Scientist Paul Workman told the newspaper in 2017 The world from Madrid, as president of the London Cancer Research Institute: “My parents died of cancer. I have been researching the disease for 40 years. New therapies for skin cancer stimulate our defenses and avoid toxic effects, but the treatments are very expensive. In England, the United States and European countries they exceed the value of a house: 100,000 euros or up to 500,000 if two, three or four treatments are needed. I do not criticize the industry that has to be economically viable. One solution is for universities and foundations to intervene in the development of medicines”.
The Sales Foundation is part of that solution. Created 47 years ago (1976), it develops cancer research programs with researchers from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet) that achieve international advances. One of them, José Mordoh, disciple of the Argentine Nobel Prize winner Luis F. Leloir and, in his youth, of the French Nobel Prize winner François Jacob (Pasteur Institute of Paris), For more than 35 years he has led a scientific team that achieved a therapeutic vaccine against melanoma, the most serious skin cancer. It is not preventive, as it is applied to patients with the disease. Approved by the National Administration of Medicines, Foods and Medical Technology (Anmat), It will be able to be used in a few months, produced by the Pablo Cassará laboratory in Argentina.
The vaccine stimulates our immune system. It demonstrated high efficacy in clinical trials carried out with patients in our country, in which between 1,200 and 1,500 cases of melanoma are registered per year, and about 600 deaths. Mordoh now aims to further increase its effectiveness, to enhance the effect of other therapies against melanoma and to be able to apply it to other cancers.
José Mordoh, disciple of the Argentine Nobel Prize winner Luis F. Leloir, has led a scientific team that has developed a therapeutic vaccine against melanoma for more than 35 years.
As highlighted THE NATION In its editorial of 7/31/23, more than a century ago certain diseases began to be attacked by our body’s defenses, although this did not happen with cancer. The reasons for this fact are already known. For this reason, in 2013, the scientific journal Science said: “Oncological immunotherapy is a totally different way of treating cancer as it stimulates our immune system, which is why oncologists claim that the leaf has been turned and that there will be no return.” The vaccine achieved by Mordoh is, precisely, immunotherapeutic. While traditional chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments were designed to attack cancer cells, destroying others due to lack of precision, Oncological immunotherapy mobilizes one’s own defenses in a precise and non-invasive way. Revolutionary approach, since when combined with the aforementioned traditional therapies, it improves quality of life and extends survival.
The idea of the aforementioned scientist Paul Workman that foundations develop anti-cancer drugs was realized by Cancer Con Ciencia of the Sales Foundation (www.cancerconciencia.org.ar), associated with Conicet, which provides the researchers. Sales achieved more than 150,000 monthly donors who grow year after year and are protagonists, along with scientists, of this advance. Your donations finance scholarships and research publications, scientific instruments and drugs, trips to meetings and congresses, clinical trials and patents approved in 21 important countries. So, Sales and Conicet are co-owners of the intellectual property of the vaccine. The aforementioned expenditures reduce the cost of treatment, since both institutions, since they do not have a lucrative purpose, eliminate the percentage of economic profit and avoid the high cost of importing a medicine.. The Association of Medical Propaganda Agents compared, a few years ago, the prices of anti-cancer remedies in Argentina with those in the United Kingdom and Spain: medicines here cost between 140% and 280% more than in those European countries.
In Uruguay, the president and oncologist Tabaré Vázquez participated in the Winter Conferences in Oncology in 2015, whose central topic was skin cancer, especially melanoma. Vázquez, who knew about our research, was very critical of the high cost of treatments against melanoma, low efficacy and reduced survival in few patients.
Preventive vaccines prevent disease. The therapy achieved by Mordoh is applied at the beginning of the disease so that the melanoma does not worsen. It is unique in the world because of the increase it achieves in the number and variety of lymphocytes in our immune system to attack tumor cells..
*The author is executive director of the Sales Foundation
Conocé The Trust Project
2023-09-24 21:26:00
#Unique #world #Argentine #vaccine #skin #cancer #coming #months
