Thursday, January 19, 2012

Destroying Cancer, For Good!


Cancer, it is one of the hardest diseases to go through; not just as the patient, but as the family.  Everyone knows someone who's been affected by it.  It comes in many shapes, in many forms.  Cancer doesn't care if you're black, white, Jewish, Christian, Russian, American; all it does is destroy.  But there is hope.  In fact, there is a little more than just help now from an Israeli company Vaxil BioTherapeutics.

Vaxil BioTherapeutics has been working on a vaccine for about 90% of all cancers.  That's right!  The vaccine is now in clinical trials at the Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem.  Currently they are testing the vaccine on a certain type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma, but because of how cancer attacks the body, this vaccine will work for just about all types of cancer.

Cancer is a disease that attacks your own cells.  Because of this, the body can't differentiate between sick cells and healthy cells.  The vaccine, Vaxil is creating, puts a little marker on these cells that mark the MUC1 gene. Overexpression of the MUC1 gene is on about 90% of all cancers; the vaccine, tells your T-Cells (cells that attack infections) to attack cells with MUC1.  Thus, not only does it stop the cancer in its tracks, but also stops it from returning, "The tumor [cancer] likes to mutate and develops an ability to hide from the treatment.  Our vaccines are also designed to overcome that problem," said Julian Levy, the company's CFO.  

The vaccine is seen as a long-term strategy for treating cancer, meaning you would only have to take a shot every few months, thus eliminating the painful radiation treatment associated with treating cancer today.  By doing this, it forces the patient's immune system to do what is designed to do, and keep the cancerous cells out of the body.  

Vaxil BioTheraputics was founded in 2006 by Dr. Lior Carmon, and is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.