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A Universal Cancer Treatment?

nautil.us

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Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#91

Post by inglor_cz »

viraptor wrote: post #90
inglor_cz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also notable how doctors can get away with not following the progress in their own field. A programmer who would ignore the developments since 2007 would be unusable.

"their field" is a fuzzy concept. For example for a GP their field is "medicine". By definition they need to know just enough about everything to direct you to a specialist when needed, but it's simply impossible to be up to date with everything. On the other hand, there's a huge number of consultants for enterprises which still write .net 4 like it's 2008 and they're both happy and productive. Unless they're sent to…

True, but a GP shouldn't declare death sentences on their relatives if he is out of his depth in oncology.

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#92

Post by biofox »

inglor_cz wrote: post #88
silisili wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's moving so fast even doctors(sans oncologists, perhaps?) can't keep up. Brother's been a doctor about 15 years. Huge extended family is aging, and of course cancer creeps in. Of course family members call to get his opinion, and he's been wrong every single time(thankfully). Usually saying something like 'oh, she'll be dead within 2 years' and them living 6, or 8. And in one case calling something a death sentenc…

It is also notable how doctors can get away with not following the progress in their own field. A programmer who would ignore the developments since 2007 would be unusable.

I'm still programming in Java like it's 2001. No problems here :)

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#93

Post by tyingq »

uwuemu wrote: post #83
wonder_er wrote: post #72

I can't help but mention that there are two dominant schools of thought regarding cancer treatments: 1. The Somatic theory of cancer ('bad genes/out-of-control cellular replication') 2. The metabolic theory of cancer ('cancer cells ferment blood sugar for energy via an ancient emergency metabolic pathway') Both have merit, but a complete occlusion of one would be bad. I wrote an open letter, long ago, to a wealthy pe…

> cancer cells ferment blood sugar oh boy

It's why PET scans work well on cancer patients, they inject you with a glucose analog that has a radioactive marker.

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#94

Post by dominotw »

01100011 wrote: post #74
dominotw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in recent years, a very effective checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy has been developed for the cancer in question. ~2x the success rates of traditional chemo > I think they've been saying this for a long time now, but it's truer than ever that a real cure for cancer is right around the corner. I think thats quite a leap. For prostate cancer( most common cancer among men), top line therapies are still androgen bloc…

Prostate cancer is, from what I understand, one of the cancers with the least amount of genetic differences from normal tissue. That makes it harder to target. It also explains the general failure of checkpoint inhibitors.

> Prostate cancer is, from what I understand, one of the cancers with the least amount of genetic differences from normal tissue.

Would love to find any references for this.

FDA has only approved BRCA+ and few others like PALB2 for genetic targeting. It doesn't really matter how many others mutations that are found they won't be targeted with PARP.

So the question becomes is PC less likely to have target-able mutations compared to others ?

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#95

Post by Viliam1234 »

biofox wrote: post #92
inglor_cz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also notable how doctors can get away with not following the progress in their own field. A programmer who would ignore the developments since 2007 would be unusable.

I'm still programming in Java like it's 2001. No problems here :)

Lucky you! When I see some recent projects using Spring, there is almost no Java code there, mostly very long YML files. The name remains the same, but it is a completely different programming language, if it may still be called so.

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#96

Post by 01100011 »

dominotw wrote: post #94
01100011 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prostate cancer is, from what I understand, one of the cancers with the least amount of genetic differences from normal tissue. That makes it harder to target. It also explains the general failure of checkpoint inhibitors.

> Prostate cancer is, from what I understand, one of the cancers with the least amount of genetic differences from normal tissue. Would love to find any references for this. FDA has only approved BRCA+ and few others like PALB2 for genetic targeting. It doesn't really matter how many others mutations that are found they won't be targeted with PARP. So the question becomes is PC less likely to have target-able mutatio…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6073096/

> At a broad glance, prostate tumors have, on average, fewer mutations (0.7 per Mb) than other common cancers, such as breast (1.2 per Mb), bladder (7.1 per Mb), colorectal (3.1 per Mb), and melanoma (12.1 per Mb)

I can't find the original article in which I saw it stated that PC has a lower mutational burden but the above might be sufficient.

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#97

Post by mjsabby »

chrisamiller wrote: post #30
mentos wrote: post #25

Early 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?

Money is absolutely an object. People are starting to do trials of early detection from circulating tumor DNA, and finding that the hit rate is alarmingly high. A decent portion of the population has some kind of malignancy, but most of these will either be cleared by the immune system, or be completely benign. Another problem is, if we detect this tumor DNA, it doesn't tell us where in the body the tumor might be. S…

Lots of clinics in Vancouver BC fully body MRI scans that are not super expensive. I really do think we should just make MRIs cheap and then get the whole world to do them.

I understand the cost, time, etc. but I still think if we can stop doing other useless stuff as humanity and do this it would be net positive.

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#98

Post by mromanuk »

borbulon wrote: post #18
nyx wrote: post #2

It 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…

What are your thoughts on Dr. Seyfried and cancer as a metabolic disease?

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#99

Post by clokar »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #71
bnjemian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be too pessimistic, but 600,000 people died of cancer in 2019, so 20-30 years is hardly "round the corner" when you extrapolate to the, let's say conservatively, 10 million families in the US losing loved ones in that time period. The history of cancer (The Emperor of All Maladies is a good book covering the history) is full of promising adjuvants, drugs, protocols that fail to generalize well. There are a lot…

My Dad is currently battling a GBM. Do you have any advice for a web dev who wants to get his toe in the door of understanding the computational biology of gliomas? I don't expect I'll be able to do much, but all of the treatments we've undertaken so far seem very dated (not able to resect, one round of radiation, temodar+avastin for the last year, just switched to CCNU+avastin). I'd love to know where the state of t…

Have you tried blood/tissue based comprehensive genomic profiling testing ? This might help understand the genomic determinants of the tumor, possibly helping the treating physician make an informed decision on treatment choice.

Re: A Universal Cancer Treatment?

#100

Post by clokar »

harmmonica wrote: post #16
nyx wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

Not sure about lung cancer, but there's positive results in other cancers for earlier immunotherapy !

https://oncologypro.esmo.org/meeting-resources/esmo-congress...

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