PharmaCyte Biotech Inc (PMCB)

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Pmcb is still scamming people with their snake oil. The future is Car-t therapy as the intelligent already know.

Car T Cell Therapy Being Tested in Pancreatic Cancer

Experimental treatment uses engineered T cells to target prostate stem cell antigen.
BY Beth Fand Incollingo
PUBLISHED March 23, 2017
A FLEDGLING BUT PROMISING form of immunotherapy known as CAR T cell therapy has been adapted to hit a new biologic target in the hopes that it will effectively fight advanced pancreatic cancer. The technique is being tested in a phase 1 trial designed to enroll up to 30 patients with the disease.

In CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cell therapy, immune cells, also known as T cells, are removed from a patient’s body and engineered in a lab to recognize a specific biologic marker that drives a cancer, and to destroy cells that carry it; these special T cells are then returned to the patient to multiply and do that work. The therapy being tested in this trial, BPX-601, targets prostate cancer stem cell antigen.

Despite its name, the prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA), a protein-coding gene, is naturally produced by the bodies of both men and women, and it does, indeed, have a relationship to pancreatic cancer. “It is a protein found on the surfaces of cells that was initially identified as a tumor antigen in prostate cancer, but subsequent investigations have revealed an upregulation in other cancers, including pancreatic cancer,” said the trial’s principal investigator, Carlos Becerra, M.D., of Baylor Health Care System, in Dallas. In fact, he said, 60 to 80 percent of pancreatic cancers express PSCA. “Studies have shown it to be effective in treating human pancreas cancer tumors in mice.” Those studies were conducted by Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the developer of the CAR T- cell therapy that targets PSCA and the sponsor of the new trial.