Adaryn
The Living Force
24 January 2020 - Dailymail
His three eldest children were still infants when he was told in 2010 that he was unlikely to make it through the nine-hour operation to remove the vast tumour from his intestine.
A year later, in October 2011, another large tumour was discovered in his pancreas, and he was again told to put his affairs in order and start saying his goodbyes. Pancreatic cancer has a mortality rate of 94 per cent within five years of diagnosis.
‘I couldn’t face any more surgery and I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to back myself to beat it,’ he says.
It was a good bet. Today, James is fit and happy, a rare long- term survivor of metastatic (spreading) cancer.
It seems that every time cancer strikes, his white blood cells —known as T-cells and a crucial part of the immune system — aggressively attack his tumours.
His body’s ability to strike back is far beyond what his medical treatment could have achieved and is so extreme, so unusual, that both James and his doctors want to understand how and why, so that knowledge could help others with cancer.
‘If there is something in me that can help people, I knew I was morally obliged to do everything I could,’ he says.
So since October 2018 a team of leading cancer and immunology specialists from six British universities have co-operated in laboratory studies using James’s blood cells. Their initial findings herald what may lead to the biggest breakthrough in cancer therapy for decades.
For James’s ‘super-charged T- cells’ not only recognise, attack and kill his cancer cells, but also, in the laboratory, do the same to cancer cells taken from other patients suffering from pancreatic, liver, breast, colon cancers and melanoma. As Professor Andrew Sewell, research director of the Institute of Infection and Immunity at Cardiff University School of Medicine, who is involved in the study, puts it: ‘James is not normal. He is not normal at all.’
In simple terms, while T-cells are good at finding and killing infected cells, cancers can create environments that are hostile to T-cells — subduing their function or starving them of nutrition.
Researchers believe that establishing why James’s T-cells are able to thwart the best efforts of cancer cells may lead to groundbreaking new therapies for cancer.
‘It is not hype to suggest that we are at the beginning of an immune therapy revolution,’ says Daniel M. Davis, professor of immunology at Manchester University and another member of the research team.
[…]
Until February 2010, James Hull had enjoyed exceptional health, never experiencing more than the odd cold or occasional rugby or boxing injury in his youth. So when he started suffering sudden stomach pains, it was something of a novelty, but he ignored them.
By the summer, he felt worse, but despite extensive tests, doctors could find nothing wrong.
Then in November, he started vomiting up faecal matter. He was rushed to Hereford County Hospital where he underwent a nine-hour operation in which a vast tumour, a lot of his intestines and several lymph nodes were removed.
‘I had a malignant carcinoma [a cancer that starts in the cells that make up the skin or the tissue lining organs] that had spread to the lymph nodes. I was just 50 with three kids under three,’ he says bleakly. ‘It was catastrophic.’
From that moment on, he and his wife Nova, 47, who had grown up in the same area of Newport in Wales as James, embarked on a conveyor belt of hospital appointments, surgery, infections, drugs, hormone treatments for his different cancers as they were diagnosed, prayers, tears and many silent car journeys back from doom-laden prognoses when, as James puts it, ‘we both knew I’d “had it” but couldn’t bear to face it.’
While the diagnosis itself wasn’t such a shock — his mother, grandparents and numerous aunts and uncles had died of cancer — his continuing survival was a mystery.
‘The cause of cancer and beating cancer are two very different things,’ explains immunologist Professor Sewell, a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator.
‘Given his familial history of cancer it’s no real surprise that James keeps getting it. The surprise is that he’s still here.’ There were early signs that James’s biological make-up was unusual.
Despite being blasted with powerful intravenous and oral chemotherapy treatments for bowel cancer, he suffered no side-effects at all.
‘I didn’t feel sick,’ he says. ‘I didn’t even lose my hair!’ When he was diagnosed with an aggressive malignant tumour in his pancreas, doctors discovered that it had actually been present for more than a year and, in their view, should already have killed him.
Next, in 2014, the numerous basal cell carcinomas (a common skin cancer) that for a year had been popping up on his arms, started disappearing without need for surgery.
In 2017, what doctors were certain on examination was a malignant melanoma on James’s scalp, contained no cancerous cells. They tested it twice in the lab to be sure.
More recently, over the past year and after refusing the transplant, the secondary tumours in James’s liver have gone from a Ki 67 reading of 17 in summer 2018, to just four, and they are still regressing. (Ki 67 is the activity/aggression index which shows the speed at which the cancer cells are dividing and forming new cells.)
He had undergone hormone treatment to slow the cancer’s progression but voluntarily stopped it in June 2019 because he couldn’t bear the side-effects. But no one expected the cancer to go backwards.
‘I started to think: “I’m going to have to start asking why I’m alive now”,’ he says. ‘And if there’s something in my blood that’s keeping me alive, can I help others, too?’
It planted the idea of a universal cancer cure in his mind — an impossible goal, surely — but James was never a man to be put off by a challenge. […]
But he says his conscience will not let him sit back and enjoy it. Throughout his gruelling treatments, he routinely asked doctors to pass on his mobile number to any fellow cancer sufferers they thought might like a friendly ear, or ‘a bit of hope’ from someone who’d survived thus far.
‘I get messages from people every week, from all over the world and many of them are just heart-breaking,’ he says. ‘If I’ve been let off the hook, spared, then I’ve got to see this through.’
So he got to work.
He threw his energy into researching who’s who in the world of immunology and approached some of the top names.
He persuaded them to work together on a cross-university research project, funded by Continuum Life Sciences, a firm he set up in 2016 and into which he has already ploughed tens of millions of pounds to fast-forward the research.
He ensured each research programme was independently verified (it is subject to an independent expert review panel run by Awen Gallimore, a professor of cancer immunology at Cancer Research UK), ethically sound (each university must satisfy its own ethical committee) and that the collaborating scientists had the equipment they needed.
It was in July 2019, 18 months after the research project was launched, that James received a succession of texts from Professor Sewell that changed everything.
‘Oh my God! It’s like Apocalypse Now! Your blood is destroying all the other cancers,’ said the first.
Then: ‘Your cells cause carnage!! Cancer should be scared.’
In the Continuum laboratories at Cardiff University, James’s super-charged T-cells had been mixed with cancer cell samples from five different cancers from five different patients — and killed them all.
In all the accompanying controls, the cancer cells continued to grow.
The researchers repeated the experiment several times — with the same result.
Within three months, the team had cloned James’s T- cells, that is, reproduced exact copies.
Now the million-dollar question was: would these synthetically produced cells actually retain their cancer- killing capabilities?
In late December 2019, the first results — for pancreatic cancer — revealed that the cloned ‘Hull’ cells were just as aggressive.
It was time to expand the research programme and find other survivors like James.
Because, while unusual, he was unlikely to be the only cancer survivor with super-charged T-cells.
So far, through the different participating universities and James’s contacts, the team has identified about 40 long-term survivors — but need more.
‘About 100 would make all the difference to our study,’ says Professor Hardev Pandha of Surrey University.
Currently, the T-cells from six individuals have produced similar (but less potent) cancer-killing results in the lab to James’s. All those cells have now been successfully cloned.
The goal is to use James’s cloned cells — and hopefully those of other unique survivors — to provide a universal therapy for all cancers.
[…]
So could James’s T-cells really herald a universal cure for cancer?
As Carl June puts it: ‘Understanding the mechanisms by which extreme cancer survivors clear their cancer has potential to end the cancer epidemic.’
Only time will tell.
But first, the Continuum team needs help to boost their research programme. They need more long-term cancer survivors to assist in their research programme by giving blood.
This is why James Hull is telling his story, in the hope others will come forward to help him and his team of world-renowned scientists in their quest to find a cure for cancer — sooner rather than later.
- Dr James Hull has been diagnosed with bowel, pancreatic, liver and skin cancer
- The 59-year-old was told he was unlikely to make it through an operation in 2010
- A year later, in October 2011, the father was again told to put his affairs in order
- It seems that every time cancer strikes, his white blood cells attack his tumours
- Since 2018 leading specialists co-operated in studies using Mr Hull's blood cells
- The initial findings herald what may lead to the biggest breakthrough in decades
His three eldest children were still infants when he was told in 2010 that he was unlikely to make it through the nine-hour operation to remove the vast tumour from his intestine.
A year later, in October 2011, another large tumour was discovered in his pancreas, and he was again told to put his affairs in order and start saying his goodbyes. Pancreatic cancer has a mortality rate of 94 per cent within five years of diagnosis.
‘I couldn’t face any more surgery and I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to back myself to beat it,’ he says.
It was a good bet. Today, James is fit and happy, a rare long- term survivor of metastatic (spreading) cancer.
It seems that every time cancer strikes, his white blood cells —known as T-cells and a crucial part of the immune system — aggressively attack his tumours.
His body’s ability to strike back is far beyond what his medical treatment could have achieved and is so extreme, so unusual, that both James and his doctors want to understand how and why, so that knowledge could help others with cancer.
‘If there is something in me that can help people, I knew I was morally obliged to do everything I could,’ he says.
So since October 2018 a team of leading cancer and immunology specialists from six British universities have co-operated in laboratory studies using James’s blood cells. Their initial findings herald what may lead to the biggest breakthrough in cancer therapy for decades.
For James’s ‘super-charged T- cells’ not only recognise, attack and kill his cancer cells, but also, in the laboratory, do the same to cancer cells taken from other patients suffering from pancreatic, liver, breast, colon cancers and melanoma. As Professor Andrew Sewell, research director of the Institute of Infection and Immunity at Cardiff University School of Medicine, who is involved in the study, puts it: ‘James is not normal. He is not normal at all.’
In simple terms, while T-cells are good at finding and killing infected cells, cancers can create environments that are hostile to T-cells — subduing their function or starving them of nutrition.
Researchers believe that establishing why James’s T-cells are able to thwart the best efforts of cancer cells may lead to groundbreaking new therapies for cancer.
‘It is not hype to suggest that we are at the beginning of an immune therapy revolution,’ says Daniel M. Davis, professor of immunology at Manchester University and another member of the research team.
[…]
Until February 2010, James Hull had enjoyed exceptional health, never experiencing more than the odd cold or occasional rugby or boxing injury in his youth. So when he started suffering sudden stomach pains, it was something of a novelty, but he ignored them.
By the summer, he felt worse, but despite extensive tests, doctors could find nothing wrong.
Then in November, he started vomiting up faecal matter. He was rushed to Hereford County Hospital where he underwent a nine-hour operation in which a vast tumour, a lot of his intestines and several lymph nodes were removed.
‘I had a malignant carcinoma [a cancer that starts in the cells that make up the skin or the tissue lining organs] that had spread to the lymph nodes. I was just 50 with three kids under three,’ he says bleakly. ‘It was catastrophic.’
From that moment on, he and his wife Nova, 47, who had grown up in the same area of Newport in Wales as James, embarked on a conveyor belt of hospital appointments, surgery, infections, drugs, hormone treatments for his different cancers as they were diagnosed, prayers, tears and many silent car journeys back from doom-laden prognoses when, as James puts it, ‘we both knew I’d “had it” but couldn’t bear to face it.’
While the diagnosis itself wasn’t such a shock — his mother, grandparents and numerous aunts and uncles had died of cancer — his continuing survival was a mystery.
‘The cause of cancer and beating cancer are two very different things,’ explains immunologist Professor Sewell, a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator.
‘Given his familial history of cancer it’s no real surprise that James keeps getting it. The surprise is that he’s still here.’ There were early signs that James’s biological make-up was unusual.
Despite being blasted with powerful intravenous and oral chemotherapy treatments for bowel cancer, he suffered no side-effects at all.
‘I didn’t feel sick,’ he says. ‘I didn’t even lose my hair!’ When he was diagnosed with an aggressive malignant tumour in his pancreas, doctors discovered that it had actually been present for more than a year and, in their view, should already have killed him.
Next, in 2014, the numerous basal cell carcinomas (a common skin cancer) that for a year had been popping up on his arms, started disappearing without need for surgery.
In 2017, what doctors were certain on examination was a malignant melanoma on James’s scalp, contained no cancerous cells. They tested it twice in the lab to be sure.
More recently, over the past year and after refusing the transplant, the secondary tumours in James’s liver have gone from a Ki 67 reading of 17 in summer 2018, to just four, and they are still regressing. (Ki 67 is the activity/aggression index which shows the speed at which the cancer cells are dividing and forming new cells.)
He had undergone hormone treatment to slow the cancer’s progression but voluntarily stopped it in June 2019 because he couldn’t bear the side-effects. But no one expected the cancer to go backwards.
‘I started to think: “I’m going to have to start asking why I’m alive now”,’ he says. ‘And if there’s something in my blood that’s keeping me alive, can I help others, too?’
It planted the idea of a universal cancer cure in his mind — an impossible goal, surely — but James was never a man to be put off by a challenge. […]
But he says his conscience will not let him sit back and enjoy it. Throughout his gruelling treatments, he routinely asked doctors to pass on his mobile number to any fellow cancer sufferers they thought might like a friendly ear, or ‘a bit of hope’ from someone who’d survived thus far.
‘I get messages from people every week, from all over the world and many of them are just heart-breaking,’ he says. ‘If I’ve been let off the hook, spared, then I’ve got to see this through.’
So he got to work.
He threw his energy into researching who’s who in the world of immunology and approached some of the top names.
He persuaded them to work together on a cross-university research project, funded by Continuum Life Sciences, a firm he set up in 2016 and into which he has already ploughed tens of millions of pounds to fast-forward the research.
He ensured each research programme was independently verified (it is subject to an independent expert review panel run by Awen Gallimore, a professor of cancer immunology at Cancer Research UK), ethically sound (each university must satisfy its own ethical committee) and that the collaborating scientists had the equipment they needed.
It was in July 2019, 18 months after the research project was launched, that James received a succession of texts from Professor Sewell that changed everything.
‘Oh my God! It’s like Apocalypse Now! Your blood is destroying all the other cancers,’ said the first.
Then: ‘Your cells cause carnage!! Cancer should be scared.’
In the Continuum laboratories at Cardiff University, James’s super-charged T-cells had been mixed with cancer cell samples from five different cancers from five different patients — and killed them all.
In all the accompanying controls, the cancer cells continued to grow.
The researchers repeated the experiment several times — with the same result.
Within three months, the team had cloned James’s T- cells, that is, reproduced exact copies.
Now the million-dollar question was: would these synthetically produced cells actually retain their cancer- killing capabilities?
In late December 2019, the first results — for pancreatic cancer — revealed that the cloned ‘Hull’ cells were just as aggressive.
It was time to expand the research programme and find other survivors like James.
Because, while unusual, he was unlikely to be the only cancer survivor with super-charged T-cells.
So far, through the different participating universities and James’s contacts, the team has identified about 40 long-term survivors — but need more.
‘About 100 would make all the difference to our study,’ says Professor Hardev Pandha of Surrey University.
Currently, the T-cells from six individuals have produced similar (but less potent) cancer-killing results in the lab to James’s. All those cells have now been successfully cloned.
The goal is to use James’s cloned cells — and hopefully those of other unique survivors — to provide a universal therapy for all cancers.
[…]
So could James’s T-cells really herald a universal cure for cancer?
As Carl June puts it: ‘Understanding the mechanisms by which extreme cancer survivors clear their cancer has potential to end the cancer epidemic.’
Only time will tell.
But first, the Continuum team needs help to boost their research programme. They need more long-term cancer survivors to assist in their research programme by giving blood.
This is why James Hull is telling his story, in the hope others will come forward to help him and his team of world-renowned scientists in their quest to find a cure for cancer — sooner rather than later.
as melatonin has these 2 properties (see the melatonin thread)