Thursday, December 22, 2022
Australian scientists could have found the ‘masterswitch’ to kill cancer
As I have benefited greatly from immunotherapy, I am pleased to hear of another immunotherapy advance. Specific substances are needed to energize attacks on specific types of cancer cell. Keytruda worked like a charm on my SCCs
Queensland medical researchers are on the brink of a staggering breakthrough that sees palpable tumours completely melting away, offering hope to sufferers of two of the deadliest types of cancers.
QIMR Berghofer scientists have potentially found the “masterswitch” that turns on the immune system to target disease in patients with triple-negative breast cancer and the most common form of bowel cancer, Micro Satellite Stable (MSS) bowel cancer.
The remarkable research findings could finally provide hope for a new, effective therapy but funding is desperately needed to progress the exciting preclinical results into clinical trials.
Associate Professor Michelle Wykes, group leader of Molecular Immunology at QIMR Berghofer, discovered the potential “masterswitch” that turns on a key type of immune cell called dendritic cells while researching immune responses to malaria.
Dendritic cells act like the generals of the immune system waking up other immune cells such as T cells and telling them what to attack and the weapons to use. However, cancer cells are very good at hiding from the immune system. In preclinical testing, the “masterswitch” antibodies make the cancers visible again, so the dendritic cells can go back to work and ‘organise’ the T cells to kill the cancer.
Associate Professor Wykes said further testing of the “masterswitch” antibodies on cancer patient blood samples produced similar results to the testing in preclinical lab work.
“We’re seeing palpable tumours that completely disappear and melt away. In our preclinical lab models, 80 per cent of both the triple negative breast cancers and colon cancers were cleared and hadn’t grown back after ten months. We’re seeing similar results from our tests on samples taken from patients with colon cancer,” she said.
“These patients urgently need help and I have something that I think could really help them, but we need funding to bring us together with a treatment. We’re appealing to the generosity of Australians this Christmas to help us advance this vital research and bring hope to patients and their loved ones,” Assoc Prof Wykes said.
Brisbane mum Justine Dillon was at peak physical fitness when she was diagnosed with highly aggressive stage four bowel cancer and given 18 months to live.
The researchers are working with clinicians at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital who collected samples from patients for the researchers to test in the laboratory.
***********************************************
Scientists say they may have uncovered a new treatment for one of the most common symptoms of Long Covid
Researchers at Yale University managed to lift the “brain fog” of eight patients with the condition who were given a mixture of guanfacine, commonly used for ADHD, and an antioxidant called N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which in the UK is mainly used to treat paracetamol overdose and respiratory illnesses.
So far, the treatment has only been tested on a small number of Long Covid sufferers, who were also mainly women, though researchers said the study looked promising for more extensive clinical trials.
But given the potentially devastating and widespread impact of Long Covid, researchers believe doctors should consider prescribing guanfacine to patients.
“If patients have a physician who can read our paper, we’re hoping that they can access help right now,” neuroscientist Amy Arnsten said.
She and her team believe that the combination of drugs could prove “immediately useful“ to millions of sufferers.
Some 2.3 million people in the UK are estimated to be living with long Covid, official figures show.
According to the NHS, brain fog elicits a similar feeling to the effects of sleep deprivation or stress. It lists common symptoms of brain fog as poor concentration, feeling confused, thinking more slowly than usual, fuzzy thoughts, forgetfulness, lost words and mental fatigue.
It’s not necessarily a symptom of those who were hospitalised with Covid and people usually recover from it.
“There’s a paucity of treatment out there for long Covid brain fog, so when I kept seeing the benefits of this treatment in patients, I felt a sense of urgency to disseminate this information,” neurologist Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh explained.
“You don’t need to wait to be part of a research trial. You can ask your physician – these drugs are affordable and widely available.”
Mr Fesharaki-Zadeh first decided to try the drug combination after considering the inflammatory effects of Covid on the human body.
The team of researchers has since tested the treatment on a dozen other patients suffering from Long Covid. Participants took 600 milligrams of NAC daily and one milligram of guanfacine at bedtime.
After a month, the guanfacine dosage was increased to two milligrams.
All eight participants who finished the trial reported substantial benefits to their memory, organisational skills, and multi-tasking abilities. While some said it cured their brain fog completely, others said they had recovered their sense of self.
The study was published in Neuroimmunology Reports.
****************************************************
Judge Approves $10 Million Settlement for Health Care Workers Fired Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
A U.S. judge approved a multimillion-dollar settlement on Dec. 19 for workers who were fired by an Illinois health care system for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
About 500 workers who were terminated or, after seeing their exemption requests denied, got a COVID-19 vaccine, will receive compensation as part of the $10.3 million settlement, a preliminary version of which was first announced in July.
U.S. District Judge John Kness, a Trump appointee overseeing the lawsuit brought by the workers, issued verbal approval for the settlement during a hearing, lawyers for Liberty Counsel and NorthShore University Healthsystem said. Kness plans to release a written judgment in the next week.
In a brief statement emailed to The Epoch Times after Kness’s approval, NorthShore wrote, “We are pleased with the Court’s approval of a supportive resolution to this matter and continue to prioritize the health and safety of our patients and team members.”
Harry Mihet, vice president of legal affairs for Liberty Counsel, said in a statement that the group was “pleased to finally get the court’s final approval of this classwide settlement for these health care workers who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions from the COVID shot mandate.”
“This case should set a precedent for other employers who have violated the law by denying religious exemptions for their employees,” he said.
Liberty Counsel, a legal group that brings cases of alleged religious discrimination, was representing the 13 named plaintiffs in the case. The group successfully won class certification for all workers who were denied religious exemptions, a group that was initially believed to be 499 former and current workers but swelled after the preliminary settlement agreement to at least 519.
As of Dec. 12, 493 class members had submitted claims for a piece of the settlement.
Each worker who was fired stands to receive $24,225. Each worker who remained at the company stands to receive $3,725.
The named plaintiffs are in line to receive an extra $20,000. Those payments, described as service awards, will provide compensation for the plaintiffs helping advise on court filings, gathering documents, and serving as lead plaintiffs “in a sensitive case involving personal health choices and religious beliefs over a matter of intense public debate, even when it was uncertain whether they would have to disclose their identities to the public,” according to a recent filing.
Three workers objected to the settlement, but both parties urged the judge to disregard the objections, which were largely based on pay the trio felt they were owed after being fired.
Marzena Novak, one of the objectors, said her actual losses from being fired and losing pay approached $140,000.
“Although the estimated $25,000 is helpful and will be welcomed, it doesn’t come close to the actual losses suffered by those they treated so poorly,” Novak wrote.
Mandate
Like many health care systems, NorthShore imposed a vaccine mandate on employees in 2021.
NorthShore told workers that they could file a request for a religious exemption using a form that said the worker in question needed to provide “a description of my sincerely held religious principle or practice that guides my objection to receiving the required vaccination.” Northshore explicitly instructed applicants to not fill out lengthy answers.
NorthShore initially approved some of the exemption requests but then reversed the decisions and denied “all or virtually all of them,” according to filings from the plaintiffs. Officials said the employees failed to meet the standard for religious exemptions.
Employees who wanted a second look were told to file an appeal that included their vaccination history since they were 18. NorthShore then said that any religious objections based on “aborted fetal cell lines, stem cells, tissue, or derivative materials” would result in denials because those products were “not in NorthShore administered vaccines.” All of the COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States have links to aborted fetal cell lines.
At one point, one of the plaintiffs said, her manager said that “we are not approving anyone” for exemptions, although at least several were approved.
“Instead of engaging Plaintiffs in good faith, NorthShore denied Plaintiffs’ religious exemption requests en masse, providing nothing more than copy and paste responses, informing them that they lacked ‘evidence-based criteria,’ whatever that means,” one filing reads. “By failing to engage any of the Plaintiffs and its numerous employees with religious objections in good faith, NorthShore had no way to know whether an acceptable accommodation might have been appropriate. The only responses received by Plaintiffs and NorthShore’s employees were one-size-fits-all blanket denials.”
The plaintiffs said the treatment violated the Civil Rights Act, which requires employers to treat workers similarly, and the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of “right of conscience.”
NorthShore repeatedly denied that it violated the law.
The system also stated that it was “an undue hardship” to let unvaccinated staff work at NorthShore and that “it initially denied many exemption requests and that on appeal it reconsidered some decisions and chose not to challenge that the requests were made based on sincerely held religious beliefs.”
**************************************************
Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) Also here
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
**************************************************
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment