Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
technologyreview.com
Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
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Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#2'Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. “There is a hint of efficacy but no proof,” says Stephan Grupp, director of cancer immunotherapy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who collaborates with Novartis. “It would be great if it works, but that just hasn’t been shown yet.”'
So the title is basically click-bait, as the treatment is unconfirmed.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#3> Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids.
Could someone explain what the process for proving it would be in this case? I presume some kind of animal testing?
Seems pretty immoral to give someone a wildcard treatment and not back it up with something known to work. Not disparaging this treatment but given we don't know if it works yet (and how aggressive cancer can be) it seems totally fair to administer it alongside chemo.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#4> Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. Could someone explain what the process for proving it would be in this case? I presume some kind of animal testing? Seems pretty immoral to give someone a wildcard treatment and not back it up with so…
> Seems pretty immoral to give someone a wildcard treatment and not back it up with something known to work.
I think they're giving the treatment to patients for whom pretty much all options have already been pursued and they're still terminally ill. Of course that still doesn't "justify" necessarily a wildcard treatment completely, but I guess one last wildcard attempt might be better than nothing.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#5"The ready-made approach could pose a challenge to companies including Juno Therapeutics and Novartis, each of which has spent tens of millions of dollars pioneering treatments that require collecting a patient’s own blood cells, engineering them, and then re-infusing them."
Is author serious with this statement? Two kids lives were saved with a potentially inexpensive technique and the author think's this point is relevant? If 500 companies go bankrupt because cancer is cured, that is a monstrous win.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#6It's hard to cure cancer definitely because cancer cells will always be trying to out-evolve any treatment. Anything that quickly kills 99% of cells, unfortunately, lets them select for survival traits really fast.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#7It's hard to cure cancer definitely because cancer cells will always be trying to out-evolve any treatment. Anything that quickly kills 99% of cells, unfortunately, lets them select for survival traits really fast.
However, given that cancer cells do not evolve between individuals (as opposed to bacteria and virii), if we are to find a efficient immunological treatment it's going to stay efficient. If anything, we will evolve for our cancers to respond better to it.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#8"The ready-made approach could pose a challenge to companies including Juno Therapeutics and Novartis, each of which has spent tens of millions of dollars pioneering treatments that require collecting a patient’s own blood cells, engineering them, and then re-infusing them." Is author serious with this statement? Two kids lives were saved with a potentially inexpensive technique and the author think's this point is r…
I don't see it as the author complaining about the danger to the companies but merely stating it. It's not only just OK, but also necessary to throw light on this.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#9> Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. Could someone explain what the process for proving it would be in this case? I presume some kind of animal testing? Seems pretty immoral to give someone a wildcard treatment and not back it up with so…
Give both the normal treatment and (new thing), and compare it to just the normal treatment and see which group has better outcomes. For serious issues you can stop the trial early and give it to everyone if it's shown to be a dramatic improvement.
Re: Two Infants Treated with Universal Immune Cells Have Their Cancer Vanish
#10> Although the cases drew wide media attention in Britain, some researchers said that because the London team also gave the children standard chemotherapy, they failed to show the cell treatment actually cured the kids. Could someone explain what the process for proving it would be in this case? I presume some kind of animal testing? Seems pretty immoral to give someone a wildcard treatment and not back it up with so…
Standard approach would likely be to choose a population of patients, randomize them between "chemo" and "chemo+immune" treatment groups, and then test for a significant difference in the metric of choice such as response rate or progression-free survival. The graphical analysis of these data is often done using Kaplan-Meier curves (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaplan%E2%80%93Meier_estimator)