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Chilean doctor promotes new therapy against cancer

Xinhua, August 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

An innovative immunological therapy that attacks carcinogenic cells in humans through increasing the body's anti-tumor response was presented in Santiago on Friday.

This therapy is now in the pre-clinical stage and its creator is Doctor Claudio Acuna, a researcher at the University of Santiago, who said the therapy will soon be patented in the United States.

The aim "is to generate a vaccine for people who already are showing signs of cancer which will allow them to improve their immunological response against tumors. We don't expect to reverse the cancer but offer an alternative," said Acuna.

During a news conference at the Chile Image Foundation, Acuna said that he is currently looking to raise funds to continue with the clinical stage which could last eight to 10 years.

"We need to wait for patents approval before progressing to the other stages. Our project is focused on improving the quality of life of the patients in the long term and to generate a therapy that is supplementary to the conventional treatments," said Acuna.

It is estimated this new method could decrease global medical care costs by 70 percent in comparison with similar therapies.

"This immunotherapy is available for a wide spectrum of patients with breast, skin, lung, colon, prostate cancer and others in the advanced stages," Acuna told local journalists.

The treatments against cancer usually include surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and directed therapies, which provoke side-effects and show low effectiveness in the terminal stages, and in general are expensive, said the doctor.

"This therapy will not have side-effects and shouldn't be more harmful. And in terms of cost, once it can be marketed, it will not have a cost of more than 500,000 Chilean pesos, the equivalent of around 750 U.S. dollars," added Acuna.

Every year, more than 10 million people in the world are diagnosed with new cases of cancer, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2012, some 8.2 million people died from the disease, according to WHO statistics. Endi