Avid Bioservices Inc (CDMO)

[volgoat]

According to The American Cancer Society, about 1,660,290 new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in 2013. Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the US, exceeded only by heart disease, and this year 580,350 Americans are expected to die from this disease.

Many people feel that getting cancer is the end of the world. However, recent advances in science are giving us hope for the future of treatment beyond chemotherapy, surgery and radiation.

Here are a few highlights from recent study results detailing important moves forward in the battle against cancer.

Immune Therapy in Lung Cancer

Cell membranes of tumor tissues and blood vessels have been shown to possess a special feature. They orient a molecule called phosphatidyl serine toward the outside surface of the cell. This change normally signals cell damage when it occurs in healthy tissues. In healthy, intact body cells, this molecule should not be present on the outside of the cell. Its presence then in cancerous tissue provides a marker that can be used to home-in on these cells with antibodies directed towards phosphatidyl serine.

An antibody that binds to the cancer cells should attract the body's immune system to approach and eliminate whatever is being bound. This response, then, could create a highly selective therapy targeting the cancer for destruction while leaving the rest of the body largely spared. This selectivity is would be very beneficial because traditional chemotherapy is just as likely to attack cancer as it is healthy tissue, which makes this therapy incredibly toxic and potentially lethal.

Clinical trial results for the antibody drug, bavituximab, were presented in February 2013. These data showed that survival for patients with advanced non-small cell lung carcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer, was improved nearly fifty percent when using bavituximab compared to control treatment.

http://biotech.about.com/od/Drug-Development/a/Recent-Advances-In-Cancer-Research-Gives-Us-Some-Hope.htm