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

AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 147 posts

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#121

Post by rootbear »

adamredwoods wrote: post #42

According to Wikipedia, it depends on a specific cancer cell mutation, T790M, which could also be a forced mutation from using other EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors. This alludes how tricky, and how fast, cancer cells mutate and adapt. >> In people treated with osimertinib, resistance usually develops within approximately 10 months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osimertinib

My sister had the ALK variant of non-small cell lung cancer. The special treatment she got worked until it didn’t, about 16 months. One oncologist said the cancer had likely mutated and the ALK specific therapy was no long effective.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#122

Post by CoastalCoder »

evantbyrne wrote: post #84
lowercased wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA: If you have dependents, or think you might, get some life insurance in place now while you're relatively young. I've had too many friends/colleagues pass away unexpectedly without any (or not remotely enough) life insurance, leaving a spouse and young children behind, inevitably turning to gofundme and similar just to get by.

Also to hijack this thread: if you or a loved one is/was a long-term smoker, take yourself/pressure them to have routine cancer testing. Right now, while our liquid biopsy has limited availability, for most people that means getting CT scans. Lung cancer is very fast moving and survivability is directly related to how early it is detected. The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for…

>The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them!

Surely there are tradeoffs here, because CT scans use ionizing radiation.

Have CT scans gotten much more efficient (regarding radiation dose) in recent years?

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#123

Post by evantbyrne »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #122
evantbyrne wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also to hijack this thread: if you or a loved one is/was a long-term smoker, take yourself/pressure them to have routine cancer testing. Right now, while our liquid biopsy has limited availability, for most people that means getting CT scans. Lung cancer is very fast moving and survivability is directly related to how early it is detected. The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for…

>The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them! Surely there are tradeoffs here, because CT scans use ionizing radiation. Have CT scans gotten much more efficient (regarding radiation dose) in recent years?

A person with 20 years of smoking history that waits for symptoms before getting tested might as well sign their own death certificate. CT scans aren't something that a person with a low risk profile would have routinely for a wide variety of reasons, which is why bringing an affordable liquid biopsy to market is so important. A lot of work has been done to make CT scans theoretically valuable to a wider audience, but that is not going to translate to widespread early cancer detection in-practice as evidenced by the >90% of eligible patients that never get tested.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#124

Post by cschneid »

hereme888 wrote: post #71
formercoder wrote: post #15

My aunt was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and is only alive because of this drug. It’s a marvel of modern medicine.

Would you be willing to share a few more details for me to understand? It would help me talk more concretely with my colleagues. So she had stage 4 lung cancer. "Is alive only because of this drug": - Was her life expectancy obviously prolonged? If so, by how much has she exceeded it so far? - Has the cancer progressed more slowly, halted, or regressed? Thanks.

My dad was in a similar situation ~10 years ago. Stage 4 lung cancer, although a different underlying mutation (ALK). Prognosis was less than a year. But he got on some new-at-the-time inhibitor drugs (Crizotinib iirc) which eliminated ("no evidence") the cancer. What is left does slowly mutates around the drugs, and he goes in for regular monitoring and has had some radiation therapy to knock down specific growth spots, but he's still here with us.

I can't speak to the one in the article, but the drugs he's on aren't chemo, but they interrupt one of the pathways the cancer is using to infinitely grow. They have side effects, but not bad ones comparatively.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#125

Post by sudosysgen »

someonehere wrote: post #7

Didn’t Cuba have a vaccine for lung cancer? I seem to recall seeing one in a documentary (maybe a Michael Moore film?)

Yes, for non-small cell lung carcinomas. Its not a panacea, but seems to be effective.

After observational studies of patients who flew to Cuba to take it confirmed efficacy, phase 2 clinical trials are underway in the US : NCT02955290

It's unfortunate it took this long. If it wasn't for the sanctions, it would certainly already have either finished (or failed, though unlikely) trials.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#126

Post by sudosysgen »

badcppdev wrote: post #12
alexnewman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father died of lung cancer. I also ran a failed medical tourism company which sent people to get this treatment in Cuba. More modern versions of the Cuban treatment are now few approved in the USA as immunotherapy. Didn’t save my dad

Sorry about your Dad but did it help other people? How many did you send and how many had positive outcomes in terms of prolonged life above the expected outcome?

You might be interested in the Phase IV trials in Cuba, which were published here : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5346887/

There was also a published study by Roswell Park, on a few hundred patients many of which flew out to Cuba to take it, but it's only Phase 1, so no efficacy, only safety and antibody titers : https://www.roswellpark.org/newsroom/201903-safety-analysis-...

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#127

Post by briHass »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #122
evantbyrne wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also to hijack this thread: if you or a loved one is/was a long-term smoker, take yourself/pressure them to have routine cancer testing. Right now, while our liquid biopsy has limited availability, for most people that means getting CT scans. Lung cancer is very fast moving and survivability is directly related to how early it is detected. The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for…

>The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them! Surely there are tradeoffs here, because CT scans use ionizing radiation. Have CT scans gotten much more efficient (regarding radiation dose) in recent years?

Yes. The one specifically designed for lung cancer screening is a 'low-dose' CT scan, that is usually around 1/5th of a standard CT scan. This is similar to the low-dose CT scan used for identifying heart disease, a coronary calcium scan. In fact, there some research showing that a single scan can do both at the same time (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23235-4), quite well, especially coupled with ML analysis of the scans.

For both of these diseases, it seems like the small amount of radiation (2-3x normal yearly background) is well worth the radiation risk done twice a decade for low risk (>40 y/o) and perhaps up to yearly for high-risk former/current heavy smokers (>50 y/o), which is the current recommendation. Even out-of-pocket, these scans tend to be very inexpensive (for medical diagnostic tests), at around $150-200.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#128

Post by justinclift »

lowercased wrote: post #74
baq wrote: post #14

A friend died of lung cancer. Went from mild cough to funeral in about 5 weeks. 40 yo. 2 pre-teen kids. Started to look after my own health a bit more. This is a very welcome development.

PSA: If you have dependents, or think you might, get some life insurance in place now while you're relatively young. I've had too many friends/colleagues pass away unexpectedly without any (or not remotely enough) life insurance, leaving a spouse and young children behind, inevitably turning to gofundme and similar just to get by.

> get some life insurance

Be super careful though, as many insurance companies (not only life insurance) just seem like scams. With you only that finding at the worse possible time, after the event.

The alternative being "try to plan for not having to rely on them", which itself may also not be possible.

Re: AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer

#129

Post by hereme888 »

cschneid wrote: post #124
hereme888 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to share a few more details for me to understand? It would help me talk more concretely with my colleagues. So she had stage 4 lung cancer. "Is alive only because of this drug": - Was her life expectancy obviously prolonged? If so, by how much has she exceeded it so far? - Has the cancer progressed more slowly, halted, or regressed? Thanks.

My dad was in a similar situation ~10 years ago. Stage 4 lung cancer, although a different underlying mutation (ALK). Prognosis was less than a year. But he got on some new-at-the-time inhibitor drugs (Crizotinib iirc) which eliminated ("no evidence") the cancer. What is left does slowly mutates around the drugs, and he goes in for regular monitoring and has had some radiation therapy to knock down specific growth sp…

Amazing. Thanks for sharing. Oncology is such a complex field. I imagine discoveries in this field will only advance exponentially due to increasing investments and AI tech.
Post reply on HN