Welcome back, everyone.
We hope you enjoyed a fun and safe 4th of July.
Did you know that the right to assemble in the name of fun, franks, fireworks, and fender-to-fender traffic this 4th was guaranteed not by the 1776 Declaration of Independence document but by the first ten amendments to the US Constitution otherwise known as the Bill of Rights (BOR) that were ratified in 1791 not 1776?
Not to be a BOR, but in case you’d like to brush up on your basic freedoms, here is a refresher on them courtesy of the EpicentRx anticancer agent, AdAPT-001.
- The First Amendment: Freedom of assembly and expression. AdAPT-001 exercises this inalienable right when it assembles inside cancer cells and expresses a transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) trap.
- The Second Amendment: The right to keep and bear arms. AdAPT-001 is an adenovirus that is armed with a TGF-β trap transgene.
- The Third Amendment: Restricts the quartering of soldiers. For soldiers substitute cancer cells. AdAPT-001 is injected intratumorally but it also acts globally to restrict the quartering or lodging of metastatic cancer cells in other organs or tissues of the body.
- The Fourth Amendment: Prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. TBH, we have not tested AdAPT-001 in brain tumors, but it is not unreasonable to expect activity there and, if so, AdAPT-001 may prevent seizures.
- The Fifth Amendment: Prohibits self-incrimination and double jeopardy. In animal models, cure of tumors with AdAPT-001 prevents later reimplantation of the same tumor cell type whereas cure by chemotherapy does not. That is prevention against being twice put in jeopardy by cancer.
- The Sixth Amendment: Protects the right to a speedy public trial. For public trial substitute clinical trial. AdAPT-001 replicates quickly in tumors, which makes a speedy clinical trial with it possible.
- The Seventh Amendment: Provides for the right to a jury trial. For jury trial substitute clinical trial. AdAPT-001 is not yet approved, but it is currently available to eligible patients in a Phase 2 clinical trial called BETA PRIME.
- The Eighth Amendment: Prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. AdAPT-001 is designed to eliminate cancer cells, which are guilty of cruel and unusual punishment against patients.
- The Ninth Amendment: States that all rights not enumerated in the Constitution are retained by the people. This includes the right for cancer patients to be treated with experimental immunotherapeutic agents like AdAPT-001.
- The Tenth Amendment: States that all other powers not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved to the States, or to the people. This amendment suggests that any limits to the power of AdAPT-001 to eliminate cancer cells by itself should be reserved for the immune system.
So, did we really remember the Bill of Rights on our own unaided, as we kind of make it out to seem, or maybe just maybe did we get a little help from Wikipedia?
Uh, yeah, we plead the 5th.