Try asking Armen "why RCC?".
Every cancer antigen company known to man has tried melanoma and RCC, from the days of Oldham forward.
Please ask him why.
His answer will differ from reality. Reality is that these two cancers have been the realm of bullshitters and phenomenologists since Morton.
I'm sick of Armen saying that there approach has been validated in many studies. The fact? Yes, studies have validated that HSPs can act as adjuvants to elicit enhanced responses to "antigens" from experimental cancers. None have shown that spontaneous cancers of recent origin in an inbred strain are immunogenic. None. Moreover, they've never done the frigging experiments.
Let's be clear.... I developed expertise in the immunogenicity of INDUCED cancers and in the immunogenicity of TRANSFORMED LABORATORY LINES which have diverged from the strain of origin at the same time that Dr. Srivastava was in the lab. I was a postdoctoral fellow of Cancer Research Inc., New York, the same funding organization which has close philosophical ties to AGEN. And I sincerely believe that we will be able to harness the immune system to destroy cancers.
But the claims of the company that their technology is validated are either distortions of the truth or dreams of the irrational.
Do the experiments, Dr. Srivastava. Show us a spontaneous cancer (non-viral induced) of recent origin in an inbred strain that is immunogenic. Until then, any modest success (which you have NOT yet achieved) with human trials can be assigned to NON-SPECIFIC effects of receiving the HSP preparation, not to the immunogenicity of spontaneous human cancers.
Do the experiments, Dr. Srivastava, and then PUBLISH your NEGATIVE results.
Pure and simple....... the majority of observations in good labs do NOT support the claims of Armen. And it's pretty easy to see that I have seen effective immunity to induced cancers of recent origin in inbred hosts. It's not like I don't understand the origin of this RESEARCH BUDGET WASTING dogma..........
Int J Cancer. 1977 Nov 15;20(5):748-58.
Immunity to MCA-induced rat sarcomas: analysis of in vivo and in vitro results.
Harmon RC, Clark EA, Reddy AL, Hildemann WH, Mullen Y.
Three in vivo techniques were used to establish the specificity of tumor immunity induced after sensitization of F344 rats to syngeneic MCA-induced sarcomas: (1) post-excision resistance to tumor challenge, (2) passive tumor neutralization (the Winn test), and (3) concomitant immunity. In general, these assays revealed unique non-cross-reactive antigens associated with each of three sarcomas, FMF1, FMM2, and FMM3. However, spleen cells from tumor-sensitized rats did not demonstrate cell-mediated cytotoxicity in vitro corresponding to the specificity of tumor resistance in vivo. In the (3H)-proline cytotoxicity assay, spleen cells from FMM3 tumor-bearing rats or from FMM3 tumor-immune rats were not selectively cytotoxic for cultured FMM3 target cells. Parallel analysis of spleen cells from normal or FMM3-sensitized rats using the Winn assay and the (3H)-proline assay revealed that (1) spleen cell cytotoxicity in vitro did not correlate with effective tumor protection in vivo; and (2) normal spleen cells were cytotoxic against cultured sarcoma target cells in vitro and inhibited tumor growth in vivo. Thus, passive tumor protection by normal spleen cells in vivo corresponded with the demonstration of natural cytotoxicity in vitro, but induced specific anti-tumor reactivity was observed only in vivo.
(I've never had a position, long or short, in AGEN. It's likely, since I rarely -- as close to "never" as you'll get -- short stocks, that I'll be long if I ever do establish a position. And, as always, it would be great if I'm wrong.) |
