By C. Rajan, contributing writer The University of Pennsylvania has announced promising results of its novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy for cancer. In the study involving 25 children and five adults with end-stage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), there was an impressive 90 percent response rate with complete remission. Twenty-seven of the 30 patients went into complete remission after receiving the investigational therapy (called CTL019), and 78 percent of the patients were alive six months after treatment. The longest remission among the patients has lasted almost three years. The patients who participated in these trials had relapsed as many as four times, including 60 percent whose cancers came back even after stem cell transplants. Their cancers were so aggressive they had no treatment options left, said the studys senior author, Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD, at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The durable responses we have observed with CTL019 therapy are unprecedented. The ongoing study is being conducted by researchers at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). The CAR trial program enrolling children with leukemia is also expanding to nine other pediatric centers. The experimental CAR therapy received FDAs breakthrough designation in July … Continue reading →

Bone Marrow-Derived Stem Cell Prolotherapy Stem Cell Prolotherapy is a procedure in which adult mesenchymal stem cells are transplanted directly into the damaged tissue or injury and promotes healing. Stem cells are the repairmen... By: Kab S. Hong M.D. … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise BOSTON It is an intricate network of activity that enables breast cancer cells to move from the primary breast tumor and set up new growths in other parts of the body, a process known as metastasis. Now a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has identified an unexpected link between a transcription factor known to regulate speech and language development and metastatic colonization of breast cancer. Currently described online in Cell Stem Cell, the new findings demonstrate that, when silenced, the FOXP2 transcription factor, otherwise known as the speech gene, endows breast cancer cells with a number of malignant traits and properties that enable them to survive and thrive. We have identified a previously undescribed function for the transcription factor FOXP2 in breast cancer, explains senior author Antoine Karnoub, PhD, an investigator in the Department of Pathology at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. We have found that depressed FOXP2 [a member of the forkhead family of transcriptional regulators] and elevated levels of its upstream inhibitor microRNA 199a are prominent features of clinically advanced breast cancers that associate with poor patient survival. … Continue reading →