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New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

princeton.edu

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Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#51

Post by perl4ever »

"MTDH was amplified — meaning it produced MTDH proteins at abnormally high levels compared to normal cells — in 30 to 40% of tumor samples"

That doesn't sound great, unless the 30-40% was only and all of the metastatic type.

My cynicism leads me to think if the news was that good, they would clearly state it.

Also, I read this:

"for some, maybe five, 10, 15, 20 years later, they’ll have a recurrence, often as metastatic relapse"

...and think, so how long does it take to prove that you've prevented this, huh?

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#52

Post by zaroth »

verve_rat wrote: post #36
steve76 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "yet it doesn’t seem to be important for normal development" Gene space is huge. My cancer is cured, but now I'm dying of mange. So that's why that mouse kept licking itself. Big ask for someone else. They have trouble getting blood thinners, statins and beta blockers right. And there's no genetics there. It's stuff people ate out in the woods for hundreds of thousands of years. > There are so many…

Wait what? Trails aren't free to participants? That alone is going to majorly bias the results. Here take this medicine, we are fairly confident it won't kill you. Here is your $100k bill. Oh? Can't afford that? No trial for you!

Trials are absolutely free for the participants. Insurance won’t pay for non-FDA approved treatments and it’s illegal to charge for them anyway.

Ancillary routine FDA approved testing that accompanies the trials may be billed to insurance in some cases? I don’t know about that. But a trial for a novel cancer treatment will be free, if not even include an honorarium of some kind to defray costs to the patient for participating.

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#53

Post by [deleted] »

perl4ever wrote: post #51

"MTDH was amplified — meaning it produced MTDH proteins at abnormally high levels compared to normal cells — in 30 to 40% of tumor samples" That doesn't sound great, unless the 30-40% was only and all of the metastatic type. My cynicism leads me to think if the news was that good, they would clearly state it. Also, I read this: "for some, maybe five, 10, 15, 20 years later, they’ll have a recurrence, often as metasta…

[deleted]

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#54

Post by danachow »

perl4ever wrote: post #51

"MTDH was amplified — meaning it produced MTDH proteins at abnormally high levels compared to normal cells — in 30 to 40% of tumor samples" That doesn't sound great, unless the 30-40% was only and all of the metastatic type. My cynicism leads me to think if the news was that good, they would clearly state it. Also, I read this: "for some, maybe five, 10, 15, 20 years later, they’ll have a recurrence, often as metasta…

Curing 30 to 40% of a population is still a big win.

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#55

Post by stenl »

xiphias2 wrote: post #21

What takes years to develop for the human trials to start? Is it about optimizing the delivery system, or finding the right targets to test on in bigger animals first? There are so many people closecto dying in cancer, that finding volunteers for a Phase 1 test should be easy.

Assuming you have found a drug that is safe and binds the target in the intended way (which itself can take years), you then have to manufacture it according to GMP standards. That takes at least a year and $1 million. Next, you have to run toxicity and pharmacokinetics (how the drug is absorbed and distributed in the body) in two different animal models. That takes 6-12 months and $1-2 million. Then you apply for permission to start phase I trials, and wait for the green light.

One reason RNA drugs are so exciting is that their manufacture is simple and can be standardized, cutting the GMP manufacturing step to a few weeks instead of a year or more. Small-molecule drugs are ”bespoke” in that each needs its own, different, manufacturing process. In contrast, all RNA molecules are essentially chemically identical, differing only in the ordering of the nucleotides.

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#56

Post by Gatsky »

xiphias2 wrote: post #21

What takes years to develop for the human trials to start? Is it about optimizing the delivery system, or finding the right targets to test on in bigger animals first? There are so many people closecto dying in cancer, that finding volunteers for a Phase 1 test should be easy.

Need to make a drug out of the small molecule inhibitor. There is a medicinal chemistry process that takes quite a while (several years at times) to get to something you can actually give to people.

Then there is safety testing in animals. Then regulatory approval. Then starting the phase I trial. The trial might take a year or more. Then you need to show the drug works compared to some standard treatment, which in a phase 3 trial in breast cancer takes 3 years and many hundreds of patients at least. Longer if you want to show it prolongs overall survival. Then the drug needs to be approved.

There is also the matter of funding but there is a lot of money for early stage biotechs at the moment.

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#57

Post by 01100011 »

sharkweek wrote: post #33
xiphias2 wrote: post #21

What takes years to develop for the human trials to start? Is it about optimizing the delivery system, or finding the right targets to test on in bigger animals first? There are so many people closecto dying in cancer, that finding volunteers for a Phase 1 test should be easy.

I have a friend who about 15 years ago was told he was going to die from melanoma in about a year. Within that first year he was put on a trial that added another 2 or so years to his life. Then during that time another experimental treatment was created and tested on him and that gave him another couple of years. A decade and a half later here we are, he still has cancer but his family (wife and two kids) has got to…

Yeah my friend has been doing that for about half as long. It still sucks. Some of the modern, immune-based therapies don't make your hair fall out, but they still can wreck your digestive tract, thyroid, and adrenals(in my friend's case, permanently). There are surgeries as well, and getting slowly hacked up as they chase tumor after tumor isn't fun.

Still though, it's a better time to have cancer than ever I suppose.

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#58

Post by nielsbot »

thornjm wrote: post #9
nielsbot wrote: post #6

"Because while it’s important to show that mice born without MTDH are resistant to cancer, that doesn’t help patients, whose genes can’t be rewritten ." ...yet Wonder if we'll look back at this and think "how quaint".

Neo: “Are you trying to tell me that I can alter DNA?” Morpheus: “no Neo, I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready you won’t have to” Altering the DNA is unnecessary if you can control the expression of genes or add additional genetic material later in the DNA->RNA->protein process. mRNA vaccines are already a great example of this. Another example might be the cystic fibrosis therapy Trikafta.

Nearly a Trifakta

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#59

Post by techdragon »

tux3 wrote: post #17
EMM_386 wrote: post #14

> MTDH is important for most major human cancers, not important for normal cells, and it can be eliminated with no obvious side effects I'm not fully buying that. If you look at "Function" on Wikipedia, it seems to have some important roles, including angiogenesis (which is still important outside of cancer). It's not like evolution would select for something that is useless outside of helping cancer. I'd be curious…

Angiogenesis is going to be important in wound healing, I suppose, but compared to the current side effects of chemo this seems relatively minor. I agree that "no obvious side effects" seems excessive if you interpret that as the expected result in humans. Still, on paper this looks much more specific that anything we have.

Thats a pretty important consideration here. If I was looking at chemotherapy & its side effects vs alternatives... the side effect list from these angiogenesis inhibitors looks a lot more focused, the sort of thing you can develop a focused regime around the monitoring and management of.

Re: New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types

#60

Post by sharkweek »

01100011 wrote: post #57
sharkweek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who about 15 years ago was told he was going to die from melanoma in about a year. Within that first year he was put on a trial that added another 2 or so years to his life. Then during that time another experimental treatment was created and tested on him and that gave him another couple of years. A decade and a half later here we are, he still has cancer but his family (wife and two kids) has got to…

Yeah my friend has been doing that for about half as long. It still sucks. Some of the modern, immune-based therapies don't make your hair fall out, but they still can wreck your digestive tract, thyroid, and adrenals(in my friend's case, permanently). There are surgeries as well, and getting slowly hacked up as they chase tumor after tumor isn't fun. Still though, it's a better time to have cancer than ever I suppos…

I’m sorry your friend is in a similar position.

There was one treatment that they were going to trial my friend on that would give him another expected extension but basically make his digestive tract stop working so he’d be pooping out of a tube into a bag the rest of his life but he declined, said it just wasn’t worth it.

There have been a couple times that’s been the call he’s made and I appreciate why.

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