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

Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 108 posts

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#21

Post by kylehotchkiss »

I am a total layperson in medicine but I try to challenge myself to read Derek Lowes blog posts and comments here from people like isoprophlex who do understand it. I really appreciate the simplicity of this solution - it doesn't need to be customized for each person, it doesn't need years of work on targeting, it's stable, potentially with few side affects of users. I know even this is a long shot but if it works, the power to change society! I imagine that it would even encourage cancer screening earlier for people to make for more effective treatments.

A working treatment for many cancers will bump many more preventable forms of deaths up the charts - obesity, cars, weapons. I hope that people will be inspired to take more significant actions to reduce those when we've tackled these really really hard ones.

And due to the potential low-cost, easy administration, and storage requirements, I am reminded a bit of how antibiotics ended up working in developing countries. Doctors prescribe them for every pain, making them ineffective at best and spawning antibiotic-resistant bugs at worst. I hope the researchers are able to consider this angle (overprescription) before these medicines become a widely distributed thing in other parts of the world.

It's an exciting decade for medicine. I hope that if we don't see the efficacy we want with this one, that more "simple" formulations will come around that do work.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#22

Post by tpool »

I'm not versed in reading biomedical studies, but I'm curious about this. A successful in vitro test would not necessarily mean that the medicine could overcome other biological challenges such as the blood-brain barrier for delivering medication to brain tumors. Is my assumption correct?

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#23

Post by JimtheCoder »

isoprophlex wrote: post #17
bfrog wrote: post #9

Amazing if true, and can't be released soon enough. In the US this will likely be a million dollars or something insane, because its the US.

The molecular compound is about as tricky to synthesize as viagra (which is to say, very simple as far as drug syntheses go), maybe even easier. All it might take is some instagram cancer influencers, a lab in india or china and some darkweb transactions to DIY your cancer away... if this is so incredibly effective and safe in humans, too.

"All it might take is some instagram cancer influencers, a lab in india or china and some darkweb transactions to DIY your cancer away... "

Or DIY yourself away accidentally. But I guess that would make it a tie, since the cancer dies as well...

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#24

Post by anotherboffin »

isoprophlex wrote: post #8
piyh wrote: post #4

Question from a layman: >100% of solid tumors Solid tumors == all cancer, or would something like a lymph node cancer not be included?

I'm a layman too but I think this distinguishes them from blood cancer, which does not form solid clumps of cancerous mass...

I’m pretty sure you are correct. At least from the way I’ve seen it used (I took cancer biology lessons but it was more on a cellular level)

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#25

Post by vikramkr »

I guess there's nothing stopping people from just shamelessly making up data on Twitter even when they're linking the actual article. This is very cool and very promising research but "almost completely inhibits the growth of xenograft tumors without causing toxicity to experimental animals" is not the same thing as "kills 100% of tumors." I do understand that there's an incentive to lie like this on the internet - it's not just magical internet points when people get paid real money as creators for getting clicks, but come on, really? Is it worth poisoning the discussion around some actually incredibly cool and promising research while driving false hope (which can actually hurt people!) Just for a few extra pennies from twitter's creator fund?

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#27

Post by Terr_ »

isoprophlex wrote: post #12

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOH1996 Look at that molecular structure. Incredible. Two amide bonds, a completely unremarkable aryl ether and an unsubstituted naphthalene ring system. No fussy weird metals or bonds that need pampering, no chiral carbon atom in sight. You could probably pay someone a very modest amount of money to end up with kilograms of this stuff, and it would probably not degrade at all under am…

> Look at that molecular structure. Incredible. Two amide bonds, a completely unremarkable aryl ether and an unsubstituted naphthalene ring system.

Something about this delivery reminds of the business-card scene from Psycho [0].

> Look at that subtle off-white coloring, the tasteful thickness of it--Oh my God, it even has a watermark..."

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#28

Post by vikramkr »

bfrog wrote: post #9

Amazing if true, and can't be released soon enough. In the US this will likely be a million dollars or something insane, because its the US.

Worth it if it works equally as well in humans. We pay way more for cancer drugs that do way less.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#29

Post by tigerlily »

isoprophlex wrote: post #12

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOH1996 Look at that molecular structure. Incredible. Two amide bonds, a completely unremarkable aryl ether and an unsubstituted naphthalene ring system. No fussy weird metals or bonds that need pampering, no chiral carbon atom in sight. You could probably pay someone a very modest amount of money to end up with kilograms of this stuff, and it would probably not degrade at all under am…

> Two amide bonds, a completely unremarkable aryl ether and an unsubstituted naphthalene ring system.

I much prefer your description of the molecule than the one found on its Wikipedia page.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#30

Post by anotherboffin »

epistasis wrote: post #6
zmgsabst wrote: post #3

What’s the process for this to be tested and moved onwards toward approved use?

Phase 1: basic safety, some amount of dose-finding. Small number of patients. Phase 2: does it appear to work as intended, tested in a larger number of people Phase 3: is it better than alternatives. Then approval, followed by monitoring of the drug and side effects. There's also an additional phase of getting insurance to pay for the new drug, which can be the most difficult. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/managing-c…

Nice summary! From my limited knowledge in case someone’s more interested. Don’t know if it’s different in oncology.

Phase 1 is pretty big on safety: sentinel dosing, then gradually increasing doses until the established max is reached or until serious side effects show up. Generally also includes PK/PD aspects: what is the half-life, how long it’s detectable in the body, does this match the modeling? How is the drug eliminated? All this is used to refine the dosing (if need be) but also provides a lot of the information needed for the safety documentation.

Post reply on HN