Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer

fda.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–76 of 76 posts

Re: FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer

#71

Post by jquery »

Alien1Being wrote: post #52

Not a nice disease to get. Ranks up there with glioblastoma multiforme, advanced oesophageal cancer and advanced duodenal cancer. I am aggressive and investigate aggressively to detect pancreatic cancer early. One even had a Whipple procedure (pancreaticoduodenectomy ), since I detected it so early. Despite that, the longest anyone I diagnosed has lived has only been 8 months. Sad, they were all nice people.

> glioblastoma multiforme

Killed my dad the same year he retired. Really stuck with me about how important living for today is.

Re: FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer

#72

Post by jr3592 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #62
yepyeppers wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. There’s something like half a billion dollars spent on pancreatic cancer research annually in the United States alone. It’s a giant money pit and that’s created an enormous body of research, increased understanding of the biology of the cancer and just how insidious it is, and funded the careers of thousands of scientists, technicians, academics and administrators, but very little of all this translates into b…

> There’s no evidence than just pouring more money into cancer research is going to give us a miracle cure. The HPV vaccine will almost entirely wipe out cervical cancer: not by curing it, but preventing it entirely. Not sure if that meets your “miracle” standard, but it’s a totally unreasonable standard to apply to scientific research. By definition, a miracle is something that is not physically possible. Research s…

Even better point. Thank you!

Re: FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer

#73

Post by pfdietz »

jquery wrote: post #70
pfdietz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One downer about this drug is the absolutely horrific side effects, like "your skin feels like you've been dipped in acid" kind of horrific. Still, pancreatic cancer is just that bad, so maybe that's worthwhile.

The alternative is chemotherapy which is even nastier, on average.

I'm not sure conventional chemo actually is nastier than this drug. It sounded really bad. Conventional chemo is less effective here, though.

Re: FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer

#74

Post by HedonicEscal8r »

freediddy wrote: post #35
HedonicEscal8r wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be disappointing to see that even a successful drug, like this one, is "only" extending life expectancy from 6.7 months to 13.2. But this is what the first steps towards a cure look like. Childhood leukemia used to be overwhelmingly fatal, and early chemotherapy trials also only managed a couple months of remission. Researchers were even criticized for subjecting patients to harsh side effects to no apparent b…

Moderna is testing an mRNA vaccine that might be useful against bladder and kidney cancers. Hopefully the same technology can be applied to pancreatic and liver cancers. Fingers crossed.

mRNA vaccines are being studied for pancreatic cancer. To quote a post I wrote in April:

> First, the personalized mRNA vaccine autogene cevumeran, developed by BioNTech and Genentech, just reported 6-year follow-up results from their Phase 1 clinical trial. 16 patients were treated, 8 were responders (showed signs of immune reaction to vaccine), 8 were non-responders.

> 7/8 responders (87.5%) survived 6 years after surgery, 2/8 nonresponders survived (25%).

> AACR meeting notes https://www.aacr.org/blog/2026/04/20/live-updates-from-the-a...

> The most important result in this small trial is that vaccine response is strongly correlated with better outcomes. But for context, the trial was restricted to patients with operable pancreatic cancer. Patients diagnosed with stage 1 or 2 pancreatic cancer have a 5-year survival rate of 12%. Patients who get their pancreatic cancer surgically removed have a 5-year post-surgery survival rate of 20%. This makes the overall 6-year post-surgery survival rate of 56% among the 16 trial patients pretty impressive. Keep in mind that the trial patients may have been healthier than average for other reasons, and small n is small n, so we shouldn't be too hasty until we see Phase 2 and 3 data.

> Source on survival rates https://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/information/just-diagnos...

Still early, unfortunately, so it will be a while before we see more updates.

Re: FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer

#75

Post by yepyeppers »

snowwrestler wrote: post #62
yepyeppers wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. There’s something like half a billion dollars spent on pancreatic cancer research annually in the United States alone. It’s a giant money pit and that’s created an enormous body of research, increased understanding of the biology of the cancer and just how insidious it is, and funded the careers of thousands of scientists, technicians, academics and administrators, but very little of all this translates into b…

> There’s no evidence than just pouring more money into cancer research is going to give us a miracle cure. The HPV vaccine will almost entirely wipe out cervical cancer: not by curing it, but preventing it entirely. Not sure if that meets your “miracle” standard, but it’s a totally unreasonable standard to apply to scientific research. By definition, a miracle is something that is not physically possible. Research s…

> The HPV vaccine will almost entirely wipe out cervical cancer: not by curing it, but preventing it entirely.

That only underlines my point. The HPV vaccine was in not really a product of cancer research, in terms of the cancer itself. It’s purely a multivalent viral vaccine with the munificent effect of preventing several cancers and nasty genital warts as an additional motivator. It has saved many thousands of lives that would have been lost with the best available cancer treatments and avoided their costly and excruciating effects.

It’s too early to write off cervical cancer, besides HPV-negative ones, there are evolving strains not covered and a huge pool of viral reserves worldwide and among the unvaccinated in the USA. A universal mandate won’t happen and coverage isn’t high enough to eradicate it.

Prevention is important for almost all cancers. There will likely be other vaccines in the future targeting carcinogenic infections but most cancers don’t have a simple infectious cause. Cancer is a family of nasty diseases that has time and again defied all pronouncements of impending universal cures.

Re: FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer

#76

Post by yepyeppers »

greenowl wrote: post #30
jrapdx3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW it's commonly the case with cancers of abdominal organs: stomach, pancreas, liver, kidney, etc. These cancers are frequently not diagnosed until at an advanced stage. Symptoms tend to be nonspecific, overlap with ubiquitous conditions like constipation, gastritis. A goal of research is improving early detection of these cancers but it's an uphill battle. It's difficult to increase providers' "index of suspicion"…

We are able to early detect these cancers right now with routine targeted imaging. Perhaps we should be working to solve or improve on the drawbacks associated with doing this, some of which are: CT scans emit ionizing radiation. MRI contrast can buildup and be retained in the body over repeated administrations. The scans can produce false positives, surface benign abnormalities which result in a wild goose chase, ca…

If you look at what practitioners and informed epidemiologists are saying the incidentaloma problem for any type of screening is huge and underestimated with no clear solution. It’s not only about finding and invasively testing benign masses, which can cause actual serious health problems (the associated anxiety and stress alone can actually kill, not to mention the cost and painful or damaging biopsies). But many true positive cancerous or malignant conditions can progress so slowly relative to the patient’s overall health that they do not shorten the patient’s life and/or the treatment may be worse than the “disease” that was detected. Hence why so many types of screenings that actually work can do positive harm for certain populations.

And once you find something with a screening you can’t unfind it. The patient or at least their doctor now has that knowledge and has to live with it and actively decide what to do about it.

Post reply on HN