Clapper, Patti, Schweizer and Mason

Associate Professor Manfred Beilharz of the University of Western Australia has gone on record stating that a trimodal manipulation of a patients’ own immune system may be an effective treatment for mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.  The effects observed in mice undergoing such treatment include the retardation of tumor growth – a key factor in prolonging the longevity of cancer patients.

The manipulation, which Beilharz calls ‘triple therapy,’ artificially adjusts the three components of the patient’s immune system.  Beilharz was led to this line of research after noticing that previous attempts to tweak one or two ‘arms’ of the immune system led to beneficial results.  He hoped that by going even further the results he could generate would be even greater.

Immunotherapy is not a new idea.  For decades scientists have been successfully boosting the human immune system to fight off various diseases.  In fact, the common vaccines we are given as children and later in life are prime examples of the effectiveness of immune therapy.  Vaccines contain small amounts of the disease or contagion the treatment is designed to fight.  By exposing the immune system to less virulent forms of a disease, we can artificially trigger an immune response and build in an identifier.  That way, if the immune system comes into contact with the full blown disease, it will already be primed to fight infection.

Immune therapy has been used to treat all types of cancer, including the three major forms of mesothelioma:  pleural mesothelioma (lung), pericardial mesothelioma (heart), and peritoneal mesothelioma (abdomen).   Beilharz’s current approach is different than the methods previously applied to mesothelioma.

Currently, Beilharz is working only with animals and the early success has led him to ramp up his research.  Beilharz will soon be overseeing clinical trials involving human mesothelioma patients.  He suggests that, based on the results of those trials, that his form of immunotherapy may be available to mesothelioma sufferers in as little as five years. 

Beilharz himself has a very personal connection to mesothelioma.  He grew up in the Latrobe Valley area of Australia and witnessed first-hand the devastation that asbestos diseases can leave behind in construction workers and other individuals employed in industries which put them into contact with harmful levels of asbestos without warnings, training or protection. 

Though the “First Wave” of mesothelioma victims is dying out, second and third waves of affected individuals are causing mesothelioma diagnoses numbers to rise.  Currently, in the United States, new mesothelioma cases occur at a rate of just under 3,000 per year.