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Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

drugtargetreview.com

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Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#81
post #43

IN MICE. (To be fair, also IN SOME OTHER BETTER MICE). https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598... (mostly a joke, but I'd be in favor of adding context to the HN headline if possible)

I wonder how long until we'll start seeing these breakthrough cancer treatment articles for clinical trials done in dogs. Oncologists think dog research is a better fit than mice because of greater genetic similarities to humans and the fact that pet dogs live in similar environments as their owners. I think in general people definitely wouldn't be as ok with inducing cancer in dogs as in mice, but finding volunteers…

I used to work at a biomedical institution that did cancer treatment experiments on dogs. There was basically a kennel and periodically they would take a dog and irradiate it.

That was fine in the abstract, but there were computational labs above the kennel and periodically you'd just get this huge outporing of dogs barking and howling and it was really hard to get any work done.

Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's MSK?

right-click, search Google: "MSK most commonly refers to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a world-renowned institution for cancer treatment and research"

The first co-author of the linked paper is also associated with MSKCC.

Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#84
This should be seen as a warning of how much time and efforts and money and stability are required to cultivate a discovery that could have never happened.

Spanish researcher from Madrid. Hired by US on a grant. Worked hard and became director of the Oncology department on the NCI on Maryland. Somebody on the Spanish government decided to bet strong on him and recover it for Spanish Cancer research. A specific customised job offer was created for him. Politicians came and go; some are sensitive about science, other not so much. Some promises were never fulfilled, and he was about to quit and migrate again until private companies stepped on the scene with the resources needed and the will to allocate those resources. Money well spent, that was about to never find his target.

Nobel prizes were created exactly for this kind of humble, serious, zero-nonsense, zero-drama, all-work scientists.

The question here is: how much "Barbacids" quit US in the last year? Scientists aren't stupid. Everybody is aware that Barbacid in US today would have being harassed just for speaking Spanish and having a scarred face. All points that US is bleeding talent at a level never seen in their history.

Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the worst that can happen? The patient dies from complications of the drug's use before the cancer.

If I had 6 months to live, and had no other options, I wouldn't care if a drug killed me in 10 days. Give me the option.

bigPharma doesn't care about that. They care about the publicity of their drug killing someone faster than the cancer.

Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the worst that can happen? The patient dies from complications of the drug's use before the cancer.

If I had 6 months to live, and had no other options, I wouldn't care if a drug killed me in 10 days. Give me the option.

It's not just those two choices though. It could be "6 months in relative comfort" and "10 days begging each minute to die but you can't because you're borderline unconscious". Or anything in between. Just saying.

Medical guidelines are there for a reason and are often, as they say in the military, "written in blood".

Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti abortion and anti birth control contingent would never let even a little of that happen in countries with significant fundamentalist and Catholic voters. There are plenty of examples where these people force babies to be born without a brain on principle. Just recently https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/louisiana-woman-carryin... One can go back to something like Terri Schiavo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

What do you mean by "without a brain"? There are multiple examples in the literature of people leading perfectly ordinary lives whilst unknowingly having no more than 5% of the typical amount of brain matter (typically because of hydrocephalus). For example, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.7434023 from 1980.

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Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "without a brain"? There are multiple examples in the literature of people leading perfectly ordinary lives whilst unknowingly having no more than 5% of the typical amount of brain matter (typically because of hydrocephalus). For example, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.7434023 from 1980.

They mean stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly . The brain is indeed incredibly resilient - some kids with serious epilepsy get an entire hemisphere taken out - but which 5% you're left with matters enormously.

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Re: Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models

#89

IN MICE. (To be fair, also IN SOME OTHER BETTER MICE). https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598... (mostly a joke, but I'd be in favor of adding context to the HN headline if possible)

This context is very important.

"Little by little, over-inflated results and breathless breakthroughs betray trust. They throwing dimes in a wishing well which people rapidly start to expect will never pay compound interest."

"Then, when one of those people is elected to parliament, or Congress, and start to cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, or declares that All Research Should Be In The National Interest (whatever that is), I wonder how much we reap what we have sown."

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