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Stanford's Weissman @ AACR on CD-47 + Rituxan...

Gene, immune therapy help cancer war
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/apr/07/cancer-immune-system-aacr/

The American Association for Cancer Research, attended by an estimated 18,000 participants, is being held at the San Diego Convention Center through Wednesday. While it is covering the gamut of research, cancer immunotherapy is a major focus. The field began more than 100 year, and has lately scored impressive advances by using gene therapy to its tool kit.

The weapon is an antibody that makes a wide range of cancer cells vulnerable to immune attack. It's close to entering human clinical trials, said Irving L. Weissman, a Stanford University professor leading that project. The antibody neutralizes a chemical signal many cancers exude to decoy the immune system, Weissman said in a Monday morning plenary session.

The antibody is being tested first in acute myeloid leukemia patients, backed by $20 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Weissman said. The institute is interested because the target cells are cancer stem cells, the cells that proliferate to spread cancer.

Moreover, research indicates the method can be used against many solid tumors that emit the signal, a protein called CD47. These include breast, ovarian, bladder, pancreatic and colon cancer.

"Every human cancer that we've seen has CD47," Weissman said.

Animal studies show that anti-CD47 antibodies inhibit growth of transplanted patient tumors, he said. And when used against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma along with an existing antibody drug called Rituxan, the result is a potent cancer-killing effect. Immune cells called macrophages actually engulf and destroy the cancer cells.