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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

#101

Post by dev_throw »

bitcurious wrote: post #95
gus_massa wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that study a randomized controlled study? Was your friend in the control group or in the experimental group? What was the difference of the outcome in both groups? It's very rare that everyone in the control group dies and everyone in the experimental group survives. Usually the result is mixed. The problem is that medical doctors sometime make bad guess about how many years the person will survive. That's one of…

For anyone reading, the control group for cancer trials is the best current treatment, there’s no placebo control.

Yep, standard of care is used in control groups. Also, there are trials in which people are moved from the control arm to the experimental treatment upon increase in tumor size, which allows participants to get a chance to actually trial the drug.

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

#102

Post by sharkweek »

ojosilva wrote: post #98
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…

The thing about trials is that there's a reasonable chance the patient ends up in the control/placebo group, which is something to think about when signing up for miracle. It could help explain some of the "done nothing" studies in your friend's journey. A good friend of mine signed up for a trial as an alternative treatment for her aggressive breast cancer, everyone's hopes went up (trials tend to have that effect o…

Yeah he always took some pride in being that early patient in a study.

As an aside, I’ll have to be careful here because I think I might be confusing some of the trials he was a part of with actual treatments he received. It’s been a big mix of throwing a lot of different things at the wall.

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

#103

Post by R0b0t1 »

nindalf wrote: post #76
R0b0t1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IANAdoctor/biologist but i assume diseases that tend to strike after child bearing age have less negative selection pressure than other diseases. It gets even better: there is selective pressure for adults that have borne children to die so that their children can procreate. First noted in pea plants that send a chemical signal to kill themselves up from the pod, can be extended to animals in things like cancer rat…

Humans aren’t peas. Pea grandparents don’t help out in child rearing but human grandparents do. There is no indication that humans face selective pressure to die early.

There is evidence that earlier death can help animals, so it is appropriate to extend it to all animals barring evidence to the contrary.

Long lived, already procreated animals limit the amount of evolution that can take place by drawing out the time between procreation events. So if you have 2 species, one which dies earlier but has more generations, you expect them to outcompete a longer lived species.

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

#104

Post by sjg007 »

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…

The new immunotherapies should be tried if he hasn't done any yet.

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

#105

Post by monopoledance »

konschubert wrote: post #79
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I’m not in these fields but I am curious enough about how the mechanisms work at a high level that I feel confident about the rest of this post. Two things to keep in mind: 1. Biology has never selected genes to maximize longevity, only to maximize healthy breeding. There are very likely tons of genes that make sense as a growing child but are harmful at a later age, e.g. a post menopause/vasectomy adult…

Also, evolution isn't "complete". It's not done optimising. And sometimes, some things evolve and there just isn't enough evolutionary pressure to remove stuff that does't hurt. Men have nipples.

> Men have nipples.

Just sayin', that has little to do with "remove stuff that does't hurt", but the fact that there is very little difference between men and women besides sex steroid levels. In particular, women do not have any genes men don't. The Y-chromosome adds the tiniest modification to gonadal development in embryos and that's it; androgens do the rest. With the right hormone levels, men can develop fully functional breasts; without estrogens, women don't.

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

#106

Post by danachow »

headmelted wrote: post #61
danachow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Does it even mean this though? If you’ve attacked 30%-40% of the tumours in each patient, no-one is cured.

Yes, this is what it means. Why does everybody here assume everyone outside the software profession is an idiot. Obviously if it only attacked 30% of tumor cells it would be useless. I'm not going to go over the physiology of cancer here, but basically yes targeted therapy works because of the common progeny of cancer cells.

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

#107

Post by bedobi »

donkeyacc wrote: post #77
bedobi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about biology, medicine or evolution, but I don't think that's how it works. Lots of people inherit and pass on all kinds of bad genes that do terrible things to them, even kill them. And for such people, switching them off would be better pretty much irrespective of any side effects. (to the degree there even are any side effects at all)

> I know nothing about biology, medicine or evolution, but well, by all means, don't let that stop you

this site is FULL of people who make wildly unqualified, unsourced, incorrect claims and passing them off as fact

but you have to have a dig at the one guy who clearly and openly admits they don't know anything before continuing with "but I think"

wow

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

#108

Post by perl4ever »

danachow wrote: post #106
headmelted wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it even mean this though? If you’ve attacked 30%-40% of the tumours in each patient, no-one is cured.

Yes, this is what it means. Why does everybody here assume everyone outside the software profession is an idiot. Obviously if it only attacked 30% of tumor cells it would be useless. I'm not going to go over the physiology of cancer here, but basically yes targeted therapy works because of the common progeny of cancer cells.

>Why does everybody here assume everyone outside the software profession is an idiot

Why does everybody here assume everyone here is a SV software engineer, except for them? You could be insulting someone in high school.

Cancer affects people from every walk of life, so there's a good chance a random non-medical person in a thread like this has some experience that they are drawing on, like seeing a family member die up close and interacting with oncologists.

>Obviously if it only attacked 30% of tumor cells it would be useless

I think both of you made up things that weren't actually stated. It didn't say that 30-40% would be cured or that 30-40% of the tumors would be eliminated.

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

#109

Post by headmelted »

perl4ever wrote: post #108
danachow wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is what it means. Why does everybody here assume everyone outside the software profession is an idiot. Obviously if it only attacked 30% of tumor cells it would be useless. I'm not going to go over the physiology of cancer here, but basically yes targeted therapy works because of the common progeny of cancer cells.

>Why does everybody here assume everyone outside the software profession is an idiot Why does everybody here assume everyone here is a SV software engineer, except for them? You could be insulting someone in high school. Cancer affects people from every walk of life, so there's a good chance a random non-medical person in a thread like this has some experience that they are drawing on, like seeing a family member die…

Yeah I really don't know. It was a genuine question.
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