Cutting-edge cancer therapy offers hope for cure for patients with lupus, New York Times reports

A relatively new treatment called CAR T-cell therapy appears to stop lupus in its tracks, according to a recent story by Nina Agrawal in The New York Times.

Her article explains that the treatment is "a kind of 'living drug' that modifies patients' immune cells to help them attack misbehaving ones."

Agrawal's piece quotes Dr. Lisa Sammaritano, a rheumatologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery — Weill Cornell Medicine and the lead author of a set of recently updated guidelines for lupus treatment, as saying, "It's really promising, and honestly the first therapy that we've talked about as a cure. [Until now] we haven't had a cure — we've had control." 

She adds a major caveat, to the effect that she's "hoping that it's a common future therapy, but we're not at the point yet where we can say that with confidence."

CAR T-cell therapy, the Times story notes, is one that "must be personalized to each patient [and therefore] is extraordinarily expensive." One-time costs approach half a million dollars or more.

Symptoms of lupus typically appear between the ages of 15 and 44, with 90 percent of the 3 million patients worldwide being women.

Dr. Meghan Sise

Half of lupus patients, the Agrawal story says, "have inflammation in their kidneys, a condition known as lupus nephritis. Between 10 and 30 percent of these patients will eventually need dialysis or a kidney transplant transplant, [says] Dr. Meghan Sise, the director of onconephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital."

Dr. April Barnado

The disease can cause joint pain, rashes, severe fatigue, and inflammation in organs, the story quotes Dr.. April Barnado, rheumatologist and assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as saying.

It often strikes, she adds, "at a time when women are raising families, or they're caregiving, or they're trying to get promoted at work. They wake up and feel like they have the flu or a viral infection a few days a week every week. That's pretty debilitating."

Lupus, formally labeled systemic lupus erythematosus, according to the article "is an autoimmune condition in which he body develops antibodies against its own DNA and other cellular material.  The name derives fro m the Latin for 'wolf,' because the skin lesions the disease sometimes causes were once thought to resemble wolf bites, some say." 

More information on treatments and drugs can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten aimed at male caregivers. My other books are MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of my newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Check out my blog at https://woodyweingarten.com for even more info.

Can electric fields tweak genes in immune cells?

Cancer treatment revolution possible via new gene-editing technique, new report says

A new rapid gene-editing method potentially could revolutionize treatments for cancer.

According to a story by Gina Kolata in recent editions of The New York Times, researchers have reported in a new scientific paper that they've found a way to tweak genes in the body's immune cells by using electrical fields.

What could happen, Kolata reports, is that genes could be removed from white blood cells and beneficial replacements inserted — "all in far less time than it normally takes to edit genes."

In addition to cancer, the method apparently could profoundly impact "infections such as HIV and autoimmune conditions like lupus and humanoid arthritis."

The journal Nature first published details of the paper, but "because the technique is so new, no patients have yet been treated with white blood cells engineered with it," the Times story indicates.

Currently, Kolata notes, "scientists attempting to edit the genome often must rely on modified viruses to slice open DNA in a cell and to deliver new genes into the cell. The method is time-consuming and difficult, limiting its use."

Fred Ramsdell, Ph.D.

The use of electrical fields rather than viruses, a process that's vastly speedier, means that "in theory a treatment could be available to patients with almost any type of cancer," her story continues. And the Times writer then quotes Fred Ramsdell, Ph.D. and vice president of research at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco, as saying, "I think it's going to be a huge breakthrough."

The institute, she writes, "is working with the authors of the new paper, led by Dr. Alexander Marson, scientific director of biomedicine at the Innovative Genomics Institute — a partnership between University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley — to make engineered cells to treat a variety of cancers."

The scientists already are conferring with Food and Drug Administration employees about using the new method to attack both solid and blood cancers.

"Our intent," says Ramsdell, "is to try to apply this as quickly as possible."

Information about other cancer research can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.