11-year-old Jonathan Varghese is on his way to being just a normal healthy kid thanks to his “heroes” at MSK. After a routine tonsillectomy in August 2015, his doctors, concerned that there was something more going on, sent his tissues for screening. It was then that they learned he had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). With a recommendation from an oncologist friend in Boston, Jonathan began a two-year intensive chemotherapy protocol developed at MSK under the supervision of Dr. Peter Steinherz. With this therapy, there was a 90% success rate for patients treated at the hospital. Jonathan only has a few months left of his protocol. “His prognosis is excellent,” Steinherz said. “The first year is the riskiest. Over the next two years, he has about a 10% risk of something coming back.”
Category Archives: In the News
A Repair of a Mutation, Glowing Tumors and More…
Read on for some of the latest developments in cancer research.
- In a breakthrough study, scientist repaired a disease-causing mutation in human embryos:
U.S. scientists successfully gene-edit human… by tomonewsus
- Scientists at the University of Sheffield discovered that the drug methotrexate used for arthritis could be used to treat blood cancer patients. Initial tests were conducted on fruit fly cells. Further testing in human cells demonstrated the potential of methotrexate to directly inhibit the molecular pathway responsible for blood cancer. Read more about these findings in Haematologica.
- The use of a contrast agent that makes tumors glow enabled surgeons to identify and remove a greater number of cancerous nodules. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used a near-infrared contrast agent called OTL3 when combining intraoperative molecular imaging with PET imaging. For more, see study published in the Annals of Surgery.
MSK Researcher Identifies Potential Zika Cure
Dr. Lorenz Studer was part of a team of researchers from MSK and Weill Cornell that screened over 1,000 FDA-approved drugs and traditional medicines to determine which, if any, could block the Zika Virus in human fetal brain cells. The team found that the compound hippeastrine hydrobromide, an active ingredient of the medicinal plant Lycoris radiata (red spider lily), was able to not only block the infection in the fetal brain cells, but also eliminated preexisting Zika infection. The compound also showed promise in infected brains of adult mice.