81–90 of 182 posts
As is often the case, the title is hyperbolic. The discovery applies to 20% of tumors, and "one of cancer's significant defenses" or "a key weakness of cancer" would be more accurate. That said, I'll happily take "we discovered a key weakness in 20% of cancers," please and thank you.
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Did Steve Jobs die from believing something similar (while skipping chemo)
We made sure to still cover all nutritional needs while following the diet.
This meant a diverse array of food sources, in sufficient amounts to meet micro and macro nutrient recommended daily values, that we cooked ourselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…
> Cancer is not one thing, I know this is a popular "well actually" to do, but it is not always useful in a conversation. Yes, all cancers are different, but yes, cancer is also one thing: unchecked, harmful division of cells. Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. It is reasonable to talk about b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
>a lot of the most difficult to treat cancers are now far more treatable, and in the next 1-5 years clinical trials will tell us which cancers this particular drug works well for, Can you help disambiguate this? Are there treatments now, or are there potential treatments with trials in 1-5 years?
The next 1-5 years will tell us which cancers this new drug will work well on, right now it's only been tried in pancreatic cancer when people have failed their first treatment. The new drug from the article, daroxonrasib, has nine trials i see currently, here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=daraxonrasib&viewType... The first two are the trial that just completed and showed success: people that have pancreati…
> Patients that take part in clinical trials really are the heroes here.
Are they?
To me personally, putting people into a permanent state of requiring drugs to survive, is not really cure. It's just maximizing income for those selling those drugs. And none of those drugs work exceedingly well; people still die, even if to other disease or frailties. I don't understand this hype in general.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…
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We'll just use you!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancer is not one thing, it's a huge zoo of many many many ways that cells start to break the social contract and divide in an uncontrolled manner. One of the most commonly observed broken mechanisms is mutation in the gene KRAS that turns this on/off growth switch into the permanently on position. This has been known for decades, of course. And there have been huge amounts of effort to try to develop drugs that targ…
> Cancer is not one thing, I know this is a popular "well actually" to do, but it is not always useful in a conversation. Yes, all cancers are different, but yes, cancer is also one thing: unchecked, harmful division of cells. Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. It is reasonable to talk about b…
Penicillin blocks a specific enzyme (transpeptidase).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin-binding_proteins
Cancer cells, by definition, are not a uniform mass. It will depend on the cancer type, which in turn is defined by the properties those cells have. And mutations happen all the time, often more in cancer cells when their repair systems also have mutations, e. g. are less efficient. By that definition alone, there can never be a wonder-cure for all cancer types. At best you can find some proteins more important (p53 for instance) and while more than 50% of cancer cells have some form of mutation in p53, others simply don't. By that definition there will never be a penicillin-equivalent to all cancer types.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cancer is not one thing, I know this is a popular "well actually" to do, but it is not always useful in a conversation. Yes, all cancers are different, but yes, cancer is also one thing: unchecked, harmful division of cells. Bacteria are also all different, but still they are "one thing", and despite their diversity, antibiotics exist that can deal with many species of them at once. It is reasonable to talk about b…
The problem is the similarities of cancer to normal cells. We have penicilin that works against all human cells. We call that poison. Now, "no, i mean poisons that attack the special chemistry of cancer," oh yes, those we call chemo.
Penicillin works against bacteria, in particular gram-positive bacteria; to a lesser extent gram-negative bacteria too (this depends on the cell membrane structure of bacteria; there are other penicillin derivatives that are also more effective on gram-negative bacteria than penicillin is, but by and large the main target will be gram-positive bacteria). It does not work against human cells. If your comparison is about drugs in general, then of course cytotoxic drugs will have an effect; simplest example I can remember off-hand is colchicin. Of course it should work against cancer cells and non-cancer cells, unless there are some mutations where colchicin could no longer bind to, but that seems very very rare, due to the natural target of colchicin involved in cellular division.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The next 1-5 years will tell us which cancers this new drug will work well on, right now it's only been tried in pancreatic cancer when people have failed their first treatment. The new drug from the article, daroxonrasib, has nine trials i see currently, here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=daraxonrasib&viewType... The first two are the trial that just completed and showed success: people that have pancreati…
But that's not a cure. If they don't take that drug, assuming it works, they still have the original mutation in the cancer cells. > Patients that take part in clinical trials really are the heroes here. Are they? To me personally, putting people into a permanent state of requiring drugs to survive, is not really cure. It's just maximizing income for those selling those drugs. And none of those drugs work exceedingly…
> But that's not a cure. If they don't take that drug, assuming it works, they still have the original mutation in the cancer cells.
The person you're replying to called this out specifically:
> and also various combinations with other drugs.
Why do you think they try it in combination with other drugs? You might be right that this drug alone might not be a cure, but if it inhibits cancer growth, then it empowers other drugs to work more effectively.
> people still die
So what... We do nothing, then? This is your complaint? That we can't be immortal, so why bother trying to cure anything?
I don't understand your type in general.