4 ms·
The described strategies in this article are still a matter of working where the light is shining, not where it would be most effective. This is an age of genom
by reasonattlm 10y ago
The described strategies in this article are still a matter of working where the light is shining, not where it would be most effective. This is an age of genomics, genomics is popular and widely appreciated, and it is thus easy to raise funding for genomic work. Therefore people are trying to build personalized and per-cancer methods based on specific genes. The ability to raise funding for work is far more of a determinant of direction taken than expectation of quality of results, sadly.
So this is just an incremental update of the old strategy of trying to find a better chemotherapeutic for each cancer. It isn't going to work fast enough and well enough. There are not enough researchers and isn't enough funding to tackle every one of the hundreds of cancers and their subtypes in any reasonable about of time via the one project per cancer approach.
The only viable approach to a sweeping cure for cancer is to identify commonalities shared by very large fractions of all cancers. The chimeric antigen receptor strategies are a step in this direction, producing a technology base that has a much lower cost of adaptation to each new cancer in the class that they can target, rather than needing a whole new project from scratch. But is only a modest step.
The best way forward appears to me to be blockade of telomere extension: sabotaging telomerase [1] and alternative lengthening of telomeres [2], a small collection of mechanisms. If developed, it can be applied to all cancers, as all cancers depend absolutely on telomere lengthening. They can't evolve their way around it, as is the case for many existing methods of targeting particular mechanisms in a type of cancer. It is too fundamental a part of cellular biology. Blockade of telomere lengthening would be absolutely and determinedly the full stop at the end of all cancers - and would cost no more to develop than any one or two existing therapies that can treat only one subtype of cancer.
[1]: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/usmc-rtt123114.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/usmc-rtt1231...
[2]: https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-control-alt-delete-cancer/ https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-control-alt-delete-ca...
- zaptheimpaler 10y ago>There are not enough researchers and isn't enough funding to tackle every one of the hundreds of cancers and their subtypes in any reasonable about of time via the one project per cancer approach. Its partly the way the problem is framed. Perhaps we wrongly assumed that cancer is one disease with a distinct root cause / cure purely based on similarities in symptoms. If so, talking of "curing cancer" is like "curing inflammation" - its much too general a symptom to cure, even though doctors are able to treat many cases of it by narrowing down the cause of inflammation, or treat it partially etc. Maybe cancer will be cured piecewise over the years rather than all at once, and people will laugh at how humanity thought there was a disease called cancer.
- sharun 10y agoAgree. I think of cancer as the consequences of "bugs in our code". Saying we are going to cure cancer is on par with saying we are going to produce bug free software. That said having spent time around cancer hospitals, things have vastly improved over the last decade or so not just in survival rates, but quality of life post treatment.
- ThomPete 10y agoSo how would something like a melanoma be explained?
- zaptheimpaler 10y agoI dont understand - melanoma (or any other type of cancer) would be explained just as it is currently explained by medicine (i am not an expert), i am only saying its possible that the cause of melanoma is different enough from the cause of lung cancer that they might not deserve to be grouped under the same name. In which case, we would not expect a single cure to be effective for both. Its a weird semantic point admittedly..
- ThomPete 10y agoWell cell change is the shared grouping no? I am seriously asking
- zaptheimpaler 10y agoI have no idea, im not a doctor. Based on pop-sci articles, i think the idea is that a cell mutates to have DNA that makes it harmful to you. But this cell is part of your body, so it gets nutrients from the body and divides like any other cell, propagating its harmful DNA.
- ljw1001 10y agoI am told at work (I work in the cancer-medicine field but am no expert) that there are upwards of 1,000 distinct targeted cancer therapies in various stages of R&D at present. They could certainly (and likely will) make a big dent
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]