Absolute clickbait fraudulent title. From the article in Cell: "Given orally, AOH1996 suppresses tumor growth but causes no discernable side effect" is a VERY different result.
IN ANIMALS (mice and dogs)
Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
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Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#72Amazing 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.
If it costs pennies a pill and you are trying to sell it for a million dollars, that is a surefire way to get murdered by a mob. I would just sell the patent to the government for a hefty profit and be done with it.
$100/vial insulin and $700 epi-pens would like a word.
Thalidomide used to cost $6 per capsule in the '70s when it was given for morning sickness (yes, I know, birth defects) but as soon as they found out it cured cancer the price went up to $18,000 and that's on GoodRx lol. [1] Harvoni for Hep C is $94,500 for a 12-week course.
Drugs aren't priced based on the cost to manufacture but based on the projected savings as compared to existing treatments for the medical system - or based on the value the provide to customers. Curing cancer provides value -> price moons.
Unfortunately healthcare is not and cannot by definition be a free market as a free market requires the voluntary exchange of money for goods and services. "Pay me or die of cancer" is not a voluntary exchange but a coerced one - hence the failure of pricing and availability of necessary care you see in the US.
Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#73The story is beautiful, too: https://nypost.com/2023/08/02/new-cancer-hope-as-pill-kills-... Named after a girl that died. Resulted in fundraising for Neuroblastoma, and this medicine.
That's really touching and admirable that they chose to name it after her.
Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#74https://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…
> I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see desperate, sick, rich people try this out on themselves, skipping FDA approval I know nothing about the FDA but for things like terminal cancer treatment, shouldn't there be a blanket exemption for "if the patient so wish, they can take whatever drugs they want even if unapproved"? When facing certain death, what's the worst that can happen? You die a bit sooner?
The worst that can happen is a industry springing up around giving terminally ill scared desperate people suger pills at a 10000% markup
Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#75https://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…
> I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see desperate, sick, rich people try this out on themselves, skipping FDA approval I know nothing about the FDA but for things like terminal cancer treatment, shouldn't there be a blanket exemption for "if the patient so wish, they can take whatever drugs they want even if unapproved"? When facing certain death, what's the worst that can happen? You die a bit sooner?
There sort of is, in a couple of ways. First, off-label use. This is very common in medicine, and means drug X (or machine X) approved for Y purpose can be used for Z purpose if a physician judges it a good idea. So if a heart drug is showing promise in treating sleep apnea in early papers, your doctor could read the papers and decide it was worth a go. Or if you asked them to; trick there is they are professionally liable for it being a supportable decision. There is a form of this for compassionate use which means most of the downsides are ignored in favor of quality of life (e.g. I'm not too worried about getting you addicted to opiods if you're only going to live a few weeks).
The second way is that drugs/devices are considered against their intended use. So the argument for using more dangerous things is much easier if you are treating brain tumors than common colds. There even are fast-track (e.g. mRNA vaccine for covid) but won't be pulled out for niche uses.
What this doesn't cover is things produced in uncontrolled ways, or "i read this on the internet and want a prescription". I can see how this is frustrating for people who are willing to try anything, but I can also see the liability side.
> "When facing certain death, what's the worst that can happen? You die a bit sooner?"
Part of the problem is you certainly can make things worse, and you can make them systemically more expensive. It's one thing to say "I'm dying anyway and I want to try this" but quite another to add "and if it goes badly I expect you to try and deal with it". No easy answers, really.
Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#76I'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
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is that cancer cells have this mutant DNA clamp[0], which rallies DNA repair mechanisms in cells. The molecule targets the mutant clamp, disabling repair mechanisms for tumor cells but not healthy cells. We all should hope that it has high specificity for the mutant PCNA, and doesn't affect healthy cells... clinical trials will investigate this. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proliferating_cell_nuclear_…
I don’t think this is targeting a mutated version of PCNA… that would assume that all cancers had the same mutation. Instead, this would target both healthy and cancerous cells. However, the idea is that the cancer cells are more susceptible to the drug. Healthy cells will be affected, but cancer cells will be affected more, and are more unstable, so losing PCNA will have more of an effect on the cancer cells. The ma…
It is written "no discernible side effects"... So we will see...
Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#78I 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, t…
Infectious diseases are different because they jump from host/reservoir to host/reservoir and can take their "experience" with them. Cancers spawn off from normal cells that mutate randomly. So the general scheme is that cancers (and each person's cancer's drug-resistance) develops from scratch in isolation within each person. Basically there's no real mechanism for one person's cancer to translate/share its experience against drugs with another person's cancer. Some cancers are related to viruses by increasing mutation rates which in turn increases the chance of a cancer developing. So basically I wouldn't expect overprescription to produce drug-resistance the way it can for anti-virals and anti-bacterials.
Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#79Please don't rely on a x-twitter headline for a de-facto statement on this. Please see other threads posted here on HN.
Or read Derek Lowe's response on AOH1996:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-mode-cancer-tr...
Or read about the drug that came before it, but didn't metabolize well:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6279569/
Or read about other new, interesting anti-cancer drugs:
https://med.stanford.edu/cancer/about/news/rewiring-cancer-c...
Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is that cancer cells have this mutant DNA clamp[0], which rallies DNA repair mechanisms in cells. The molecule targets the mutant clamp, disabling repair mechanisms for tumor cells but not healthy cells. We all should hope that it has high specificity for the mutant PCNA, and doesn't affect healthy cells... clinical trials will investigate this. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proliferating_cell_nuclear_…
I don’t think this is targeting a mutated version of PCNA… that would assume that all cancers had the same mutation. Instead, this would target both healthy and cancerous cells. However, the idea is that the cancer cells are more susceptible to the drug. Healthy cells will be affected, but cancer cells will be affected more, and are more unstable, so losing PCNA will have more of an effect on the cancer cells. The ma…
I read it selectively initiates apoptosis based on that protein and only affects cancer cells but that might have been relayed incorrectly
Edit: exactly -> "It was created to target a specific variant of PCNA found only in cancer cells. This protein is crucial in the body for DNA repair, but targeting it was difficult because of its role in healthy cells. By going after only the variant, it may be possible to selectively target only cancer cells"
From Wikipedia