Dylan Stoll | Health Editor
Featured Image: “Trojan Horse” treatment effective against over six different cancer types. | Pixabay
The fall of Troy, as depicted in Greek mythology, didn’t happen because of brute strength nor did it happen because of sheer numbers, the city of Troy fell because of the cunning and intelligence of the Greeks. When the Greek army approached the fortified city, they brought with them a “gift”—a massive wooden horse—as a token of their surrender to the Trojans. What the Trojans didn’t know, however, was that the horse was no gift; it was a means to get their soldiers inside.
The horse was in fact hollow; it contained armed troops ready to flood the streets of Troy and sack the great city from within. A story told throughout the ages, the fall of Troy has inspired everything from films to songs to poetry. It has even gone so far as to inspire a team of cancer researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research in London, as well as the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, to use the same cunning and intelligent approach as the Greeks, and attack the cancer cells from within.
But what exactly is cancer? Professor Michael Scheid, a cancer researcher at York, explains the ailment more clearly: “Cancer is a genetic disease whereby cells of our body acquire errors in the copy of DNA they carry. As these errors increase, the cancer cell evolves and divides, resulting in a tumor.”
Tisotumab Vedotin (TV), referred to as the “Trojan Horse” treatment, has been shown to be effective against many types of cancer, including cervical, bladder, ovarian, endometrial, esophageal, and lung cancer. The greatest response was seen in bladder cancer with 27 per cent of volunteer patients attaining stabilization of their disease.
“TV is a new treatment using so-called immunotherapy, which is an approach that utilizes antibodies to fight cancer cells,” Scheid explains. “Antibodies are proteins that your body makes that allows your immune system to recognize and target foreign invaders, such as bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. Recently, scientists have utilized this powerful system in cancer therapy whereby antibodies are custom made in the laboratory to target proteins expressed on cancer cells. With TV, researchers have fused antibodies with a toxic compound; when the antibody finds a cancer cell, it ‘delivers’ the toxic payload much like the Trojan Horse of mythology.”
A 27 per cent grade of effectiveness doesn’t seem like a very high mark, but the patients involved in the study are only those that are no longer responding to current treatments. Every other attempt made has failed. “So far, the results of these trials have been very encouraging, suggesting that this approach using immunotherapy could be an effective treatment in the future,” Scheid says.
Although TV will probably make a powerful weapon in the fight against cancer, it is not available to the general public as of yet. Keytruda, a form of targeted immunotherapy (‘targeted’ meaning only attacking cancerous cells), is open to the public; it has shown to be effective, not in its own “weaponry,” but in utilizing the readily available soldiers of the body. “Keytruda works by disabling the clever ability of cancer cells from hiding from your own immune system. Once activated, the patient’s immune cells becomes a powerful army that can very effectively kill cancer cells,” explains Scheid.
With all of these different treatments and with the many cancer types that encumber society, it can be very difficult for oncologists to decide which would be most effective for their patients. Some wish for a “cure all” cancer treatment, as it would certainly simplify things, but unfortunately, such a discovery is unlikely.
“Firstly, cancer is a heterogeneous disease of many mutations and traits; one drug that might be effective for cancer in one person might have no benefit in treating another person. Secondly, cancer cells can evolve. Thus, a treatment that might be initially effective could be evaded by the cancer cells as they acquire new mutations,” says Scheid. “The hope in the future is to develop personalized medicine where a person’s cancer is genetically defined and combinatorial approaches of several treatments are used to fight it.”
