From: Sent: To: Subject: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 2:38 PM [email protected] fyi <http://s.wsj.net/img/wsj_=rint.gif> • BUSINESS <http://online.wsj.com/publichearch?article-doc-type==7BBusiness%7D&HEADERTEXT=Business> • JANUARY 25, 2011 Novel Effort To Fight Cancer With Cancer Cells By RON WINSLOW In an audacious twist on the concept of fighting fire with fire, scientists have developed a provocative strategy of fighting cancer with cancer. Researchers at the Rogosin Institute are taking tumor cells from mice, encapsulating them in beads made from a seaweed-derived sugar called agarose, and implanting them in the abdomen of cancer patients. There, cells in the beads secrete proteins researchers believe could signal a patient's cancer to stop growing, shrink or even die. So far, at least 30 patients have been treated with the cancer beads=20 in an initial human study, and a phase two or intermediate-stage trial has been launched—with the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—to test the technique in patients with advanced colo=, pancreatic and prostate cancers. It's too early to know whether or how well the beads work in people,=20 but in studies involving laboratory mice as well as dogs and cats stricken with cancer, the treatment substantially reduced the size of tumors. In some cases animals lived significantly longer than expected, according to two articles being published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Research. A Bead on Cancer In a novel treatment currently under study, scientists are testing whether cancer cells implanted into patients can signal the patients' tumors to stop growing, shrink or even die. View Full Image chttp://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AZ008_BEADS_D_2=110124201806.jpg> Cancer research is replete with strategies that have succeeded in treating mice only to fail when subjected to rigorous human testing. But if the cancer beads prove effective in people, it would challenge