I ctrl+f for "patent" and got no hits, so forwarded it to someone on our team to dive in to further.
A Universal Cancer Treatment?
41–50 of 100 posts
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#42Oncologist here. You can think of drug development as an extremely wide funnel with a minuscule exit hole. At any given time a medium sized pharmaceutical company has 300-500 drug candidates. From this group 50 make it to phase 1 trials. 40 get slashed due to toxicity, company abandons them, gets bought by third party and sits in sleepy storage. 10 advance to phase 2 trials where 5-8 may not end up having enough effi…
Sounds like this one is pretty advanced down the funnel, having successfully passed phase 1 human trials, or am I missing something?
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#43I may be missing something but the article does not explain how the bacteria target is actually targeting the cancer cells. Of course, if you can design an ideal universal cancer targeting mechanism, the active ingredient itself is beside the point. Did anyone else catch this? Stopping DNA replication across the body will be fatal. This is what eventually kills with radiation toxicity.
It does, from the article: "“Normally, our blood vessel walls are all sealed pipes,” Brahmbhatt says. “But around wherever the cancer is growing, the blood vessels are known to be very defective. They have got a lot of holes in them.” Brahmbhatt and his collaborator Jennifer MacDiarmid devised a clever ploy. They would send a Trojan horse into malignant cells and turn cancer’s own trickery against it. The Trojan hors…
I see. I do wonder how specific that is though. Potentially it could be toxic to other areas where vasculature could be "leaky". Like in the filtration mechanisms in the kidney.
Targeting the cancer's vascular supply is also a known anti-cancer mechanism of action (anti-angiogenics). How will this method not have the same toxicity as that one?
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#44It really is remarkable how far cancer treatment has progressed, even in the last few years. I'm one of the unfortunate people who, through a close family encounter with cancer, knows more about this stuff than anyone should have to. The oncologist told my relative that if they had presented with this particular cancer just a decade ago, his recommendation would have been to start hospice care. However, in recent yea…
As a person who currently has stage IV NSCLC, I can add some context to this: YMMV. One thing to remember is that "Lung Cancer" is not just one thing. There are mutations of different genes, there are overexpressions of different genes. Each one has its own new medicines. Also, some peoples' cancers are more aggressive than others, and while for many they can find the right drug, for some nothing works. Keytruda work…
I was diagnosed with stage III NSCLC February '21. Radiation, chemo, and a bilobectomy. I had the ALK+ morphology which meant I wasn't a candidate for immunotherapy but I've been on alectinib since my surgery in June '21 with no signs of recurrence so far.
The process is grueling in hindsight, but I'm glad to hear you're getting results. At first I would have said "if this is going to kill me, make it sooner rather than later" to avoid a drawn-out painful experience, but I'm starting to appreciate what the buying time really means. It's hard with all that's going on but get your head straight and make sure you enjoy it.
Keep on keeping on.
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#45I loved Michael Levin's thoughts on solving cancer. Kind of similar to immunotherapy but on a level of reprogramming the cells back that got 'lost' from their big purpose in their organ.
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stage IIIC NSCLC, specifically a superior sulcus tumor, advanced enough to be considered inoperable. Standard of care in this case was induction radiotherapy, followed by a single course of combination chemotherapy consisting of carboplatin, pemetrexed, and pembrolizumab (the last of which is the cutting-edge immunotherapy I'm talking about; brand name Keytruda.) After that, patients are prescribed the pemetrexed and…
Thank you for pointing out the standard of care in this case, given inability to resect, was the immunotherapy from the start. Obviously very specific for that type of lung cancer and the state of your contact's tumor, but I've been learning more and more about this and have been told by multiple oncologists that immunotherapy is typically only given after more conventional treatments are first attempted and fail to…
The scan that indicated the 80% reduction was after just a couple of weeks, if I recall correctly.
Since you're talking about immunotherapy not typically being a first-line treatment, I'll share a morbidly interesting fact that underscores some of the, er... quirks of the US medical system. The oncologist treating my relative initially staged my relative's cancer in the electronic health records as stage IV, despite no evidence of metastasis (the usual criterion)--he explained that he did this specifically in order to pursue first-line Keytruda (which is indicated for stage IV but not stage IIIC) and have it be covered by insurance.
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#47Oncologist here. You can think of drug development as an extremely wide funnel with a minuscule exit hole. At any given time a medium sized pharmaceutical company has 300-500 drug candidates. From this group 50 make it to phase 1 trials. 40 get slashed due to toxicity, company abandons them, gets bought by third party and sits in sleepy storage. 10 advance to phase 2 trials where 5-8 may not end up having enough effi…
Sounds like this one is pretty advanced down the funnel, having successfully passed phase 1 human trials, or am I missing something?
Phase 1 trials are used to determine drug toxicity. All that reault really says is that the new drug won't itself kill the patients. It still needs to be compared relative to the standard of care in larger phase 2 and 3 trials.
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#48It is not a single disease, but rather a result of several errant biological outcomes. The mortality rates have improved a lot with better treatments, and around 60% of the population will develop some form of the disease in their lifespan. The most disturbing part is most people are unaware they are ill until relatively late stages of the disease. If you live long enough, one will know many good people that go this…
liquid biopsy seems promising in early detection.
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, that's an interesting insight into the dropoff rate for these ideas. Do you have an opinion on what the bottleneck is? Volume of ideas, length of testing, or perhaps flawed approach in general?
The extreme complexity of biology. There's no substitute to just trying things and seeing if they work, because you will never understand what's going on beforehand.
funny how many of blockebuster drugs were discovered by accident.
Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?
#50Early detection? Whats the best way to detect cancer (money is no object) and how do we get that cost down 10x and get everyone to participate?
problems: - False-positive results - False-negative results "Mammograms are the best breast cancer screening tests we have at this time. But mammograms have their limits. For example, they aren’t 100% accurate in showing if a woman has breast cancer. They can miss some cancers, and sometimes they find things that turn out not to be cancer (but that still need further testing to be sure)." https://www.cancer.org/cance…
Furthermore the detection method used (x-rays) cause cancer in and of themselves.