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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

#101

Post by jordanpg »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #92
Vaslo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You know so little about this, ad it is terribly frustrating to me. Scientists have been made out to be villains, when, on the whole, these are some the hardest working, most motivated people you will ever encounter.

They have absolutely no idea what they are destroying or why. An entire generation of scientists will be lost. It is breathtaking to watch what will surely be someday labeled as one of the greatest acts of intentional, national self-destruction ever.

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

#102

Post by SubiculumCode »

Vaslo wrote: post #93
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>100% support (10s of millions of Americans do) many of these cuts when scientists are hired because they know someone, or are part of some “group” rather than being the best choice. Prove it. Prove this happens at a large scale. This is just nonsense talking points.

[flagged]

It's called the 2024 election. People have listened to so much propaganda aimed at destroying the anyone with credibility that can challenge whichever "truth" the propagandist chooses to push.

There is no leftist scurge I'm science.

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

#103

Post by fartfeatures »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #95
pancreaticdiet wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anecdotes are not data It's 2026, this is SOP. It's why I referenced the metabolic pathways derived from data backed research, linked to a data driven study, and used language like "we had significant success with our loved one " and "if you want something that you can do to try ". Honestly this reads like an "aHCkTualLy!1!" from someone without experience of having a loved one suffering from a cancer diagnosis. Pe…

I have had a family member die of pancreatic cancer before age 60. It is, of course, terrible beyond belief. I'm not sure what you mean by "SOP" in this context. Referencing a bio-plausible mechanism is not actually clinically meaningful. It can provide a direction for study, but does not replace an actual clinical trial. As I said, "a patient can try anything they want". But since we don't actually know whether such…

Standard Operating Procedure.

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

#104

Post by cschmidt »

inglor_cz wrote: post #46
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.

Aren't those 20 per cent of tumors more concentrated on the "intractable" side? If so, then the hyperbole is forgivable.

It does seem like those 20% are exactly on the nasty side. So even more impressive.

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

#105

Post by michaelmrose »

shevy-java wrote: post #86
epistasis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next 1-5 years will tell us which cancers this new drug will work well on, right now it's only been tried in pancreatic cancer when people have failed their first treatment. The new drug from the article, daroxonrasib, has nine trials i see currently, here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=daraxonrasib&viewType... The first two are the trial that just completed and showed success: people that have pancreati…

But that's not a cure. If they don't take that drug, assuming it works, they still have the original mutation in the cancer cells. > Patients that take part in clinical trials really are the heroes here. Are they? To me personally, putting people into a permanent state of requiring drugs to survive, is not really cure. It's just maximizing income for those selling those drugs. And none of those drugs work exceedingly…

Everyone dies. Dying 5 years later is a victory. I would go so far as saying if it was you or someone who you care about you would understand.

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-have-cancer-rates-changed-...

>However, even though the overall number of cases rises as the population grows, fewer people are getting and dying from cancer. Between 2000 and 2021, the incidence rate — or the rate of new cancer cases per 100,000 people — declined by 5.7%, while the annual mortality rate fell by 27.5%.

Cancer is a broad term encompassing many sorts of malfunction and nearly 40% of Americans will be diagnosed with it at some point because if you survive other hazards and maladies cancer is often what gets you.

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

#106

Post by jmcgough »

shevy-java wrote: post #86
epistasis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next 1-5 years will tell us which cancers this new drug will work well on, right now it's only been tried in pancreatic cancer when people have failed their first treatment. The new drug from the article, daroxonrasib, has nine trials i see currently, here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=daraxonrasib&viewType... The first two are the trial that just completed and showed success: people that have pancreati…

But that's not a cure. If they don't take that drug, assuming it works, they still have the original mutation in the cancer cells. > Patients that take part in clinical trials really are the heroes here. Are they? To me personally, putting people into a permanent state of requiring drugs to survive, is not really cure. It's just maximizing income for those selling those drugs. And none of those drugs work exceedingly…

I can understand being frustrated and cynical with the pharmaceutical industry, but I have never worked with a single doctor that approaches patient care with the goal of getting them "hooked" on something for life.

The pharmaceutical companies are not the ones making clinical decisions - in this case, it's a shared medical decision between a patient and their oncologist.

Having seen how horrific pancreatic cancer is, how difficult it is to treat, and the decades of slow research done by academic scientists to get to this point, I am elated that we have a tool to give patients more time with their families even if their cancer can't be "cured" with this particular drug.

This may seem unsatisfying, but it's real, measurable progress. KRAS has been known about since the earliest days of cancer research, so it's a true breakthrough to finally have a drug targeting it.

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

#107

Post by inigyou »

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…

How does it avoid targeting KRAS in healthy cells? Or is this another form of chemotherapy where we're trying our hardest to deliver the right amount of poison that kills the cancer before it kills the rest of you?

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

#108

Post by inigyou »

warumdarum wrote: post #68
cogman10 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For chemo it's often "these chemicals kills cancer cells faster than they kill regular cells".

Which is why we got ecchemo.. where the cancer affected pathways get seperated from the regular ciculatory system via shunt and then get fed the chemo seperately and get a little wash before reconnection to the full circulation. It would be even more ideal if you had the whole navel setup in two entirely seperated systems.. sorry, a man can dream..

if you can separate a tumour's circulation why not just leave it permanently disconnected?

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

#109

Post by inigyou »

shevy-java wrote: post #89
warumdarum wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We have penicilin that works against all human cells. Penicillin works against bacteria, in particular gram-positive bacteria; to a lesser extent gram-negative bacteria too (this depends on the cell membrane structure of bacteria; there are other penicillin derivatives that are also more effective on gram-negative bacteria than penicillin is, but by and large the main target will be gram-positive bacteria). It does…

It was an analogy. Just like penicillin kills a broad variety of bacteria we also know substances that kill a broad variety of cancer cells. Arsenic, for instance, and shotgun bullets. The problem is they usually select for all cells or all human cells, not cancer cells more specifically.

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

#110

Post by inigyou »

bruce511 wrote: post #23
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…

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 h…

Depressing: evolution has discovered a universal cure for cancer, and it's reproduction. You make a whole new human without the bad bits. Other humans have to evaluate which bits are bad.
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