor Calzada /The El Paso Times via AP) EL DIARIO OUT; JUAREZ MEXICO OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT IF USE ON LAM OR LAT AND EL DIARIO DE EL PASO OU

                   EL PASO, Texas (AP) - On the very day of her youngest daughter’s preschool graduation, Kristol Veach received a call no woman wants to get.

  It was her oncologist requesting her to come in for a visit.

“I knew why they wanted to see me,” Veach said. “I asked them to give me two hours so I could watch her graduate.”

On June 2, Veach was officially diagnosed with HER2-positive invasive ductal carcinoma - the most common form of breast cancer. The El Paso Times reports (http://bit.ly/1O5VgUP ) it is the exact same type of cancer her mother, Maria Reyes, was diagnosed with six years earlier.

Veach, a neonatal intensive care (NICU) nurse at The Hospitals of Providence Memorial campus, knew she had cancer week’s before having a biopsy done.

“I could see on the sonogram that the area looked completely different,” she said. “I was devastated. I stayed in the car for 20 minutes crying. I called my husband and he said, ‘You don’t know how to read an ultrasound.’ He was right, but I could tell something looked different.”

Veach, 32, was scheduled to have a bilateral mastectomy (removal of both breasts) last Wednesday.

“It’s more difficult to see my daughter go through this than when I went through it myself,” Reyes said. “You never want to see your children go through any pain and to see her so sick and swollen, it just kills me. I felt horrible that I could have given it to her.”

In this case, the BRCA gene test - a blood test that uses DNA analysis to identify harmful changes in either one of the two breast cancer susceptibility genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2 - was negative.

“This is a very unique case,” said Dr. Ines Sanchez, the oncologist for both women. “Usually when we have these cases, it’s because they are positive for BRCA but they were not. (The cancer) was not genetically driven.”

Invasive ductal carcinoma refers to cancer that has broken through the wall of the milk duct and begun to invade the tissues of the breast. Over time, invasive ductal carcinoma can spread to the lymph nodes and to other areas of the body.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 180,000 women in the United States find out they have invasive breast cancer each year. About 80 percent are diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma.

HER2-positive breast cancer is breast cancer that tests positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which promotes the growth of cancer cells.

“It makes up about 20 percent of all cancers,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez said despite Veach having a more aggressive treatment plan, she seems to have handled it better than her mother.

“She saw what her mother went through and experienced it with her,” Sanchez said. “She was more up beat going through the chemo. She had dance videos with her co-workers and was more upbeat about it even through she was sicker than her mother.”

Veach, her co-workers and family dance before each of her chemotherapy treatments and post them on YouTube.

“Everybody kind of looks forward to my chemo treatments because they want to see the videos,” Veach said with a huge smile.

“The first one was ‘I Will Survive,’” she said. “It was just me jumping around by myself. The second one was with my coworkers, we did the Nae Nae. The third one was the Hokey Pokey with my daughters. We did a dance compilation with my mom and the last one we did ‘Thriller’ with my brothers.”

Reyes, 58, had a mastectomy on her right breast six years ago. She has been in remission for five years.

“I was working so hard that I forget to take my mammograms,” said Reyes, who is an oncology nurse at The Hospitals of Providence Sierra campus. “If I had been doing my check-ups we could have picked it up earlier. I try to encourage everyone to make sure they get their mammograms, get checked and do their exams.”

The only reason Veach went in to get checked was because of a New Year’s resolution she made with her husband.

“Our New Year’s resolution was we were going to start going to the doctor regularly and eat healthier so I went to my OBGYN to have my annual and he wanted to get a baseline mammogram,” she said. “I never thought it was going to come out positive.”

Just as Veach was there for her mother every step of the way, Reyes has been there for her daughter.

“She has been so strong,” she said. “Everybody has been very supportive of her. I just try to give her encouragement. I know some days she feels horrible but I tell her not to worry, it will get better.”

Veach simply laughs.

“I feel like a big wuss,” she said. “My mom was so awesome. Every time I would go and see her, she was awesome. She was still working like if it was nothing, she was amazing. I feel like I just cave in all the time.”

She did say it was nice to know that she has her mother to lean on through these difficult times.

“Even if she hadn’t gone through the experience I know she would be there for me,” Veach said. “My mom is just that type of person. She is always there for anybody whether it’s me or people that she knows.

Source from : http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/2/mother-daughter-battle-same-type-of-cancer-in-west/?page=all#pagebreak

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New Treatment to Target Mutated Cancer Cells

London:  Oxford researchers have found the 'Achilles heel' of certain cancer cells - mutations in a gene which could be targeted with a new drug to kill cancer cells that are resistant to treatment.

It is well known that mutations drive cancer cell growth and resistance to treatment. However, these mutations can also become a weak point for a tumour.

The researchers from University of Oxford in UK found that was the case for cancer cells with mutations in a key cancer gene called SETD2.

"Mutations in SETD2 are frequently found in kidney cancer and some childhood brain tumours, so we were excited when we discovered that a new drug we were studying specifically killed cancer cells with this mutation," said study author Timothy Humphrey from Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology.

Researchers showed that cancer cells with a mutated SETD2 gene were killed by a drug called AZD1775 that inhibits a protein called WEE1.

The team achieved this by exploiting the concept of 'synthetic lethality', where a combination of two factors kills a cancer cell.

This has the potential to be a less toxic and more effective treatment than more standard approaches because it can specifically target cancer cells.

"When WEE1 was inhibited in cells with a SETD2 mutation, the levels of deoxynucleotides, the components that make DNA, dropped below the critical level needed for replication," said co-author Andy Ryan, from University of Oxford.

"Starved of these building blocks, the cells die. Importantly, normal cells in the body do not have SETD2 mutations, so these effects of WEE1 inhibition are potentially very selective to cancer cells," Mr Ryan said.

The research team have also developed a biomarker test to identify SETD2 mutated tumours, something that can be used immediately in cancer diagnosis.

"This novel and exciting finding provides a new scientific basis for precision targeting of some cancers which are currently very difficult to treat, and we are now taking these findings into clinical trials," said Tim Maughan, Clinical Director of the Cancer Research UK/ Medical Research Council Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology.

While there is still work to do before a treatment is available, the hope is that these findings will help to target other cancers with similar weak points and provide a step towards personalised cancer therapy, researchers said. 
Source from : http://www.ndtv.com/health/new-treatment-to-target-mutated-cancer-cells-1239128

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The neatest scientific advance in skin cancer treatment

Hedgehog pathway inhibitors exciting development in treating non-melanoma skin cancer

 In the treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer, “the fastest-moving area—and the neatest from a science standpoint—is the class of drugs called hedgehog pathway inhibitors.”

That’s the message Scott Dinehart, M.D., delivered in his presentation, “Medical Advances in Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer,” yesterday (Thursday, Oct. 1), the opening day of the Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference in Las Vegas.

Dr. Dinehart, a Little Rock, Ark., dermatologist, says hedgehog pathway inhibitors are approved for certain patients with basal cell carcinoma.

“The average dermatology practitioner will not use these molecules on a daily basis, however, the medications are very useful for a small subset of patients for which other treatments are not optimal,” he says. “Using this class of medications requires knowledge and experience and can be extremely satisfying from both a practitioner and a patient viewpoint.”

According to Dr. Dinehart, some common medications with which dermatologists are already familiar and comfortable are hedgehog pathway inhibitors—the anti-fungal drug itraconazole and imiquimod are examples. What excites him are advances in putting this class of drugs to work.

“There are new ways to use hedgehog pathway inhibitors—continuously, intermittently, shrinking a tumor prior to surgery, in combination—so that the hedgehog pathway is blocked in more than one part of the pathway,” he says.

Dr. Dinehart believes more such advances are in store for these drugs.

“We will continue to see more innovative ways to use hedgehog pathway inhibitors in skin cancer patients,” he says. “Combination or dual therapy with multiple hedgehog pathway inhibitors is something that may increase efficacy and diminish resistance. We will see more research on this in the future.”

Source from : http://dermatologytimes.modernmedicine.com/dermatology-times/news/neatest-scientific-advance-skin-cancer-treatment

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Therapy Dogs Can Calm Kids With Cancer: Research

Washington:  Dogs can give us company in our solitary hours and now new research has shown that therapy dogs can improve anxiety levels of pediatric cancer patients and their parents.

Many hospitals have therapy dogs who visit patients. During the visits, children pet or talk to the dog, brush its fur, view the dog's photos, watch the dog practicing tricks or commands, and learn about dog breeds.

In preliminary investigation of an ongoing study to be concluded in 2016, the researchers collected data on blood pressure, pulse rates and anxiety levels of children before and after a weekly visit from a therapy dog.

Preliminary findings show that blood pressure readings in the group receiving animal-assisted interventions remains more stable across all sessions than in the control group, said lead researcher Amy McCullough, national director of humane research and therapy, American Humane Association.

Similarly, there was a higher degree of variability in heart rate within the control group patients than with the treatment group patients.
"These findings suggest that the dog may have a calming effect on the patient," McCullough said.

To date, 68 children aged three to 17 who are newly diagnosed with cancer have been enrolled in the study, including 39 in the treatment group and 29 in the control group.

Preliminary results indicate the canine encounters also appear to improve anxiety levels among parents, the study said.

"This study will be a milestone in understanding the benefits of the vital bond shared between people and animals," McCullough said.

The findings will be presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition in Washington DC on Sunday.


Source from : http://www.ndtv.com/health/therapy-dogs-can-calm-kids-with-cancer-research-1236034

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New breast cancer guidelines raise concerns

By Ana B. Ibarra
aibarra@mercedsunstar.com

The American Cancer Society earlier this week released new guidelines for women with an “average risk” of breast cancer. Mammograms can be delayed another five years, the guidelines say. But those new recommendations have brought concern to some physicians and specialists.

The new recommendations advise women to begin yearly mammograms at age 45. The recommended age used to be 40.

Women are also advised that fewer mammograms are needed. According to the society’s guidelines, at age 55, women could transition to having mammograms every other year, although those who wish to stick to the yearly routine can do so.

“Since we last wrote a breast cancer-screening guideline, there have been the publication of quite a number of new studies that inform us about the benefits and drawbacks of screening with mammography,” said Dr. Richard C. Wender, the society’s chief cancer control officer, in a statement.

Mammograms, as explained by the American Cancer Society in a news release, sometimes find things that turn out to be harmless but that have to be checked out with additional tests that come with side effects, including pain and anxiety. An expert group weighed the benefits and harm to come up with the new guidelines, according to society officials.

“This guideline makes it so clear that all women by age 45 should begin screening – that’s when the benefits substantially outweigh the harms,” Wender said.

The guidelines also state that breast exams by a provider or self-exams are no longer recommended because research does not indicate any clear benefits.

Dr. Dortha Chu, a breast surgeon in Merced, does not agree with the changes. While she understands the guidelines are only recommendations, she said they also can mislead women and provide a false sense of security.

“I’m concerned that women will read this (the guidelines) and take it as a license to delay medical care even more,” she said.

Clinical exams, for example, are not perfect tests, she said, but they help open the dialogue between doctor and patient. These exams provide an opportunity for patients to be educated about breast changes and for the provider to become familiar with a patient’s medical history.

Self-exams are also important, not because they will directly save lives, but because they help women become familiar with their own breasts, Chu said.

“Ignoring breast exams, that part especially doesn’t sit well with me,” she said. “As medical professionals we should be doing an even better job in teaching patients how to do a self-exam properly.”

Changing mammograms from annual to every other year at age 55 is also tricky, Chu said, noting that close to one-third of her patients are in their 70s. Many of those patients, had stopped their regular mammograms because they believed they were no longer at risk of getting breast cancer, she said.

“But as long as you have breasts, you can get breast cancer,” Chu said.

Reaching a consensus in screening guidelines will always be difficult, the breast surgeon said. The best advice for women, she said, is to keep communicating regularly with their doctor.

However, one thing that will improve detection is new technology.

Last month, Mercy Medical Center in Merced announced the addition of a 3-D mammography system that should be ready for use early next year.

Patients currently have to travel to Modesto or Fresno for a 3-D breast screening.

Chu explained that the more in-depth screening works like a CT scan. The new mammography system can take up to 80 photos during the same exposure needed for the conventional 2-D system to take a couple of photos.

Chu said this system is definitely a step forward.

Source from :  http://www.mercedsunstar.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/article41265423.html

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