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ByMelissaNelson- Gabriel The Associated Press EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, FLA. Searchers strug- gled Wednesday to find the seven Marines and four sol- diers killed when a helicop- ter crashed, hampered by the same fog that plagued a nighttime training mission. A second helicopter turned back safely shortly before the wreck, which left debris washing ashore along the Florida coast, of- ficials said. Military officials haven't said what caused the crash of the UH-60 Black Hawk, but the weather was bad enough for the other crew to return to land, said Maj. Gen. Glenn H. Curtis, adju- tant general of the Louisi- ana National Guard. The helicopter that crashed had a veteran crew from Hammond, Louisiana, that served multiple tours in Iraq and helped human- itarian missions after Gulf Coast hurricanes and the BP oil spill. They were carrying un- conventional warriors from the Marines Special Oper- ations Command. Like the Army's Green Berets and the Navy's SEALs, they were highly trained to en- dure grueling conditions and sensitive assignments on land and at sea, from seizing ships to special re- connaissance missions and direct action inside hostile territory. Tuesday night's training involved practicing "inser- tion and extraction mis- sions," using small boats and helicopters to get troops into and out of a target site, said Capt. Barry Morris, spokesman for the Marine Corps Special Oper- ations Command at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Even the training can be dangerous. "It has everything in it except for the bullets, so when they are actually training, it's like being in combat in a lot of ways," said Bruce Labrecque, the owner of the Mariners Inn in Hammond, Louisiana, near where the Guards- men were based. The spot is popular for lunch for lo- cals and military in the area. President Barack Obama expressed his condolences to the families and said he's confident of a detailed and thorough investigation, said his spokesman, Josh Ear- nest. "Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families as the search and rescue continues," De- fense Secretary Ash Carter said on Capitol Hill. Kim Urr, 62, who works at the Navarre Beach camp- ground near the Eglin Air Force Base training area, said she heard a strange sound, followed by two ex- plosions around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. "It sounded like some- thing metal either being hit or falling over, that's what it sounded like. And there were two booms after- ward, similar to what you hear with ordnance booms, but more muffled," Urr said. Human remains were found Wednesday before the weather deteriorated again, and all 11 service members were presumed killed. But it was still con- sidered a search and rescue mission. A small flotilla of boats searched the choppy water, airmen walked shoulder-to- shoulder down the beach, scanning the sand. "There is always room for optimism," Eglin spokes- man Mike Spaits said. 11 KILLED Bl ac k Ha wk c ra sh ed i n fo g, a no th er t ur ne d ba ck MELISSANELSON-GABRIEL—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Military personnel wade in the water and search on the beach under heavy fog at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Wednesday for the wreckage of a military helicopter that crashed with 11service members aboard. By Malcolm Ritter The Associated Press NEW YORK Can a tetanus shot help treat brain can- cer? A small study hints that it might. A dose of tetanus vac- cine let patients live longer when added to an experi- mental treatment for the most common and deadly kind of brain tumor, re- searchers report. It "put the immune sys- tem on high alert," pav- ing the way for the exper- imental treatment to work better in attacking the dis- ease, said researcher Kris- ten Batich of the Duke Uni- versity Medical Center. In a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature, she and others de- scribe a study of 12 patients. Some who got the tetanus shot lived years longer than those who didn't. Dr. John Sampson of Duke, senior author of the report, called the results promising but noted the study was small, and said bigger studies are needed to confirm the results. A follow- up study has already been planned but isn't recruiting patients yet, Batich said. Brain cancer experts un- connected with the work were impressed. The results are "very ex- citing," said Dr. Nader Sanai of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. While he agreed more work is re- quired, "what you have so far, it's a very positive story." Tetanus is otherwise known as lockjaw. Vaccines for it are routinely recom- mended for children and adults. The new study focused on glioblastoma, which killed Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 2009. Even after surgery to remove the tumor, it usually grows back and kills. The few drugs to treat these tumors have lit- tle effect. Half of patients die within about 15 months. The new work is an ex- ample of a long-standing ef- fort to harness the immune system to fight cancer, an approach called immuno- therapy. The specific strategy it used is called a dendritic- cell vaccine. Doctors re- move particular blood cells from a patient and equip them with a chemical tar- get found in the tumor. Then they return the cells to the patient's body, where they train the immune sys- tem to go after the cancer. The 12 patients in the new study were treated with sur- gery, radiation and chemo- therapy. All patients got an ordinary tetanus-diphthe- ria shot and then three in- jections of their own cells, spaced two weeks apart. Then they were randomly divided into two groups. One group got a second, tiny dose of the tetanus- diphtheria vaccine at the place in the skin where the cells would be injected the next day. The other group got a dummy dose. The idea behind the tet- anus mini-shot was that the immune system "gets revved up in this particular area" so that "the body will be more excited about what's to come," Sampson said. Cell injections continued monthly until brain scans showed tumor growing. For the six patients who got the dummy shot, only one was still alive two years after diagnosis, sur- viving for about 3½ years. Still, overall results for this group indicated a small benefit from the cell injec- tions alone, Batich said. The results were far bet- ter for patients who got the mini-shot of tetanus. Four surpassed two years. One of them lived almost five years and another nearly six years. Still another is approach- ing nine years and count- ing. She is Sandy Hillburn, 68, of Fort Lee, New Jersey. When diagnosed in New York in April 2006, "I was told I had two to three months to live," she recalled in a telephone interview. But her family flew her to Duke in North Carolina be- cause of its reputation for glioblastoma care, and she was offered a slot in the ex- perimental study. "I was very positive it would help," Hillburn said. "I said, 'Sure, thank you.' I'm still saying thank you." In the years since then, she has attended her son's wedding and gained five more grandchildren. Now she plays soccer with six grandsons in Ohio and Boston. VACCINE Study: Tetanus shot may aid treatment of brain cancer 2 Ifso,youlikelyknowbynow! But if you have not yet placed an ad to say THANK YOU to your customers who voted you #1 in your business category, better call your Daily News advertising representative right away! (530) 527-2151 Is YOUR business one of THE BEST? 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