11–20 of 44 posts
Immunotherapy is indeed the most promising approach to cancer therapy so I'm optimistic, but the odds of success here are 1-in-20 if this is an average study, or perhaps 1-in-5 at best.
Paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18300 Company release: http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication-describes-f... Really it is pretty random as to what cancer research and development gets more or less attention from the media and public. Merit has little to do with it. You should assume that any given article like this is representative of many similar ones that passed by without comment. The most import…
Agreed. And while this study's methods wouldn't be cheap per se, RNA-based methods combined with whole genome sequencing of tumors are much more cost (and time) efficient methods than approaches that require antibodies or chimeric proteins. I believe that these methods, in combination with immunotherapy, are the best candidates for future cancer therapy.
Stupid/insensitive question: what if cancer were a species "feature" earned through evolution that helps reap people who made it through their reproductive years without accident or disease but are now more hindrance than help to the species?
Stupid/insensitive question: what if cancer were a species "feature" earned through evolution that helps reap people who made it through their reproductive years without accident or disease but are now more hindrance than help to the species?
Paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18300 Company release: http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication-describes-f... Really it is pretty random as to what cancer research and development gets more or less attention from the media and public. Merit has little to do with it. You should assume that any given article like this is representative of many similar ones that passed by without comment. The most import…
Not sure if that's intentional, but the BioNTech series of trials for melanoma been called MERIT (this particular incarnation is Lipo-MERIT).
Paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18300 Company release: http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication-describes-f... Really it is pretty random as to what cancer research and development gets more or less attention from the media and public. Merit has little to do with it. You should assume that any given article like this is representative of many similar ones that passed by without comment. The most import…
Not sure if that's intentional, but the BioNTech series of trials for melanoma been called MERIT (this particular incarnation is Lipo-MERIT).
Stupid/insensitive question: what if cancer were a species "feature" earned through evolution that helps reap people who made it through their reproductive years without accident or disease but are now more hindrance than help to the species?
The reason people die is not because it's better for evolution. It's because evolution simply doesn't care about maximizing life expectancy. Most organisms die long before they get cancer, so the fitness of a gene that prevents cancer is pretty small.
Paywall: I read this as an ability to help in immunotherapy which works like a vaccine. I really am interested in what types of cancer this works with the strongest effect. They list soft tumors in Lungs. The bellow citation seems to show that these are something that could work on all cancer types and is cheap. These are exciting times. Now it will be another 5 years till we see this even in a trial for children? (S…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very exciting, but as these therapies become more successful, we're going to have to tackle the adverse reactions both acute, and chronic. Granted, you're surviving cancer so that's not the primary concern, but it will be a concern.
Well that is the Number One Reason why they are going immuntheraphy the side effects are minor compared to Chemo and Radiation. This is your own body fighting the cancer.
Right now, there's still a lot of art to the balance between having your immune system fight hard enough to kill the cancer, without setting off a cytokine storm that kills you. There's also the issue of longer term autoimmune complications, which I suspect will turn out to be the "secondary cancers" of the immunotherapy world.