Break-Through Invention for Treating Cancer
November 07 2011 - 9:47AM
Business Wire
ImmunAid Pty. Ltd. has been awarded a European patent for its
pioneering work in the treatment of cancer, based on monitoring the
immune cycle of each individual patient and then determining the
optimal time to deliver treatment to that patient.
Dr. Svetomir Markovic, chair of the Melanoma Group at
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, says, “The discovery of the regulated
immune response cycle in cancer patients is potentially of immense
clinical significance with profound public health
implications.”
Approximately $32 billion is spent globally each year on
cancer drugs, yet the cancer mortality rate in the United States is
more than 11,000 per week. An analysis of 63 clinical trials
published since 2000 shows the average complete response
rate--becoming cancer free--in late-stage patients across a wide
range of cancers is 7 percent.
ImmunAid Pty. Ltd. is a private Australian biotechnology
company, majority owned by Genetic Technologies Limited (ASX-GTG,
NASDAQ-GENE). ImmunAid was founded a decade ago to explore the
concept developed by inventor Martin Ashdown that the immune system
switches itself “on and off” in a continuous, repeating cycle in
patients with certain diseases, including auto-immune disease, and
that treatment should be timed to support the body’s own efforts to
fight off such disease. Subsequently, Ashdown expanded his concept
to include cancer and several degenerative diseases.
Ashdown and the ImmunAid research team demonstrated that
the immune system of cancer patients undergoes a repeating cycle,
and that the administration of treatment at certain critical
moments within that cycle can significantly improve the clinical
outcome.
Dr. Mervyn Jacobson, ImmunAid chief executive officer,
says. “Once we realized this immune cycle is real and measurable,
we postulated that the administration of chemotherapy and other
anti-cancer therapies should be timed to work with each individual
patient’s immune system to attack the cancer. The results then
spoke for themselves.”
Professor Brendon Coventry, a senior surgical consultant
and practicing surgeon at Royal Adelaide Hospital, has conducted
extensive clinical trials over several years in conjunction with
ImmunAid. He says, “Treatments ‘randomly’ given without
consideration to a patient’s immune cycle explains why some
patients achieve a complete recovery and others do not.”
The Mayo Clinic currently is conducting an independently
funded clinical trial to further assess the influence of timed
delivery of conventional chemotherapy for patients with cancer, and
several hospitals and universities in Australia are now conducting
trials on cancer and also a number of other diseases, including
multiple sclerosis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Dr. Markovic states, “I have been struck by the
scientific community’s acknowledgement of the increasing validity
of ImmunAid’s work. In Mayo’s ongoing experience, timed delivery of
chemotherapy appears to offer added therapeutic benefit in the
treatment of metastatic melanoma.”
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