Thymosin Therapy for Cancer

Constantly investing money and time to discover new and more effective ways to treat cancer is the only way science will ever defeat this disease. One methodology which was tried to no avail is thymosin therapy, or application of thymosin hormone to individuals who have cancer.

Cancer

• Cancer is the development and subsequent spread of non-conforming, abnormal cells. These cells form into a mass called a tumor, and after growing to sufficient size they spread throughout the lymph node system of the body to other organs and tissue. Symptoms can include chills, night sweating, fever, weight loss and malaise.

Thymosin

• Thymosin is a hormone which promotes the development of T-cells. T-cells are white blood cells. They are part of the immune system which acts to customize the body's immunological response to a particular threat, such as cancer. T-cells are also commonly referred to as T-lymphocytes.

Thymosin Therapy Theory

• The general idea behind using thymosin therapy to combat cancer is that by injecting patients with thymosin, their bodies will adaptively respond, producing additional T-cells to better counteract the threat of cancer. The specific type of thymosin used in treatment is called "fraction V (5)."

Effects

• According to a study published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science in 1978, application of thymosin fraction V had a normalizing effect when administered to cancer patients. In other words, some patients increased their overall T-cell count while others saw a decrease. Another study published in December of 1987 in the journal Cancer Research saw no difference in survival rates following administration of thymosin to individuals affected with lung cancer.

Considerations

• While some cancer treatments live up to their promised potential, others fail to deliver. By and large, thymosin therapy failed to produce results in either of the two aforementioned studies. Because of these disappointing results, the prospect of using thymosin to combat cancer has been largely forgone, with science turning its eyes towards the potential of other means such as gene therapy and nanotechnology to finally defeat cancer.