Can Stem Cells Taken from the Body Cure Colorectal Cancer?

[Bararontok]

There are reports that stem cells have been successfully used to cure cancer in the lungs, spleen, brain and spine. It was done on a 38 year old man from Las Vegas, but can it cure colorectal cancer? And when was the stem cell cancer therapy first successfully tested?

 

[Monique]

What are your sources?

 

[Bararontok]

The news article can be found on the following link:

http://blog.targethealth.com/?p=7958

 

[Evo]

The news article can be found on the following link:

http://blog.targethealth.com/?p=7958

That link is not acceptable. Please provide a peer reviewed paper from an acceptable journal.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I find that link highly questionable, stem cells aren't a magic panacea that you can just inject and expect a treatment. If anything there are risks of forming teratomas. Stem cell treatments have great promise and some techniques are going through clinical trials but curing cancer in such a simple way is not one of them.

The principle behind stem cell therapy is similar to that of any cell therapy: the idea is to regenerate tissues by replacing damaged cells with healthy ones. In terms of cancer treatments stem cell therapies would help in dealing with the damage caused by the cancer and cancer treatments but I've never heard of any proper studies where cancer is fought just by application of stem cells.

 

[Bararontok]

What about a scan from a printed newspaper article which contains the exact same text as the online source? Is that an acceptable source? Because it would be advisable to know that before taking the time to upload such a large file into an image hosting site for exhibition only to find out that it will be rejected.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

What about a scan from a printed newspaper article which contains the exact same text as the online source? Is that an acceptable source? Because it would be advisable to know that before taking the time to upload such a large file into an image hosting site for exhibition only to find out that it will be rejected.

No that's not, peer-reviewed research please. If the news article mentions who did the research, when and where they published it then you could use that to search for a credible source.

 

[Bararontok]

Here is a section of a journal published by doctors working with stem cells and it contains the name of a doctor mentioned in the news article. This publication is not the same as the one mentioned in the news article but it is also about the use of stem cells to cure cancer:

http://www.spandidos-publications.com/ol/3/1/66

These may not be reliable sources but they are from the most popular and trusted newspaper publishers in the doctor's country of origin:

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090917-225612/Stem-cells-from-me-for-me

http://www.asianjournal.com/galing-pinoy/59-galing-pinoy/2992-world-renowned-cancer-specialist-dr-sam-bernal-finding-a-breakthrough-in-regenerative-medicine.html

More links to scientific papers will be posted here as soon as they are found.

 

[Monique]

Your author Canlas does not appear in PubMed, which is a search engine for biomedical research.

When I look at the publication I see that they are talking about cancer immunotherapy through dendritic cells derived from stem cells. So I wouldn't say that it is stem cells curing the disease, it's the immunogenic properties that they acquire through their specified differentiation into dendritic cells.

In PubMed articles can be found that evaluate these treatments, for instance:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22264240

 

[Bararontok]

Well the doctor said in the newspaper article that the patient was not completely cured, but that their quality and length of life was prolonged, not by a specified amount but most likely a few decades, so this form of cancer treatment may not yet be fully effective, but since the patient was terminal and the other forms of cancer therapy did not work, he was most likely desperate to just try anything to stay alive, even if he had to utilize a cure that is not yet fully tested.

The results of the research performed in the pubmed.gov website show the effectiveness of using cord blood stem cells to indirectly cure cancer by using them as a source of dendritic cells which generate antigen-specific immune responses and anti-tumor effects. So stem cells do have the ability to cure cancer. But the article does not mention which types of cancer can be cured by this method. Is there any article that lists the specific types of cancer that this therapy method can cure?

 

[Evo]

Well the doctor said in the newspaper article that the patient was not completely cured, but that their quality and length of life was prolonged, not by a specified amount but most likely a few decades, so this form of cancer treatment may not yet be fully effective, but since the patient was terminal and the other forms of cancer therapy did not work, he was most likely desperate to just try anything to stay alive, even if he had to utilize a cure that is not yet fully tested.

A newspaper article may not be accurate or even be true, that is why they are not allowed as sources. No research can be found to back up that story, I doubt the credibility of it.

 

[Bararontok]

How terrible that newspapers have the audacity to use their popularity, reputation and public trust to provide inaccurate information. This just shows the media's capacity to abuse its influence in order to sell sensationalized stories. This is similar to the inaccurate information many movies, television shows, and fiction books disseminate about computer science. They make hacking look like a tough speed typing contest or video game, when in reality, fast, efficient hacking software that can be downloaded from certain websites can automatically do the hacking for the hacker. Just read the following examples to have an idea of the false information sometimes spread by the media:

http://www.cracked.com/article_15229_5-things-hollywood-thinks-computers-can-do.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_19160_8-scenes-that-prove-hollywood-doesnt-get-technology.html

Additionally, the pubmed.gov article at least demonstrates the potential of stem cells to cure cancer, even if indirectly.

 

[Evo]

How terrible that newspapers have the audacity to use their popularity, reputation and public trust to provide inaccurate information. This just shows the media's capacity to abuse its influence in order to sell sensationalized stories. This is similar to the inaccurate information many movies, television shows, and books disseminate about computer science. They make hacking look like a tough speed typing contest or video game, when in reality, fast, efficient hacking software that can be downloaded from certain websites can automatically do the hacking for the hacker. Just read the following examples to have an idea of the false information sometimes spread by the media:

http://www.cracked.com/article_15229_5-things-hollywood-thinks-computers-can-do.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_19160_8-scenes-that-prove-hollywood-doesnt-get-technology.html

Additionally, the pubmed.gov article at least demonstrates the potential of stem cells to cure cancer, even if indirectly.

Cracked.com is a comic publication, the stories are meant to be jokes.

 

[Bararontok]

But the movies and television shows mentioned in those two articles are examples of false information about computer science spread by the media. It is not the cracked.com website that is spreading the false information, they are merely reporting the various media companies that are doing so.

Additionally, the pubmed.gov article is of course appreciated. At least this provides useful information on the current state of stem cell research for curing cancer. Now can the consultants of this website post links to articles that list the specific types of cancer that can be cured using the method of taking dendritic cells from cord blood stem cells and using its anti-tumor properties to cure cancer?

 

[Monique]

Now can the consultants of this website post links to articles that list the specific types of cancer that can be cured using the method of taking dendritic cells from cord blood stem cells and using its anti-tumor properties to cure cancer?

This is a new area of research for me, you could certainly browse through PubMed yourself to look for relevant publications.

The following is a review of a few years ago that started the field:
Dendritic cells as therapeutic vaccines against cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15803149

Here a more recent article:
Immunotherapy with pluripotent stem cell-derived dendritic cells: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21461992

In the abstract it says: "Clinical trials of anti-cancer therapy with DC pulsed with peptide antigens have been carried out in many institutions, although dramatic therapeutic effect has not been observed in most of the trials."

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Additionally, the pubmed.gov article is of course appreciated. At least this provides useful information on the current state of stem cell research for curing cancer. Now can the consultants of this website post links to articles that list the specific types of cancer that can be cured using the method of taking dendritic cells from cord blood stem cells and using its anti-tumor properties to cure cancer?

First off I would advise you to drop the notion of a "cure" for cancer. Cancers can be treated and patients can go into remission but it can always return.

From the article that you linked to above the dendritic cells are not directly fighting the cancer. DCs activate activate T-Cells which are important component of the immune system. In the link you provided you can read and see that they fused dendritic cells (derived from adult stem cells) with liposomal constructs containing antigens for the type of tumour the patient had. These DCs are then used to activate T-cells to fight the cancer. I've no idea why they wanted to add the step of differentiating their own DCs as opposed to just deriving the cells directly from the patient.

I have come across research like this before and it is relatively new, its full potential and limitations haven't been elucidated yet. It's promising but its early days and we are a long way for widespread utilisation.

 

[Bararontok]

Cancer can certainly comeback at an unknown time to a recovered cancer patient and can even strike a person who never had cancer before at any age because cancer is caused by genetic mutations and there is no accurate way to predict when that will happen, but avoiding mutagens and carcinogens certainly helps to reduce the risk of having such cellular mutations.