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Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

ultimovacs.com

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Re: Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

#21

Post by brokensegue »

somenameforme wrote: post #20
brokensegue wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A 2021 study showed that among adults hospitalized with flu, vaccinated patients had a 26% lower risk of intensive care unit (ICU) admission and a 31% lower risk of death from flu compared with those who were unvaccinated. Yet you should still be getting the flu vaccine

Numbers like that are highly misleading, because it's a conditional. If your chances of dying from something are 1 in 10 million, and a treatment changes that to 1 in a billion, then that treatment would mean you're 99% less likely to die of whatever. But the risk of death is so extremely low to begin with, that that 99% figure is largely just noise. I mean noise in both the colloquial sense, as well as the statistic…

The flu vaccine reduces severity and likelihood of catching it as well (which can serve to protect vulnerable populations). Your own personal chance of death is not all that matters.

Getting it yearly may also reduce the risk of other related conditions e.g. https://www.uth.edu/news/story/uthealth-houston-study-flu-va...

It's nearly risk free and it's definitely worth it even if all it did was decrease the severity of flu if you catch it (and it does more than that).

Re: Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

#22

Post by NetOpWibby »

jseliger wrote: post #14
huytersd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren’t you able to get into the study at UCSD? How is that going? Are you allowed to talk about it?

I was! I've now been infused twice with 1100mg of petosemtamab / MCLA-158 ( https://beta.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03526835 ), on Sept. 27 and then Oct. 12. The next is Oct. 25. For the first week I had no apparent reactions, and then a rash erupted on my face, chest, and back. That's pretty normal for EGFR drugs, and the rash was (and is) itchy and annoying but not unbearable. To treat it, I inject an antibiotic c…

Thank you for sharing and I hope the science evolves alongside your recovery.

Re: Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

#24

Post by henry2023 »

jseliger wrote: post #2

This is obviously good but note that it appears to be covering mesothelioma only, and "The median [overall survival] OS was 15.4 months (95% CI, 11.1-22.6) for UV1 plus ipilimumab and nivolumab (treatment arm) versus 11.1 months (95% CI, 8.8-18.1) for ipilimumab and nivolumab alone." Another headline could be: "Cancer vaccine helps some mesothelioma patients live an extra 4.3 months," which is less exciting than the…

I'm sorry to hear that. I have zero knowledge about your specific condition and I hope the best for you. Given that, I want to recommend you to read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. It's rough, anti status-quo, and yet very compelling.

Re: Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

#25

Post by somenameforme »

brokensegue wrote: post #21
somenameforme wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numbers like that are highly misleading, because it's a conditional. If your chances of dying from something are 1 in 10 million, and a treatment changes that to 1 in a billion, then that treatment would mean you're 99% less likely to die of whatever. But the risk of death is so extremely low to begin with, that that 99% figure is largely just noise. I mean noise in both the colloquial sense, as well as the statistic…

The flu vaccine reduces severity and likelihood of catching it as well (which can serve to protect vulnerable populations). Your own personal chance of death is not all that matters. Getting it yearly may also reduce the risk of other related conditions e.g. https://www.uth.edu/news/story/uthealth-houston-study-flu-va... It's nearly risk free and it's definitely worth it even if all it did was decrease the severity o…

The flu shot does not prevent one from getting the flu and spreading it to others. Like the past 3 years have shown, you're just not going to get herd immunity with these short term low efficacy shots, even when paired alongside monumental, wide scale, and completely unsustainable efforts.

Also, the risk of something needs to be put in context of the risk of what you're protecting against. If something only has a severe negative side effect 1 in a million times, then it absolutely should be considered extremely low risk. But you're risk of whatever it's protecting against only has a severe outcome 1 in 2 million times? Well not only should it also then be considered extremely low risk, but getting the treatment would be quite illogical. These risks also needs to be multiplied repeatedly for low efficacy treatments which entail annual use.

Re: Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

#26

Post by adamredwoods »

m3kw9 wrote: post #10

27% doesn’t seem all that significant considering a vaccine

Pretty good numbers, actually, considering the other conventional treatments for mesothelioma (surgery, aggressive chemo) is similar:

>> The median survival for patients in the chemotherapy arms was 8.5 months compared to 7.6 months for BSC (best supportive care), which was not statistically different.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3307510/

Re: Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

#28

Post by adamredwoods »

btilly wrote: post #8
jseliger wrote: post #2

This is obviously good but note that it appears to be covering mesothelioma only, and "The median [overall survival] OS was 15.4 months (95% CI, 11.1-22.6) for UV1 plus ipilimumab and nivolumab (treatment arm) versus 11.1 months (95% CI, 8.8-18.1) for ipilimumab and nivolumab alone." Another headline could be: "Cancer vaccine helps some mesothelioma patients live an extra 4.3 months," which is less exciting than the…

Do you have an opinion on https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-mode-cancer-tr... ?

In my air-chair opinion, the future of cancer treatments will not be one "cure-all" drug, but many, all depending on a cancer's characteristics and an individual's response to treatments. Cancer can also mutate or become metastatic when under duress, so the characteristics change then as well.

So the more treatments we can create, the better.

Re: Universal cancer vaccine trial shows significant improvement in overall survival

#30

Post by haldujai »

somenameforme wrote: post #25
brokensegue wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flu vaccine reduces severity and likelihood of catching it as well (which can serve to protect vulnerable populations). Your own personal chance of death is not all that matters. Getting it yearly may also reduce the risk of other related conditions e.g. https://www.uth.edu/news/story/uthealth-houston-study-flu-va... It's nearly risk free and it's definitely worth it even if all it did was decrease the severity o…

The flu shot does not prevent one from getting the flu and spreading it to others. Like the past 3 years have shown, you're just not going to get herd immunity with these short term low efficacy shots, even when paired alongside monumental, wide scale, and completely unsustainable efforts. Also, the risk of something needs to be put in context of the risk of what you're protecting against. If something only has a sev…

Both of your comments have described concepts that are very important to understand when discussing medical interventions, especially at the population level. Your reasoning is correct, I just wanted to add the terminology we use:

Absolute risk reduction (ARR), relative risk reduction (RRR), number needed to treat (NNT), number needed to harm (NNH).

Reading about these is a good starting point for anyone wanting to understand more about the decision making process.

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