Dendritic cells, Bird Flu, Monocytes and me.

Now sit up straight and pay attention, I'm only go to say this once. (Mainly because I've only just got my head around it all and I'll have forgotten most of it by the time you read this)

Another of the reasons for yesterday's barbecue a'la Ron was to fool my immune system into thinking I was running a fever and therefore under attack from some invading force.
This then caused my bone marrow to produce large numbers of monocytes.

A Monocyte is a type of leukocyte, part of the human body's immune system. Monocytes have two main functions in the immune system: (1) replenish resident macrophages and dendritic cells . (2) in response to inflammation signals, such as being cooked in a pizza oven, monocytes move quickly to sites of infection and divide into macrophages and dendritic cells. Like soldiers in the fight against an invading foe.

Although Dendritic Cells are potent cells, there is not usually a large enough quantity to allow for an effective immune response in disease such as cancer. Still with me?

Today we harvested those monocytes and they have been sent away for processing in a laboratory to produce huge numbers of Dendritic Cells. In eight days time these will be given back to me in order to allow massive Dendritic participation in optimally activating my immune system against my cancer.

Ok nearly done.. It gets better. Scientists recently discovered that a certain variant of an avian virus, Newcastle Disease Virus (That's a bird flu to you and I) that is fatal in birds yet harmless to humans, has a very neat little trick up it's sleeve when it is introduced to mammals (that's us).

The virus, (do I need to explain how virus's work?) seeks out cancer cells, invading and destroying them while leaving normal cells unharmed. Once all the cancer cells have been destroyed the virus no longer has a host and expires. Scientists don't fully understand the process behind it but there are several theories, none of which I need go into.
I will be receiving this virus in conjunction with the Dendritic cell vaccine.

Basically this is just one of the treatments that I will be receiving here at the clinic. Add to that the possibility of antibody treatment once the blood samples sent to Greece are analysed, plus the tailored chemotherapy, we are going to be hitting my lymphoma hard from several fronts.

If the above treatment sounds a bit radical, it is. This clinic is one of only a handful in Germany and indeed the world that is licenced to administer it. It's cutting edge stuff. Look for it at your local NZ hospital in about 10 years.

OK enough boring medical stuff.. I'll tell you about the gory bits in the next (short) post.