immunotherapy – Margaret's Corner

The fact that mice don’t vomit is one of the many things that I learned while reading an extraordinary May 16 Boston Globe article about an experimental cancer treatment that cured, yes, cured a dog, a golden retriever, from soft tissue sarcoma. This cancer treatment, immunotherapy, might possibly (someday) help human patients, too.

Anyway, have a look here: goo.gl/DyBnJZ

Really quite amazing. Incidentally, many thanks to Cynthia for posting the link to this article on Facebook…

Quick update: our 8.5 month old kittens, Pandora and Pixie, were sterilized on Monday and are doing well, phew… Tomorrow I’m taking them back to the vet clinic for their post-op check-up. Everything seems to be going fine, but my fingers are still crossed! 🙂

Before I give you the link to a very interesting article I read in “The Scientist” this morning on the connection between gut bacteria and cancer, I should really tell you why I haven’t been posting lately. I got back from my emergency trip to the U.S. almost a month ago, but since then I’ve been terribly busy…lots going on…and I’ve also been terribly worried about my mother, who is still in the rehab clinic and not doing as well as she should be at this stage. Luckily, my sister is there, taking care of everything, but the daily updates she gives me by phone and email are hard to take, at times. Well, fingers crossed…

So, yes, in short, I just haven’t felt like posting…

But from now on I will make an effort to post more frequently, especially if I read something that tickles my brain cells, which happened with the above-mentioned article. Here is the link: http://goo.gl/O1BDZ5 I warn you, it’s long!

The article doesn’t mention myeloma or any other type of blood cancer, but in the second paragraph it does bring up the possibility that gut bacteria could “contribute to cancer cell death, even in tumors far from the gastrointestinal tract. The most logical link between the microbiome and cancer is the immune system. Resident microbes can either dial up inflammation or tamp it down, and can modulate immune cells’ vigilance for invaders. Not only does the immune system appear to be at the root of how the microbiome interacts with cancer therapies, it also appears to mediate how our bacteria, fungi, and viruses influence cancer development in the first place.”

Myeloma…immune system…microbes…

???

So if you have some free time in the next couple of days, put your feet up and take a look at this article. And, by the way, any thoughts would be most appreciated. Leave me a comment or two! 🙂 Thank you!

P.S. A blog reader sent me a link (https://goo.gl/LdXif3) to a recent “Guardian” article discussing how our gut microbes may even affect our behavior, thoughts, and moods…as well as the structure and function of our brains. This might turn out to be good news for folks who have multiple sclerosis, for example. So, another very interesting read. Very!