Drug repurposing for cancer is a neat and vaguely plausible idea that's been eating up attention and grant funding for a decade now, without any successes in clinical trials.
We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
21–30 of 142 posts
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
U.S. cancer treatment is the best in the world. The greatest research, innovation and results[1] happen in America. These are products of American Society. American Society is actually pretty good at fighting this disease. We devote huge resources to preventing, diagnosing and treating and have made great progress. The CAR T-Cell innovations are very promising and American research is making it work. Families often f…
That doesn't mean that the system isn't dysfunctional. Merely that it's less dysfunctional than elsewhere.
It’s also not uniform. If you’re in a “medical tourism city” you’re much more likely to get high quality treatment than say a regional clinic.
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#23There is a tendency to fight our way out of every problem. But what we truly need is to accept the problem, take responsibility and look for the root cause.
That is true “fighting”. But most try to destroy the symptoms so they can continue their path and usually continue the root cause.
Of course finding the root cause is not easy and it takes one to study oneself
I highly recommend the following book to everyone (including the “healthy”)
The 12 Stages of Healing: A Network Approach to Wholeness Book by Donald M. Epstein and Nathaniel Altman
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#24I was forced to dive headlong into understanding cancer therapy 2 1/2 years ago. It was obvious at the time that this was the correct direction to head, developing an entire therapeutic ecosystem to give the body every possible advantage and assail the disease with every possible disadvantage in order to get the desired outcome. However, what I saw was a rather bizarre and disturbing fetish in the pharmaceutical and…
Re: monotherapies. This hasn't been my experience.
Almost all chemotherapy regimens are combination cocktails (e.g. R-CHOP, CMF, FOLFIRINOX, &c)
And as soon as a drug is shown to be very potent on its own (e.g. aPD1/aPDL1 checkpoint blockade) there's an explosion of trials looking to combine it with every possible other mechanism.
However, there is a strong desire to see drugs do something on their own before combining them with something else.
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#25There is a tendency to fight our way out of every problem. But what we truly need is to accept the problem, take responsibility and look for the root cause. That is true “fighting”. But most try to destroy the symptoms so they can continue their path and usually continue the root cause. Of course finding the root cause is not easy and it takes one to study oneself I highly recommend the following book to everyone (in…
while I'd be the last to say root approach should be discounted (diet, lack of exercise, smokes, and bad sleep contributing more to bad outcomes that just about anything else), I worry that the thinking in this post can be used to judge people who have cancer for their actions when unfortunately the true root cause for many people is actions taken long before they're born because of environmental exposure. So while yes most everyone could benefit from more self study some cancerous situations require vigorous assault on the symptoms, like death.
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#26So if I summarize correctly they re-evaluated already “FDA passed” but abandoned substances for anti-cancer workings using new techniques (CRISPR) and got 50 hits. That’s amazing! Would this work in other fields as well?
That's a good summary but it's missing the context that these kinds of "hits" will most likely fail clinical trials. Many drugs look good at this stage in preclinical development and almost none of them show both safety (ph1 trial) and efficacy (ph3 trial).
There aren't actually that many low hanging therapeutic fruit out there, mostly we have to actually do the work to discover new mechanisms and make new compounds to target them.
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#27From a science and pharmaceutical perspective, maybe. As the partner of someone in the US dealing with stage 4 cancer in their 40s, who has two hospitals fighting with each other over whether to keep using a chemo drug that's sent them into anaphylactic shock twice in two rounds of chemo because it's _more convenient_ for the infusion clinic to administer, and all of that currently held up by pre-approval from a rela…
I'm curious about what kind of cancer masquerades as iron deficiency, an infection, and a benign tumor?
>I'm curious about what kind of cancer masquerades as iron deficiency, an infection, and a benign tumor?
The kind of cancer where the patient can be easily dismissed by the doctor because of course they know best.
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious about what kind of cancer masquerades as iron deficiency, an infection, and a benign tumor?
>I'm curious about what kind of cancer masquerades as iron deficiency, an infection, and a benign tumor? The kind of cancer where the patient can be easily dismissed by the doctor because of course they know best.
Thanks for your insightful contribution to the thread. I also hope to hear from the original poster about the type of cancer, because the story is interesting.
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#29From a science and pharmaceutical perspective, maybe. As the partner of someone in the US dealing with stage 4 cancer in their 40s, who has two hospitals fighting with each other over whether to keep using a chemo drug that's sent them into anaphylactic shock twice in two rounds of chemo because it's _more convenient_ for the infusion clinic to administer, and all of that currently held up by pre-approval from a rela…
The last bit of your comment, regarding misdiagnosis, reminds me of a recent episode of Peter Attia’s podcast The Drive, wherein he interviews an experienced oncologist. Her opinion was strong in that we are overspending in treatment research and underspending in (early) diagnosis research. Her case, as described in the interview, made sense to me and gave me some hope that at least others could benefit in the future from such spending adjustments. But, I am sorry for what you’re going through, and that such a change has not yet taken place from which you/your partner would have benefitted.
Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized
#30From a science and pharmaceutical perspective, maybe. As the partner of someone in the US dealing with stage 4 cancer in their 40s, who has two hospitals fighting with each other over whether to keep using a chemo drug that's sent them into anaphylactic shock twice in two rounds of chemo because it's _more convenient_ for the infusion clinic to administer, and all of that currently held up by pre-approval from a rela…
If I learned one thing from fighting a (not cancer) disease, it's that you have to be the one responsible for your own recovery. Don't just sit there and say "please save me doc!" You better start reading about the latest research 6 hours a day, make massive comparison charts about treatment options, find the best doctors you can and get opinions from all of them, network with people going through what you are for su…
What an absurd and dangerous notion.
It's bad enough to imply that someone dealing with the physical and emotional debilitations caused by both the disease and the treatment, not to mention secondary concerns like the effect on employment and finances, essentially isn't trying hard enough. But suggesting pseudoscience that could very well make things worse is deplorable.
I'm truly glad it worked out for you, but as someone who has had cancer this is an absolutely awful position to take.