Out of the Box and into a Rat

Yesterdays conversation with Dr. Nesselhut revolved a lot around the efficacy of the DC Vaccine treatment that he is administering, in particularly the priming of the DC cells.

To explain, dendritic cells themselves do not fight cancer, or other infections. They are mere messengers. A dendritic cell exposed to a foreign antigen will present the antigen to other types of otherwise dormant white cells it comes into contact with. This activates the cells and they then go forth, seek and destroy anything that matches the antigen.

My current DC therapy involves infecting my cancer cells with the Newcastle Disease Virus. The virus, deadly to birds but safe in humans, readily infects cancerous cells while leaving normal cells alone. The dendritic cells are then exposed to NDV antigens. Once injected, the DC cells train the immune system to recognise the NDV antigen that is expressed on the surface of infected cells. These are then destroyed. That is the theory anyway.

As the last DC vaccine did not seem to do much, we discussed priming a second batch with P2X7 in addition to NDV. (This by the way is an Australian discovery. Makes me feel sad that I have to travel to Germany to take advantage of this research.). Basically P2X7 is another target that DC cells can be primed with. Colorectal cancers commonly express P2X7 on the cell surface and once primed, the immune system will target these as well. Not all colorectal cancers express P2X7 however, but getting tested for this marker is not easy and takes time. So for me this is basically a shot in the dark, but still worth a try.

What I really want is to get the DC Vaccine primed with my own tumour cells. This is by far the most effective based on my research and Dr. Nesselhut agrees with me. The problem is getting a big enough tumour sample. A traditional needle biopsy I was told does not yield enough tissue and you need a sample roughly the size of the tip of your thumb. Only realistic way to get such sample is after resection surgery, or to perform laparoscopic procedure to get a chunk of tissue. Not keen on poking holes in my tumours however, as that is a great way to encourage new mets to form.

Growing cancer cells in a lab is notoriously difficult so not a realistic option either. I know that researches do this all the time, but they use immortalised cell lines and that is different.

But I like to think out of the box so I propose this idea: Lets get a rat and inject him with a few of my tumour cells. Within a few weeks the poor rat will have enough tumours to get a big enough sample that I need to prime the DC vaccine with. Nesselhut just laughs at this suggestion. Not that it would not work, he says he sees no reason why it would not, but then he starts to list all the rules, regulations and things needed to get the appropriate licenses. He concludes that it would take them about 20 years to obtain permission to do what I suggest. Yet it is so simple.

So as with everything else on the cuting edge, if you want it done, you have to do it yourself. Time to visit a pet store you think? I wonder if the kids would like a pet rat. :). But seriously, just need to find a research lab that can do this, then extract and freeze the sample. No one then needs to know where the tissue sample came from right?

ALPPS liver surgery is another example. I am told that I will not qualify for the procedure as I don’t have enough healthy liver left to be able to meet my metabolic needs after a lobe is removed. So what? Liver dialysis machines are used to keep liver transplant candidates alive while waiting for a new liver. My out of the box thinking says why not hook me up to one of these post surgery. It takes just 6 days for the liver to re-generate following ALPPS surgery and liver dialysis could easily keep me alive for 6 days. So far no response to my suggestion. I get the feeling that no one has thought of this option before. Why not?