Biocancell, in Jerusalem Israel, uses an anti-gene H19 effectively to deal initially with refractory bladder cancer and theoretically with the 70% of cancers that express the actively evil H-19 gene.WITH NO SIDE EFFECTS

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ISRAELIS TAKES COUNTER -TERRORIST APPROACH TO CANCER
The Story of a Drug, BC-819, Being Developed in Jerusalem
Howard Sterling April 22, 2010
Who is a terrorist? A human being, who starts out looking like most every other
person around him (or her) but has two obsessions, to create many terrorists like
himself and to have the means and mindset to kill many (or all) other people or a
group of people. What is a cancer cell? A cell that starts out looking like most
every other cell but seems to have two obsessions, to create many cancer cells
like itself and to have the means and the mindset to kill many (or all) cells or the
body around it.
Professor Avraham Hochberg, call me “Abe”, at Giva’at Ram, Hebrew University,
Israel, may well be denominated a polymath, a person of great and varied
learning. Besides being a great cancer scientist, he is an archeologist of note and
not a bad painter. Abe has an auxiliary cancer research laboratory in the
Palestinian authority, and in Jerusalem, many very professional Palestinians work
side by their Israeli colleagues.
In the 80’s Abe became obsessed with dealing effectively with cancer. What
would be an effective drug for cancer? It should have three characteristics: there
should be only limited side effects; one drug should be able to deal with many
kinds of cancers; and the drug should be efficacious. With those characteristics in
mind, Abe came across a piece of DNA, a gene, H-19, that he thought could be the
basis of such a drug. Most genes are meant to produce proteins but not H-19. H-
19 is a regulatory gene and is a growth accelerator on a good basis in the embryo
where it helps create a healthy baby. H-19 should go to sleep, and never express
itself after we are born but, unfortunately, H-19 re-expresses itself as an
aggressive growth accelerator in 70% of all cancer types.

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Abe thought, how could he turn the bad characteristics of this H-19 bad actor,
into a drug for its own destruction which would be efficacious, have only few side
effects and work in the 70% of cancers where the H-19 expresses itself?
So Abe created a plasmid, a known round type of DNA, called BC-819. The plasmid
might be thought of as having a fuse and a bomb in it. The plasmid enters into the
tumor, say a bladder tumor. It transfects, penetrates, all types of bladder cells,
normals and cancerous ones, but transfect mainly cancerous cells. Only cancerous
cells express H-19 so only those cancerous cells turn on the H-19-related fuse. So
that is why there are such minimal side effects to BC-819: whereas most cancer
medicines poison all fast growing cells (such as hair, taste and intestinal cells), BC-
819 only and elegantly targets the cancer cells. Then, once the H-19 fuse is
activated in the cancerous cells, it sets off the bomb. The bomb is called
diphtheria toxin A, so potent that a single molecule can kill a cell. So by the use of
BC-819, the terrorist cancer cell expressing H-19, light the fuse, setting off the
toxin bomb, killing itself without harming the normal cells around it.
Abe then turned BC-819 over to a bio-tech company in Jerusalem (BioCancell
Therapeutics Inc., TASE: BICL) for clinical trials. BC-819 is in early-stage phase 2b
clinical FDA trials in the USA and Israel for bladder cancer and in phase 1/2a trials
for pancareatic and ovarian cancers. In the phase 1/2a trial for refractory bladder
cancer, cancers that were growing despite conventional drug treatment, BC-819
was able to have a positive effect on 72% of the cancers. {Results for ovarian
phase 1/2a} – we can’t give any information at this stage.
In addition, the Israel Health Ministry has allowed BioCancell to administer BC-
819 in compassionate use cases, patients with liver, ovarian and bladder cancers
who had failed chemotherapy and had no other options. Although the results are
anecdotal, and not statistically significant, these late stage patients did not seem
to suffer any toxicities and had at least a temporary palliation of the tumors.
It must be emphasized that the trials and results are early stage and there is no
surety that BC-819 will be turned into a successful cancer drug. Approximately

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90% of drugs for cancers that get to this stage do not become fully-approved
drugs.
Thus no one knows if BC-819 will be as efficacious in later stage trials, as it is in
the early stage trials, and whether or not BC-819 will be effective for other
cancers. But Abe’s research and BioCancell’s early trials will surely provide, as all
great research does, a basis, truly to be desired, of a more effective answer to
cancer.