Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

The original goal of mRNA vaccine research was to fight cancer. After being so successful in immunizing against COVID-19, the research is refocusing on fighting cancer.

Quote: Ozlem Tureci, who co-founded the German company BioNTech with her husband, was working on a way to harness the body’s immune system to tackle tumors when they learned last year of an unknown virus infecting people in China. ... [T]he couple decided to apply the technology they’d been researching for two decades to the new threat. ...

As BioNTech’s profile has grown during the pandemic, so has its value, providing funds the company can use to pursue its original goal of developing a new tool against cancer.

“We have several different cancer vaccines based on mRNA,” said Tureci, who is BioNTech’s chief medical officer.

Asked when such a therapy might be available, Tureci said “that’s very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we expect that within only a couple of years, we will also have our vaccines [against] cancer at a place where we can offer them to people.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/scientist-behind-pfizer-vaccin...

Quote: The vaccines that target tumor-associated or tumor-specific antigens (TAAs or TSAs) can specifically attack and destroy malignant cells that overexpress the antigens and achieve chronic therapeutic response because of immunologic memory. Therefore, cancer vaccines offer specific, safe, and tolerable treatment compared to other immunotherapies.

https://molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...

I created this account on July 28, 2014 [1] - I had(have?) stage IV Colon Cancer with liver metastases. I did a FOLFIRI regime with cetaximab, then a colon resection with a general surgeon.

My oncologist was great (ucsf medical center) - but the surgeon refused to address my liver mets - they were too large and distributed.

My wife found out about a specialist at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan that uses something called a Hepatic Arterial Infusion Pump - a hockypuck that delivers 50x a chemo dose directly to the liver. That was implanted in my abdomen and I flew between SF and New York to get it refilled every 4 weeks for six months. Their surgeon then resected 75% of my liver. (Skipping a few steps here. I had another met that they couldn’t get surgically and they got it with 10 rounds of radiation.)

My company was very supportive and our health insurance picked up most of the cost - over US $2million (so far?)

I was hospitalized several times after the surgeries for post operative infections - in a way they seemed far more difficult for the doctors to address than the cancer itself.

Oh, while the Cetaximab shrank the tumors, the skin rash it caused was absolutely wretched - my cuticles would bleed and had to wear finger cots and gloves to protect them. And my eyelashes grew about 3x their normal length.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8095321

The changes in melanoma and lung cancer are mainly due to immunotherapy, which is a bona fide revolution in cancer treatment. It's almost embarrassingly simple, just turn off one receptor ligand interaction (PD-1 and PD-L1) that suppresses anti-cancer immunity. Nobel prize was given for the discovery. Importantly it works in earlier stage and later stage disease, and the same drug works in multiple different cancers which is quite unique for a cancer treatment. There are definitely people walking around today who are alive only because they received this treatment. Seems that you can stop it after 2 years as well and it largely keeps working.

These treatments cost about $100K - $150K per year. They don't work for everyone, or even the majority of people with melanoma and lung cancer. Generally they result in 15 - 20% of patients with otherwise fatal cancer having long term disease control, and some lesser percentage that are probably cured from the incurable. They require sepcialist multidisciplinary oncology care. There can be severe and permanent side effects, but these are almost aways preferable to being dead from cancer.

It is important to note that these drugs do not work well or at all for the most common cancers with large shares of overall cancer mortality (Breast, Prostate and Colon), so this decline in mortality isn't going to automatically continue year over year. Also note that lung cancer is still the number one cause of cancer mortality, and this is due to smoking. So although we should celebrate great science and fancy expensive drugs, always remember that lung cancer is a disease caused by our failure to think clearly about corporate ethics and healthcare. Big tobacco is remarkably profitable and that is solely because we agree to pay in cash and lives for the negative externalities of their product.

I wonder if someone could give me feedback on this. I heard that basically all cancer cells switch over to aerobic respiration, ie fermentation, and that in this metabolic mode they can use glucose and the amino acid glutamine as fuel but not ketones. So some people have treated their cancer by eating zero carbohydrates and taking a special drug that disables glutamine, doing so intermittently, and they have seen incredible results from that.