Spanish scientists use maths to cure terminal liver cancer
By using a mathematical formula formula designed to strengthen the immune system, a team of scientists in Spain have succeeded in curing a patient who was in the last stage of terminal liver cancer.
The team of researchers from the Complutense University in Madrid believe that this discovery could open new doors for the treatment of solid cancerous tumours.
The new treatment was developed in 1998 by a team led by Antonio Bru, a physicist who bases his theory on the idea that the evolution of solid tumors depends on a mathematical equation which defines their biological growth. An equation is then obtained in the laboratory and used to design a therapy to destroy the tumor.
The scientists, who have carried out successful tests on mice over the past few years, announced yesterday that the only human experiment they have carried out so far has been a complete success.
Apparantly the patient was suffering from liver cancer which had been diagnosed by his doctors as terminal and in its final stage. The scientists used a mathematical formula to create a treatment based on neutrofiles that strengthened the patient's immune system. The patient responded well to the treatment immediately and has since made a total recovery and has returned to work.
The treatment produces no side effects.The Spanish scientists believe that their theory could be applied to treat all kinds of solid tumors although they will need to carry out many more tests on human patients before they can be sure.
Update 1/06/2005:
Today, the Complutense University (whose switchboards have apparantly been innundated with phone calls from people wanting to find out more about this news item) has published a communication on its website with a brief communication from Prof. Antonio Bru. The full article is here. Below is a translation of Professor Bru's brief note which appears at the end of the article:
Given the expectation generated by the news of the publication of the article Regulation of neutrophilia by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor: a new cancer therapy that reversed a case of terminal hepatocarcinoma in the Journal of Clinical Research, I would like to make the following points:
1) The proposed treatment is still at an experimental stage and needs much wider experimentation before it can be validated.
2) For this reason, at this moment there is no treatment protocol which enables it to be applied as a general treatment.
3) Given that it is impossible for the Complutense University of Madrid to answer all the phone calls received, and bearing in mind how they can disrupt normal teaching and research activity, please send any enquiries to the following email address: bru@mat.ucm.es
Dr. Antonio Brú, Departamento de Matemática Aplicada
Facultad de Ciencias Matemáticas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Related:
The Universal Dynamics of Tumor Growth by Antonio Bru and his team of researchers.
The team of researchers from the Complutense University in Madrid believe that this discovery could open new doors for the treatment of solid cancerous tumours.
The new treatment was developed in 1998 by a team led by Antonio Bru, a physicist who bases his theory on the idea that the evolution of solid tumors depends on a mathematical equation which defines their biological growth. An equation is then obtained in the laboratory and used to design a therapy to destroy the tumor.
The scientists, who have carried out successful tests on mice over the past few years, announced yesterday that the only human experiment they have carried out so far has been a complete success.
Apparantly the patient was suffering from liver cancer which had been diagnosed by his doctors as terminal and in its final stage. The scientists used a mathematical formula to create a treatment based on neutrofiles that strengthened the patient's immune system. The patient responded well to the treatment immediately and has since made a total recovery and has returned to work.
The treatment produces no side effects.The Spanish scientists believe that their theory could be applied to treat all kinds of solid tumors although they will need to carry out many more tests on human patients before they can be sure.
Update 1/06/2005:
Today, the Complutense University (whose switchboards have apparantly been innundated with phone calls from people wanting to find out more about this news item) has published a communication on its website with a brief communication from Prof. Antonio Bru. The full article is here. Below is a translation of Professor Bru's brief note which appears at the end of the article:
Given the expectation generated by the news of the publication of the article Regulation of neutrophilia by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor: a new cancer therapy that reversed a case of terminal hepatocarcinoma in the Journal of Clinical Research, I would like to make the following points:
1) The proposed treatment is still at an experimental stage and needs much wider experimentation before it can be validated.
2) For this reason, at this moment there is no treatment protocol which enables it to be applied as a general treatment.
3) Given that it is impossible for the Complutense University of Madrid to answer all the phone calls received, and bearing in mind how they can disrupt normal teaching and research activity, please send any enquiries to the following email address: bru@mat.ucm.es
Dr. Antonio Brú, Departamento de Matemática Aplicada
Facultad de Ciencias Matemáticas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Related:
The Universal Dynamics of Tumor Growth by Antonio Bru and his team of researchers.
61 Comments:
Additionally, they proved that with a sample of one, the variance of their data is zero, therefore irrefutable.
well anonymous, i'd like to see what you've been doing in the time that these people have been trying, quite successfully, to save lives. I bet if you developed a terminal cancer you'd fucking be extatic.
Oh, how this comment is clever. Have you ever had a relative dying of cancer?
8 relatives died of cancer (including parents). Forget about zero variance and let them work (another anon just passing by)
nice
Anything that produces these kind of results, even if it is by chance, is worth delving into. Just give them money and time.
Good! Keep up the good work!
Fantastic news. Wow. I agree with the comment from last-anonymous-but-one. Give them funds and encouragement and see if this proves to be the breakthrough we've been waiting for ever since cancer research began. Well done Spain!!
If my liver cancer ever gets to the stage of being terminal I'll be glad of any work they'd done.
Although being optimistic we should also be careful and a bit skeptical.
I think more trials are needed and that will take time and money.
Congratulations Spain!!
These are really good news!!!
I hope they can try it on more people to see the outcome.
To first anonymous: ANY research done to save lives and improve quality of life souldn't be undervalued.
Keep up the good work Spain!
Let's not get over excited here .... anonymous #1 is voicing a concern and it might all be too good to be true. The success rate would more likely not ever be 100% exactly, so lets try to keep it in perspective.
Yes, it sounds promising and should be investigated some more and given it's effects on the current clinical thinking on and therapies against tumour growth, this study, even with whatever flaws may come to light, could kick start a whole new direction of attack against cancer.
So well done Bru et al, keep up the good work.
what on earth did the equation actually "do" ? Does anybody know this?
No, sorry, no idea at all. The mind boggles. But I bet it isn't your good old straightforward x+y=z
Anonymous #1 is only partially correct. Yes, there is only one human sample, but they have done extensive lab studies on rats. The mechanics of the study are not species specific. Treatments based on the use of a specific drug are much harder to translate between species. This treatment is based on the fundamental development of tumors. It does not suffer similar limitations. My guess as to why there is only one human guiney pig is that earlier research has probably inspired others to study the effect on humans.
As such, time is the essence. The sad reality of learned studies these days is centered on the "publish or perish" mentality.
Still, this kind of info SHOULD be out quickly. Even if it was not well grounded, a patient who has already been given up for dead might like to try it.
Irrefutable and anecdotal. Patients sometime get better, sometime diagnoses are
incorrect. Without a controlled study this is just dangerous hope inflating hype.
The equation being talked about is actually a generalized growth model that appears to properly describe and predict tumor growth within a host body. This model isn't strictly theoretical or anecdotal, as it is based on a large amount of experimental data on cancer growth.
This model predicts the known and documented problems with current cancer therapies (such as chemo), as well as the problem with biospies being unreliable for prediction, another known fact.
Furthermore, this model suggests more effective methods for curing cancer based on affecting the growth factors of the tumor. These methods appear to have worked in at least one human subject who was beyond hope of cure by any conventional means.
However, these methods aren't really the point to the research. The point is just understanding how cancer works, with the assumption that such an understanding will make curing cancer easier and more reliable. They certainly have enough data to make a good case for why their model of cancer growth is a good one.
One problem is this model is based on solid tumor growth. Not all cancers are solid. Malignant cancers tend to have no well defined boundary because the cancerous cells invade the surrounding tissue rather that pushing it out of the way when they go through mitosis.
I would tend to think that all problems can be solved by math. Algorythms are everywhere and they shape nature and the human body. Like someone renwoned said : if you have aa problem with your interface throw in a algorythm and it keeps the doctor away...
I don't really know that much about malignant cancer growth, but I don't see why oddly-shaped tumors would make them any less solid. Mathematically, they are still volumes, and they still have a surface and an interior. The basic growth model should still apply, it just gets more complicated.
The problem with this kind of news is that cancer sufferers, like myself, know that it probably won't be available for some years, until it's too late. This makes it much harder to stay positive. This kind of news should be repressed until the cure can be available to all. And what about the cost factor? Will it be out of reach to the ordinary person, like so many other treatments?
"An algorithm a day keeps the doctor away." How many cancer patients are lined up outside their University today? Having watched my father-in-law deteriorate over the past two years, even if the cure rate only matches that of chemo- and radiation therapies, if it saves some of the side-effects it's worth more funding and research.
I'm sorry you are suffering from cancer. I feel bad for you. But suppressing news of progress just to avoid giving you hope isn't really the direction to go.
If anything, it would slow down funding which would slow down progress. If it bothers you that much to read about it, there IS a simpler solution.
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Have many of you read the paper they posted? It's a long read, as to be expected, but it's quite informative and looks to be very promising. It's posted at the end of the post, but here's another link if you missed it.
Treatment Paper
I'm both hopeful and skeptical.
Mathematics is an idealization, an abstraction of reality. A formula can predict what might happen in a double blind study of a larger population but it's not always 100% accurate.
I'm sure that the zero side effects may be true in the model, but in group of real patients, that's not any more likely than a 100% cure rate.
Any step forward in correcting the biological data corruption know as Cancer is definitely a step in the right direction.
Wish all those people working on this, not only in Spain, but around the world all the best to find a cure for this scurge on society...
There's no information here, at all. I don't get why this is even news. Of course new therapies for serious illness are exciting, but seriously, what a lot of nothing from an information standpoint.
Having accurate (even fractal!) models to predict the weather doesn't make it any easier for us to change tomorrow's weather. Nor does accurate knowledge about how a child's brain grows allow us to necessarily change that growth.
The referenced paper proposes that knowing the growth behaviour of the tumour can be used to better time chemotherapy, but I could not see any mention in the paper about the fortunate person whose liver cancer went into ?remission.
Some people said it was impossible to cross the horizon because boats will fall, other people said earth was flat, and some others said "it will be only 4 computers in the whole world". All of them was scientists too.
Give Dr. Bru time, be skeptical, but don´t close your mind to hope.
Keep going Bru!!!!.
and doesn't the medical profession just talk about your chance of surviving cancer over a 5 year horizon. They don't say cured for all time that I know of.
Well, the first part of your statement is very true. Even if this develops into an operational therapy, it will take years and probably won't be effective in all cases.
But I don't agree on repressing news. Science advances by spreading information and making it available to all. If the information is available, another researcher may be able to make further advances. A rich donor may fund the work of Prof. Bru. A patient with early stage cancer may refuse giving up and fight harder to stay alive until an effective therapy is developed...
--- In reply to: "The problem with this kind of news is that cancer sufferers, like myself, know that it probably won't be available for some years, until it's too late. This makes it much harder to stay positive. This kind of news should be repressed until the cure can be available to all. And what about the cost factor? Will it be out of reach to the ordinary person, like so many other treatments?"
"dangerous", "hype"... well, some never get it.
read: it's not about the clinical results. it's about the math that led to it all.
endavant, bru et al!
Good job spain!! Is about time. Hopefully more money goes into this research and we get some more data out of it. There isnt much money for research in Spain unfortunately and even though this guy and his team carried on with the work. Nice. Where the fuck is the US? with all the fucking money they got and there they are, manufacturing fucking weapons and wasting money over oil. I say we go for Spain which without money and support they made more progress,,
"and doesn't the medical profession just talk about your chance of surviving cancer over a 5 year horizon. They don't say cured for all time that I know of."
I had a DFSP (Dermata Fibro Sarcoma Protuberance) a few years ago in my R. thigh - It looked like a clogged pore or ingrown hair at first so I didn't worry... Later it looked like a cyst (3 Dr's agreed on this) but it turned out to be malignant cancer (and I had no insurance at the time - talk about bad luck) - I had a surgery (they took about a hamburger pattys worth of flesh from my leg - no chemo no radiation therapy) after a year of follow ups (CAT scans & MRIs) I was declared cured (not cancer is in remission) - so it does happen you just don't hear alot about it...
also MKRN1 (google it) is actually another hopeful cancer cure in the making - if i remember correctly it removes the telemorase (an enzyme) that coats the telomers (ageing tags) of cancer cells - allowing them to die off like normal cells.... (cancer cells are often called immortal - the telemorase allows them to divide w/o ageing the way normal cells do) I believe that only cancer cells have the telemorase enzyme (i may be wrong) so the MKRN1 should only affect cancer cells....
I've been to school to be a lab tech (yes I did graduate :) and have spoken to the Molecular PHD and the DNA techs at the lab I work at and they said (mind you we do not have access to the raw study data) that it is entirely feasable and we have learned about telomers and telomerase in the last few years.....
Cancer cells have several phases G-1,S,G-2,M,G-o - depending on the type of cancer, various treatment protocals are meant to attack the cells at certain phases - the math may have to do with determining the the cancer cells most vulnerable phase and administering treatment to coincide precisely with the phase the cells are in (but I'm just guessing here because the article did not go in depth on how it works...)
if this is hard to follow or makes little sense - i appologise - I'm really too tired to spell check or punctuate properly (long day at work) ... sorry
CLM
a very close relative is on a terminal cancer, and we are going to try mr. bru´s treatment by ourselves, I have managed to talk with him and he has told me that he thinks that he can be cured, so we are going to reproduce exactly his experiment with medical supervision(a doctor friend of mine is going to do it, as it is still ilegal here to try this, but we do not have much time left. I will post here if we have cure him. I do not want to give more information, as I do not want to be caught, but as soon as we finish the treatment I will tell you exactly everything we did. wish me luck as I love very much the person that is dying, and yhis is our last hope.
Well, I hope I can help:
In pages 12 and 13 you can read the "protocole". In this link you can see the amount of neupogen used regarding to the weight, leukocyte levels and the two stages they followed. With that and a doctor you know, you can repeat the process that brú and his team made. Good luck.
http://161.111.50.195/tsweb/ antoniobru/ARTICULOS/A RTICULOS/ jounalclinicalresearchdic2004.pdf
Good luck to the person who is going to try Bru's treatment and please let us know what happens. Our thoughts, and hopes, are with you.
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thank yoy very much for your support: I have managed to get my hands on the amount necessary of neupogen to start an 8 week treatment. I next friday we will start with the first injection, I will keep you posted. if this works you will hear from me as i will dedicate my life to help mr.bru to cure cancer all over the world. again, pray for me. thanks
Good luck with the treatment!! Let us know how everything goes. Are you Spanish?
I prefer not to give any information about me as to try this is illegal where i live. I will tellyou every day how everything is going and if it works i will give everybody my name and telephone number in casa anybody needs support
I hava a friend who has had cancer for the past 6 years and has been given just a few weeks to live. Is it worth us contacting Dr. Bru? Is he prepared to consider individual cases?
consider to be guided by a medic. it is essential to control your leukocyte level.
I have a friend who is a doctor and he is going to monitor every day the leukocyte levels, about your friend, I would certainly do it. regarding dr.bru, I talked to him and he can do nothing but tell me what to do. it is simple and it is on his study. if it is weeks, then do it. I have managed to get the neupogen in andorra, just ask different pharmacysts. remember, this suposedly works only on solid tumors, I do not know what type of cancer your friend has. as I said, next friday I will start with the first injection. I will post all the leucocyte levels and how the patient is feeling. i don´t know what will happen but I have a hunch, and mr.bru told me looking in my eyes that HE THINKS IT CAN BE CURED. still, there are only 2 cases but there are 2 out of 2, ehich is important I supose we are the 3rd, and it is adifferent cancer though it is a solid tumor so we´ll see. as I saod, if it cures her,(remember this is nothing more than a desperate experiment) i will post my name and full adress with telephone numbers in case anybody needs any help from me
Good luck. Is today the first injection then? Could you use a pseudoname so that we can call you something. Thanks and thinking of you.
no, it is next friday when we are starting. you can call me ayaman
Ayaman, the thoughts of us, we have a close friend who is suffering cancer and seems to have not cure, and of many other people are with you. We congratulate your bravery and also the pioneer work of Mr. Bru. Many people will be interested in hearing how this experiment continues. Please keep us informed. Thank you and good luck.
Yesterday we got in touch with Antonio Bru in Madrid's Completense University to ask about any ongoing experiments, and ask about his relationship, if any, with http://www.antonio-bru.info. We have received the following answer from a member of his research team:
"As things stand today, we still don't know when or how we will be carrying out the next lot of tests. We have answered thousands of requests, one by one, and we have not yet agreed to carry out any further tests with anybody. The following steps are controlled by very strict legal norms, which we have always respected. It may turn out to be a slow process, but when things concern public health, this is the best solution...
"Secondly, we are aware of the website you mention and the people behind it have nothing to do with our research group. Although we have made a great effort to always offer information as precise as possible, we know that there is always a risk that news items like this one get distorted by some news sources and the general public. I have left a message on the said site trying to summarise the current state of affairs in an attempt to clarify a little the many extravagant comments which have, unfortunately, appeared.
I am extremely grateful for your interest and for your efforts in mantaining the degree of objectivity required by a theme as important as this one".
that's right. the site it isn't made by brú or a member of his team. in that way, they have changed it for www.terapia-cancer.org
it is also true that in that place, you can read all the official publications of brú, including all the experiment of this one successful case.
Why there are not any news about this issue from some days ago? May be the forum has been blocked?
Could you anyone explain me why?
We would like to get some information from ayaman about the results obtained with Bru's treatment. We hope everything is going well. Good luck!
30.06.05
Ok it's been a while since Ayaman posted his/her mail though I can't make out when she/he would have started the treatment for her friend. I am desperate to hear some news as my sister in law has stage IV cervical cancer and this seems like the last window of hope..ANyone heard anything I have checked out MKRN1 and its still in the tyest tube phaze so that avenue is closed to us for the moment..anyone know of any other treatment or clinical trial out there?? I really feel like I need to reasearch this and find out about our options. I refuse to give up hope.
Mas información
www.terapia-cancer.org
Y su foro
http://www.terapia-cancer.org/foro/index.php
People, there are few people in the forum www.terapia-cancer.org that are being treated. Almost all feel lot better, even someone that were in bed are now feeling good and walking around. I think this is incredible and nobody is giving nothing for this. Why? There are lots of treatmeants that work worse. Lets give a chance to it. Read this forum, is very interesting
i need to buy neupogen. Can you please tell me how you do it (address of phone number of the pharmacy)
i NEED TO BUY NEUPOGEN. CAN SOMEONE HELP ME AN TELL ME HOW TO DO IT. THANKS
hello!
As somebody said a few comments above, try the forum www.terapia-cancer.org.
I follow them everyday and there is hope there. Several people are following Dr. Bru's protocol and inform daily of their progress. It doesnt always work out as we would like, but provideing the patient begins the treatment on a good condition, the reports are encouraging.
Language is Spanish, but if you post any query, any of us will translate. I can do it every night. We are trying hard to make ourselves heard, so that Dr. Bru and his team be granted funds from our government for investigating further and go ahead with the clinical trials, and so shortening the time it will take for the treatment to be at everybody's disposal.
A news difficult to believe yet true. Science can do wonders. All that we need is science, more science and still more science. Congratulations indeed.
i need your prayers,i have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, my stay on this earth is numbered.need your prayers.
P.norbert,
Spain
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