Could This New Therapy Wipe Out Cancer?

The cure to cancer…

At this point, those words are starting to seem like a bit of a cliché.

I can’t tell you how many headlines I’ve come across over the years touting possible cancer cures, only to find out these treatments were going to be stuck in the lab for another decade — or better yet, haven’t even made it past animal testing…

But last week, tests of a revolutionary cancer therapy were shown to have what experts are now calling “extraordinary” results on a small group of terminally ill cancer patients. When I was briefed on the details, I immediately knew this was something groundbreaking…

In a study performed at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, 94% of participants suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia saw their symptoms vanish completely after being treated with this new therapy. To put it simply, the outcome was virtually unheard of.

As lead researcher Stanley Riddell said about the study, “This is unprecedented in medicine… to get response rates in this range in these very advanced patients.”

The therapy is being described as a “potential paradigm shift” in cancer treatment by medical experts. We’ve heard these kinds of claims before, but the difference this time is that similar treatments could realistically be available to the public within as little as two years…

The Cure is Real… And It’s Here

As baffled as I first was at the 94% remission rate in the Fred Hutchinson study, I can’t say I was at all surprised to hear what kind of therapy was being used. We’ve been following the back story for the last few years, and all evidence points to one specific method as the inevitable future of cancer treatment: immune engineering.

Without getting too much into the specific details, researchers at Fred Hutchinson treated the advanced-stage leukemia patients with genetically modified T cells. The cells were specifically designed to recognize cancer cells and activate the body’s natural immune response.

The reason this method works so well is because our white blood cells have actually been fighting off cancer on their own for thousands of years — and they’re very, very good at it. When it comes to cancer and the immune system, though, it’s not a matter of being strong or weak but rather an issue of recognition.

As one expert from Johns Hopkins explains:

The immune system simply does not recognize cancer. In its complexity, the cancer cell has learned to disguise itself to the immune system as a normal, healthy cell. Cells infected with viruses or bacteria send out danger signals setting the immune system in action. But cancer cells do not.

In other words, the cure to cancer isn’t actually about killing cancer — we do just fine at that already. The cure to cancer is about finding cancer instead. For decades, scientists have understood this fact, but not until recently have they actually had the tools to do it…

Fortunately, we’re on the verge of commercializing that technology today.

Miraculous Outcomes

Take the story of two-year-old Layla Richards.

Last June, Layla was desperately ill — advanced-stage leukemia was flowing through her veins to the point that many of her doctors had considered it incurable.

Her parents had tried everything. Just 12 months old at the time, this poor girl had already gone through multiple rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, but to absolutely no avail. The only option left for Layla was an experimental treatment.

Waiting patiently in the freezer of the hospital at which Layla was being treated was a vial of T cells that had been genetically modified (using a new genome editing technique) to hunt down leukemia. According to MIT Tech, these were the “most extensively engineered” cells ever proposed for a medical therapy — and at that point, they had only ever been tested in mice.

Needless to say, the treatment seemed like a long shot at the time, but it really wasn’t. The science was sound, so it paid off. Today, Layla is cancer free — something that would have been impossible just a few years ago — and it’s all thanks to immune engineering.

Fast-forward to today, and immune engineering has been tested in over 300 patients in a clinical setting. The results have been nothing short of miraculous, with nearly 90% of patients reaching full remission.

As for how that all relates to these pages, this new promise for a cancer cure has spurred enormous activity amongst the investment community. Dozens of drug firms and biotechnology companies are now working to bring such a treatment to market in a race to what could potentially be the single most profitable therapy in the history of medicine.

Of course, none of this is to say it would be wise to suddenly bet the farm on development-stage biotech firms, but it is certainly time to start paying attention if you haven’t begun to already.

Today, the overall revenue opportunity for cancer therapeutics stands at about $85 billion — and that’s for treatments, not cures. The market is already being taken over by conventional immunotherapies, which are expected to become the backbone of 60% of cancer types within less than four years.

When immune-engineered therapies finally make their way to the market — and they will — the option for doctors and patients will be clear. It won’t happen overnight, but you can count on these treatments taking over that $85 billion pie.

Until next time,

Jason Stutman

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