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Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

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Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#61

Post by pfdietz »

ramraj07 wrote: post #41
EternalFury wrote: post #14

Anyone can mix chemicals in a test tube and claim it’s the cure for something. That’s the easy part. Proving it’s safe and effective, that’s what requires a lot of capital expenditure. This statement is a drastic characterization, but you could say “half a dozen PhDs can form reasons to believe they may have found a cure for something”, and the paragraph would end the same.

Got my PhD from a lab that works on antibody drugs, they eventually even released one to the market. I’d argue that our current system is broken. There’s no reliable metric of drug effectiveness in any of our pre-clinical models, and thus we end up going into clinical trials quite blind indeed. And more often than not, what drug gets into trials has more to do with ego and politics than actual scientific merit. And t…

The current system is like Churchill's description of democracy: the worst system, except for all the others.

Biology is extremely complex. There's no substitute for actually trying things out on subjects in vivo. For many diseases we don't even know the cause (Alzheimer's for example). Drug companies have all the incentive in the world to improve the system to get better odds; it's not like they want drug discovery to be such a crapshoot.

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#62

Post by wesselbindt »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #30
EternalFury wrote: post #14

Anyone can mix chemicals in a test tube and claim it’s the cure for something. That’s the easy part. Proving it’s safe and effective, that’s what requires a lot of capital expenditure. This statement is a drastic characterization, but you could say “half a dozen PhDs can form reasons to believe they may have found a cure for something”, and the paragraph would end the same.

Does it? There is a billion people on this planet without adequate medical system - whose health is not considered worth investing into. If they get auto-diagnosed by app (zero-cost), they could volunteer for a free chemical trial (delivery of package), a application of said package (local nurse - not free) and a series of follow up scans + analysis. The office behemoths involved are optional. Whats missing is tools…

> whose health is not considered worth investing into. If they get auto-diagnosed by app (zero-cost), they could volunteer for a free chemical trial

What a profoundly ineffective and broken system we have that this could be uttered as anything other than satire.

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#63

Post by NotGMan »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #19
ALittleLight wrote: post #3

That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it. https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/news-eve... From what I can tell there are several things like this - that have promising anti cancer effects, that just don't really get that much atte…

It’s pretty unlikely that this is true for a few reasons: - Doctors want the best outcomes for their patients. They’ll use whatever treatment is most effective - Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish - Patients want the best outcomes for themselves. If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it…

>> If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor

Hah sure.

Try this and tell me how the egomanical "gods in white" react.

Go through some stuff the RFK says about vaccines etc... and you'll see that in real life it's the opposite.

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#64

Post by InDubioProRubio »

wesselbindt wrote: post #62
InDubioProRubio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? There is a billion people on this planet without adequate medical system - whose health is not considered worth investing into. If they get auto-diagnosed by app (zero-cost), they could volunteer for a free chemical trial (delivery of package), a application of said package (local nurse - not free) and a series of follow up scans + analysis. The office behemoths involved are optional. Whats missing is tools…

> whose health is not considered worth investing into. If they get auto-diagnosed by app (zero-cost), they could volunteer for a free chemical trial What a profoundly ineffective and broken system we have that this could be uttered as anything other than satire.

So the perfect nothing is allowed to block the imperfect something, because we wait for humans to transcend to angelic beeings?

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#66

Post by wesselbindt »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #64
wesselbindt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whose health is not considered worth investing into. If they get auto-diagnosed by app (zero-cost), they could volunteer for a free chemical trial What a profoundly ineffective and broken system we have that this could be uttered as anything other than satire.

So the perfect nothing is allowed to block the imperfect something, because we wait for humans to transcend to angelic beeings?

Yeah, not doing human testing on poor folks without a choice is really "angelic" and "perfect". Very high bar to set, how could we possibly achieve such high standards of morality?

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#67

Post by adventured »

DrScientist wrote: post #50
prox wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a market that can be disrupted? It sounds if you know how to save a few billion and introduce more science based drugs, it’s ripe for an overtake.

In the same way Uber disrupted licensed taxis - or the big internet firms disrupted ad supported media. ie totally ignoring existing regulations, pretending they don't apply to you and just hoping you can push through. In a lot of the 'problems' are the regulations ( which are double edged and tricky to get right ) - and pharma companies are just following the rules. I think governments might be less lax in letting t…

There's no hoping you can push through. The US Government has complete top-down control over the sale of prescription drugs in the US, from clinicals to approval to distribution & sale.

The sole reason Uber pulled off what they did, is there's no national authority governing taxi style services for all states and cities, it's a state and local effort. So Uber counted on navigating around zillions of slow local governments long enough to get big, and it worked very well. You can't do that in prescription drugs, the feds have a big hammer and can (and will) use it anytime they like.

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#68

Post by nkrisc »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #64
wesselbindt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whose health is not considered worth investing into. If they get auto-diagnosed by app (zero-cost), they could volunteer for a free chemical trial What a profoundly ineffective and broken system we have that this could be uttered as anything other than satire.

So the perfect nothing is allowed to block the imperfect something, because we wait for humans to transcend to angelic beeings?

I’m inclined to believe that the status quo is actually better than mass human experimentation on the poor.

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#69

Post by pfdietz »

monero-xmr wrote: post #32
vasco wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since these are cancer trials I'm assuming no test subjects get paid, and university PhDs research for free, like in every other field, so what necessarily has to be expensive about it? If you have to pay 200 homeless to take your 0.0001% better than placebo antidepressants in the context of a huge corporation, and maybe redo the trial a few times, I can see how that gets expensive, but I don't see why it's a de fact…

This is the most misinformed unknowing take in all of the comments. You can’t just recruit “200 homeless” and have it pass research standards. The homeless population is the most difficult of all to track, maintain accurate records, and even recruit for that matter. You think the homeless just line up for novel drug trials and report back for updates on a strict schedule? You need good candidates for the trial. You n…

I (not homeless!) was recently in a vaccine trial (Moderna's mRNA vaccine for RSV). The trial paid me $100 per office visit, just to show up. There were periodic phone checkups ($50) and a weekly status check through an app ($10). I did follow the protocol pretty damn well. There was an incentive to come in and get checked when symptoms occurred, including when I came down with COVID at one point after a trip to Europe.

Re: Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

#70

Post by pfisherman »

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #58
ramraj07 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got my PhD from a lab that works on antibody drugs, they eventually even released one to the market. I’d argue that our current system is broken. There’s no reliable metric of drug effectiveness in any of our pre-clinical models, and thus we end up going into clinical trials quite blind indeed. And more often than not, what drug gets into trials has more to do with ego and politics than actual scientific merit. And t…

Many thanks for saying what I suspected when looking at the research publications and clinical trials on neurodegenerative diseases. I was starting to think I was an unproductive perpetual malcontent. For example, memantine has been tested 5 times in ALS. There even no pre-clinical studies that show any positive effect of memantine in animal models. This seems so bizarre to me.

How good are our animal models of ALS? Are they predictive of effectiveness in humans?
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