141–150 of 182 posts
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Can you cite any stats or studies that show that this is happening in any substantial amounts? This seems to be one of those "it just makes common sense" when the underlying data is ignored or assumed.
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Sorry, it does not apply ... this drug inhibits (for the first time) the KRAS mutation (previously considered "undruggable") that is the primary cause of 90% of pancreatic cancers and 50% of colon cancers.
No reason to be sorry, that sounds like this is even better news then :)
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For every cell mechanism that's being abused by cancer to fuel its growth, there are other cells in the body for which that mechanism is crucial for their correct functioning. Wholesale editing every cell in the body mostly guarantees that the patient does not die of cancer -- the cure will kill them before the disease does.
Only cells that have the necessary signature get the edit
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Can we end up with a situation like antimicrobial resistance, where cancer itself evolves to resist these new treatments?
evolution is a wrong concept to approach it. cancer is not a separate life form, but a bug in the regeneration system of a complicated life form. it doesn’t exist outside of it, it cannot propagate.
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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?
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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?
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It does seem like those 20% are exactly on the nasty side. So even more impressive.
I'm no expert, and don't know if it applies in this case, but for a cancer I had (lymphoma) I was told that aggressive can often be easier to treat or "cure" (as defined by survival rates, etc.) since it also can often be hit more brutally by the treatments. Anyway, since many in my family have died from this horrible cancer, its fantastic news to hear of any improvements there.
That is not true for most cancers, though.
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1. Trump has been trying to cut Science budgers by larger percentages for a while now. Congress has not let them. 2. NIH funding notice of awards has slowed to a crawl since Trump did not get his wish to cut Science funding. 3. Putting scientific funding under political control, instructing them to ignore the reviews conducted by peer scientists. 4. Have practically made international collaborations on grants impossi…
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The political left, of course, is the opposite and obsesses over Type I error. Accepting the wrong people and ideas is less important than getting good results. This leads to things like Lysenkoism, but also tends to reject less successful research, given the other checks and balances built into a healthy system.
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Unfortunately in this particular case people die about 6 months later, not 5 years. See the article.
This is just a failure of understanding. This particular advancement is part of a decades long slog which taken together allows a substantial number of people to live meaningful additional durations every single year. 6 months average by itself means that John got another 3 years even if Jane only got 3 more days. If I pulled one person out of a burning building it would be newsworthy. Doctors are and have been pulli…
We should be spending the same amount of money on health and disease as we spend on AI. Ogogogogogo
It is more than plausible that spending money on AI is spending money on healthcare. I believe with little certainty that AI will help us find new ways to fight disease, improve our health and live longer lives.