This is very good news as cancer affects so many.
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I’ve got a relative having good results from immunotherapy
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Jim had to have a colonoscopy when they found blood in his depistage. He had fourteen polyps, two of which had small cancers. Everything was removed and his follow up procedure was successful, so he doesn’t have to have another one for three months.
This is just to emphasise that these tests really do save lives and the colon one is far easier than it used to be, so everyone, take the test!
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Interesting and clearly good for the participants but as any medical researcher will attest promising results from small phase II studies are not always seen once larger Phase III studies are carried out.
Also, the number of rectal cancer patients eligible for this sort of treatment is 5-10% (see this link for more info on the same trial from the European Society For Medical Oncology).
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To every journey there has to be a first step.
Re energising the bodies immune system to fight off what modern living has done to our immune systems.
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Any progress made in dealing with certain forms of cancer is good. It’s always wise to be a little (or a lot) skeptical until there’s data from a substantial blind study.
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Anything which offers Hope (be it now or way in the future)… I’ll grab it with both hands (but not go overboard…)
Having several close family die from various sorts of Cancer… that’s how I feel…
Others might well disagree (and I’ve no problem with that…)
The “engineering” behind it seems quite exciting to my unqualified eye. Tailormade responses to ones own “breed” of malignant cells. I heard on the radio that this approach has also been successful with lung canacer and one other form of cancer (which I can’t remember 
) so fingers crossed.
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Brilliant. There will come a day when all treatment adopts the same approach.
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I hope so. It seems stunningly simple in concept and stunningly complex and clever in execution. It’s basically an mRNA vaccine with your own cancer cells as the target “virus”.
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If only I could grab hold of some of these new ideas and treatments… and take 'em with me, as I step into a time machine to go back … and I bet I’m not alone with that sort of thinking…
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I find the focus on prevention here very reassuring. They were screening for diabetes in town today and I had a test before my coffee (two sugars ) and croissent.
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The pace of development is accelerating all the time. Soon enough some of the current treatments will seem as bizarre as the practice in the middle ages of cutting the top of you skull off to let out the evil spirits, then popping if back on. It seems the mortality rate, despite what one would expect, wasn’t 100%.
A few years ago, I explained a revolutionary new treatment to my pal who suffered with arthritis in her spine (and it was now affecting her neck).
With a totally deadpan expression “pince-sans-rire”… I went through the procedure of how all this pain could be done away with, and a whole new life would be hers 
and my darling pal took it all in, even when towards the end of my discourse… I mentioned the head-transplant…
There was no disbelief, not at first… she was nodding in agreement, it all seemed quite logical… until she suddenly looked suspiciously at me and I couldn’t hold onto my laughter any more…
Lovely lady that she was… never moaned, never complained… and always hoped…
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Like filling teeth with mercury. 
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Thanks for the link - so it’s relatively conventional monoclonal antibody therapy targeted at a specific group.
There was talk on R4 this week of a therapy based on RNA vaccine technology, but thats obviously yet another trial.
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I’m glad to hear about these trials… good to know that research is ongoing and delving ever deeper into the mysteries…
Ahh, I assumed they were the same. So progress on two fronts, even better.
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In 2012 I had an Erasmus Fellowship at the Charles University in Prague and was given a tour of their wonderfully old-fashioned anthropology museum, the snappily named Hrdličkovo muzeum člověka. They have many collections of skulls of different ethnographic groups and one large case containing a couple of dozen examples of prehistoric trepanned skulls whose owners had evidently lived for several years or more after the procedure
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Hi Jane
Have a family history of colon cancer, 2 generations.
Have my next colonoscopy in July. On a 5 year cycle at the moment.
Cannot stress too highly the importance of poo tests and the followups
It can SAVE YOUR LIFE !!!
Do not be embarressed.
Andy
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