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AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

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Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#91
post #85
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are, again, failing to note that it’s a right skewed distribution. The mean is not what you care about.

In fairness, I was responding to the first sentence in the quote from the article. It seems relevant, as a patient to ask, on average, how much longer will I live if I take this drug?

To which, an average is a pretty poor way to convey non-normal data.

If you run a year long trial where you flip a coin and immediately kill or save people based on the results, your average survival will be 6 months

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#92
post #32

My father has been taking Tagrisso since he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer in January 2022. It’s been able to give him a relatively normal quality of life I don’t think my family would’ve seen otherwise if he’d gone through chemo and radiation. Just chiming in that I’m super thankful to that these newer treatments are so effective. That said it’s not cheap and he still has to work to keep his insurance… othe…

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Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US approval follows the path of one treatment for one ailment. so if something was useful for 100 ailments, it needs 100 different approvals, and a company willing to attempt doing that what more likely happens is one treatment is denied for the one ailment the company thought they were tackling, and that one treatment is never pursued again so there's a lot of waste in this particular approach to protecting the publ…

Why doesn't the company pursue it for other purposes? Sounds extremely narrow, as per the comment above. There may be related stuff where it works as a treatment depending on the endpoint?

because there is always lower hanging fruit at that point.

Even if this was the most altruistic, non-profit funded goal to solve an obscure ailment, once that inevitably fails - and statistically it is inevitably - all capital has been expended, your team's reputation has been spent. You go to something that has more consensus instead of your alchemy concoction nobody's ever head of and wasn't good for the one thing you made it for.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#94
post #38

My aunt was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and is only alive because of this drug. It’s a marvel of modern medicine.

My wife was diagnosed in Nov '23. Stage 4. She had a mutation that allowed Tagrisso/osimertinib. There are many mutations, but this one is prevalent in Asian women who have never smoked. There was a trial published just after her diagnosis that showed progression free survival at 2 years of 57% (chemo+osimertinib) vs 41% (osimertinib). https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2306434 She's 6 days into the chemo. T…

I wish her and you all the strength in the world.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#95
post #32

My father has been taking Tagrisso since he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer in January 2022. It’s been able to give him a relatively normal quality of life I don’t think my family would’ve seen otherwise if he’d gone through chemo and radiation. Just chiming in that I’m super thankful to that these newer treatments are so effective. That said it’s not cheap and he still has to work to keep his insurance… othe…

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If you're honestly interested in the history of Osimertinib (Tagrisso) then this article has a good overview. It specifies the studies involved so that you can dig into funding sources. Generally for drug development, public funding only covers basic science and maybe early-stage trials. The majority of the expense is in phase 3 clinical trials which pharmaceutical companies pay for.

https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdw129

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#96

I predict that ~30 years from now, someone will take all these drugs that have shown some success in treating some cancer, mix them all together at a low dose, and find the combination works better than any of the components.

This is already done. There are many labs currently looking for "synergistic" combinations of treatments.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#97

My mom died from lung cancer. It was going to happen, life long smoker. Dying from LC is a terrible way to go. Your lungs fill with fluid and you slowly drown in your own fluid. The pain meds make you hallucinate terrible thoughts. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. For the benefit of humanity, I hope this treatment works.

Same with my dad in the 80s. His descent was horrible to witness, in my case at the age of 21. I’ll never know the truth, but I think his doctor took pity on him, dad died very shortly after a push of morphine.

I'll never understand how in this day and age we still allow people to die suffering this way.

How come we are ok with euthanasia for pets but not people?

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with my dad in the 80s. His descent was horrible to witness, in my case at the age of 21. I’ll never know the truth, but I think his doctor took pity on him, dad died very shortly after a push of morphine.

I'll never understand how in this day and age we still allow people to die suffering this way. How come we are ok with euthanasia for pets but not people?

It is allowed in some places. The problem is it's a terrible slippery slope which has been used to get rid of people whose lives were considered to not be worth living.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with my dad in the 80s. His descent was horrible to witness, in my case at the age of 21. I’ll never know the truth, but I think his doctor took pity on him, dad died very shortly after a push of morphine.

I'll never understand how in this day and age we still allow people to die suffering this way. How come we are ok with euthanasia for pets but not people?

"We" don't. Here in NL euthanasia is freely available if needed.
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