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New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

economist.com

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Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#21

Post by siva7 »

basisword wrote: post #7
gcanyon wrote: post #6

As is often the case, the title is hyperbolic. The discovery applies to 20% of tumors, and "one of cancer's significant defenses" or "a key weakness of cancer" would be more accurate. That said, I'll happily take "we discovered a key weakness in 20% of cancers," please and thank you.

What does this mean in layman's terms? How will this potentially help me if I get cancer?

It won't help... mind you this is an article from the economist. There is no such thing as a cancer "master switch", that would equal a disease master switch and that point we have solved biology.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#22

Post by LoganDark »

dpark wrote: post #20
bad_username wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cancer is not one thing, I know this is a popular "well actually" to do, but it is not always useful in a conversation. Yes, all cancers are different, but yes, cancer is also one thing: unchecked, harmful division of cells. Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. It is reasonable to talk about b…

It seems relevant here because the question was “How will this potentially help me if I get cancer?” and the answer is “Not at all unless you get a particular form of cancer that this applies to”. > Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. Except people don’t ask “what if I get bacteria” the way the…

> Except people don’t ask “what if I get bacteria” the way they ask about cancer.

Yeah, but doctors also don't tell people "you have bacteria" or claim "we found a cure for bacteria". The lack of nuance on average is largely due to a lack of nuance from experts. The media treats cancer as one big thing and bacteria and viruses as separate things. Thus the average joe inherits 'treating cancer as one big thing' from the media.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#23

Post by bruce511 »

bad_username wrote: post #17
epistasis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…

> Cancer is not one thing, I know this is a popular "well actually" to do, but it is not always useful in a conversation. Yes, all cancers are different, but yes, cancer is also one thing: unchecked, harmful division of cells. Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. It is reasonable to talk about b…

I understand where you are coming from here, but I think it is helpful for people to overtly grasp that there are very different cancers, very different treatments, and indeed very different outcomes.

Without this understanding it becomes a quick jump from "we're spending all this money on cancer" to "we've made no progress"

An example of the nuance plays out in the common cancers (like breast and prostrate). These have between 90 and 100% 5 year survival rates. Others (like the one in this article, pancreatic) have very poor survivability.

As you note, it's very unlikely that we'll "cure cancer". But we already "cure" (for some definition of cure) some cancers. Progress is slow, methodical, and incremental. It can feel like a lost cause when viewed from afar, but up close very real progress is being made. And that's an important message to pass along.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#24

Post by [deleted] »

bad_username wrote: post #17
epistasis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…

> Cancer is not one thing, I know this is a popular "well actually" to do, but it is not always useful in a conversation. Yes, all cancers are different, but yes, cancer is also one thing: unchecked, harmful division of cells. Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. It is reasonable to talk about b…

[deleted]

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#25

Post by warumdarum »

bad_username wrote: post #17
epistasis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…

> Cancer is not one thing, I know this is a popular "well actually" to do, but it is not always useful in a conversation. Yes, all cancers are different, but yes, cancer is also one thing: unchecked, harmful division of cells. Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. It is reasonable to talk about b…

The problem is the similarities of cancer to normal cells. We have penicilin that works against all human cells. We call that poison.

Now, "no, i mean poisons that attack the special chemistry of cancer," oh yes, those we call chemo.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#26

Post by jldugger »

LoganDark wrote: post #22
dpark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems relevant here because the question was “How will this potentially help me if I get cancer?” and the answer is “Not at all unless you get a particular form of cancer that this applies to”. > Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. Except people don’t ask “what if I get bacteria” the way the…

> Except people don’t ask “what if I get bacteria” the way they ask about cancer. Yeah, but doctors also don't tell people "you have bacteria" or claim "we found a cure for bacteria". The lack of nuance on average is largely due to a lack of nuance from experts. The media treats cancer as one big thing and bacteria and viruses as separate things. Thus the average joe inherits 'treating cancer as one big thing' from t…

Is it? I'm pretty sure oncologists will say "you have stage 2 breast cancer," but I wasn't in the room at the time.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#27

Post by Nippon_anzai »

gavinray wrote: post #15

To offer context for others: The bigger deal about this is that KRAS was considered an "undruggable" target. Recent advancements have allowed us to design biologics to do things we previously thought impossible, which broadens the horizons for other treatments in the future. Baby steps.

What's next then?

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#29

Post by dyauspitr »

epistasis wrote: post #10
basisword wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this mean in layman's terms? How will this potentially help me if I get cancer?

Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…

The golden panacea for this would be a gene editing mechanism that will work in every cell in the body. Once we have something we can do whole hog gene replacement, most human health problems would be solved forever.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#30

Post by sarchertech »

siva7 wrote: post #21
basisword wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this mean in layman's terms? How will this potentially help me if I get cancer?

It won't help... mind you this is an article from the economist. There is no such thing as a cancer "master switch", that would equal a disease master switch and that point we have solved biology.

What do you mean “it won’t help”?

It most likely will help if you get pancreatic cancer. It might help if you get one of the other types of cancers with this mutation.

And it will likely lead to new treatments for some of the worst kinds of cancer.

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