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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

#91

Post by [deleted] »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #53
kybernetikos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Derek Lowe had a similar take: "AOH1996 is a very unremarkable-looking molecule - to be honest, it looks like the sort of stuff that you used to see in old combinatorial chemistry libraries in the late 90s and early 2000s, a couple of aryl-rich groups strung together with amide bonds." https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-mode-cancer-tr...

A key sentence: “I hope that human cancers will prove vulnerable to this new mode of attack in the clinic, and that they are not able to mutate around it with new forms of caPCNA too quickly, either.” Even if this does prove effective in humans, eventually cancer cell defenses will evolve to get around it.

[deleted]

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#92

Post by mrguyorama »

ncann wrote: post #59
isoprophlex wrote: post #12

https://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 concern isn't about killing people already dying of cancer, but rather allowing literal snake oil salesmen to target people dying of cancer and ready to extract all possible wealth from dying people.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#93

Post by hirvi74 »

hidelooktropic wrote: post #85
adamredwoods wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IN ANIMALS (mice and dogs)

And?

Well, it doesn't mean it will 1:1 map to humans. We have observed promising treatments for Alzheimer's-like conditions in mice multiple times, but alas, we have very little for humans still.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#94

Post by mabbo »

adamredwoods wrote: post #79

Please 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.…

Derek Lowe's take is, as usual, reasonable and factual. And even he is really optimistic and happy about this result!

We need some good news these days.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#95

Post by mrguyorama »

zer8k wrote: post #36

Given the importance of this medication and it's promising initial data I have no idea why it's not given "warp speed" clearance. We cleared mRNA technology almost overnight in response to the pandemic. I feel like society as a whole has collective amnesia on how this happened. A relatively novel strategy to rapidly produce a vaccine in response to a pandemic was trialed essentially on a global scale. The phase 1/2/3…

The reason is that the PR department of most bio labs say they have cured cancer every other week.

We have MOUNTAINS of things that stop cancer in mice and sometimes other animals, that don't or won't pan out.

The superconducting results are much closer to if this paper was a small scale human study. Then you would likely see the same kind of "open all the floodgates" ramp up of effort.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#96

Post by mrguyorama »

pastor_bob wrote: post #69

The patent appears to belong to City of Hope[0], a non-profit cancer hospital. Conspiracy idea: such a simple drug is not what Big Pharma wants, thus was never investigated. Hopefully, if effective, it's affordable for people worldwide. [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2017049206A1/en

That kind of conspiracy has never held water. Pharma makes bank off of cheap and simple drugs.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#97

Post by mrguyorama »

amluto wrote: post #46
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1217/

I admit I’ve never been convinced that a handgun would be especially effective. I would certainly not expect a bullet to make a dish full of airborne pathogenic bacteria or viruses safe.

Well the comic is about cancer cells....

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#98

Post by mrguyorama »

megaman821 wrote: post #88
arcticbull wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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 a…

I get your point, but these medicines are all bought by insurance companies for some negotiated price they don't disclose. According to GoodRX a Medicare patient will pay between $42-$198 for thalidomide.

Which is still absurd for something that recouped all the R&D decades ago and costs a penny to manufacture.

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#99

Post by jjtheblunt »

thebradbain wrote: post #84
jjtheblunt wrote: post #15

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.

Suppressing tumor growth is how you kill cancer, is it not? Cancer cells themselves, like the original cells they mutate from, don't live forever. Depending on which type of cell we're talking about, they can die within hours (e.g. skin cells)/days (e.g. blood cells)/months (e.g. liver cells). The issue with cancer cells is they are reproducing like crazy way faster than they die, which is why the tumors grow bigger…

suppressing growth does not equate to 100% regression.

the growth rate could be suppressed to match the attrition rate and turn into a steady state, rather than eradication of the mutant cell lines (and their progeny).

Re: Oral cancer drug kills 100% of tumors in vitro and in animal models

#100

Post by overnight5349 »

mbreese wrote: post #60
isoprophlex wrote: post #39

Earlier 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…

Hold up, we've identified a mechanism that all cancer cells posses and healthy cells don't? That's almost unbelievable.

I wonder how something like that comes about? Is there something special about that isoform that is necessary for tumor growth or what?

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