10 ms·

New leukemia treatment "exceeded our wildest expectations"

289 points by xd 15y ago

ComputerGuru 15y ago
Original New England Journal of Medicine paper on this subject: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849
spottiness 15y ago
I voted up your posting, but please use the original title "New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations'". The HIV part is pretty irrelevant.
- xd 15y ago
  Makes sense. Changed.
- ryanisinallofus 15y ago
  To me the use of a harmless, modified HIV was the most interesting part.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Me too, I'd like to know whether a consensus exists that this HIV is harmless or whether it's just these researchers' opinions.
    - xd 15y ago
      The HIV is used to modify white blood cells .. so I'd wager harmless as they are not putting the HIV into the patient. This is why I changed the title after a little nudge, to avoid people getting the wrong end of the stick.
    - jforman 15y ago
      I haven't studied the details of the vector they used, but as a general comment HIV is a very well-understood virus, so removing its potential to infect a human should be easy to do in theory. Practice is another matter, since molecular biology is quite messy.
  - scarmig 15y ago
    Thing is, even if the HIV were as deadly as regular HIV, it'd likely give them a longer lifespan than they'd have without it.
    - epochwolf 15y ago
      At the risk of infecting someone else?
      - scarmig 15y ago
        Of course, it'd create that risk. You can expect to live for a decade or two at more or less your current lifestyle until near the very end, while with aggressive forms of cancer we're talking more about months of extreme pain and suffering. If you (a) use protection and (b) are taking medicine as prescribed, however, even the risk of infecting someone else isn't that high. Your viral load remains very low; I remember a study in Switzerland that suggested that two HIV-discordant monogamous partners engaging in anal sex aren't at significant risk of seroconversion even without a condom, if the HIV-positive partner uses his drugs at prescribed and there aren't compounding factors like STDs. Which isn't to say it's a good idea. It's definitely a trade I'd make in a second, though. Then again, I've seen people waste away from leukemia and not from AIDS, so my perspective is admittedly skewed. Edited to add: that study is most definitely not a license to have unprotected sex with someone who has HIV. Just to be clear.
  - VladRussian 15y ago
    the Nature has perfected the viruses as effective delivery system of genetic material ("DNA patches") into cells. We just need to produce correctly working "patches". Another example: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/smnrescue.htm http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/smnrescue.htm
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
iqster 15y ago
From the article: "Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration." The keywords are "experiment was too novel, and thus, too risky for consideration". Unfortunately, this seems to have become the rule rather than the exception in scientific research. All the young folks (pre-tenure) are on a treadmill to get funding and publish something in the top journals/conferences. I wish there was some accountability in the system ... the geniuses who rejected funding this research will go about completely unaffected.
- msie 15y ago
  NYTimes article on the sad state of National Cancer Institute funding: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.h...
- Alex3917 15y ago
  The entire pharmaceutical industry is basically going to collapse by the end of 2014 anyway, so it's largely irrelevant. There will be much less funding for everything no matter how promising it is, unless the government steps in and reinvents the entire process. Seems unlikely at this point though: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/07drug.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/07drug.html?_r=1
- jobu 15y ago
  My guess is they balked when the researchers decided to use a modified HIV virus to implant the new genes. If it went badly everyone would point to the HIV and the bad press could be devastating. Thankfully these researchers were able to take some big risks and prove out the theory in a fairly successful trial.
  - jdkoeck 15y ago
    HIV is used to insert the genes into the white cells in-vitro. They are not inserted in the patient. So I guess the risk of HIV infection is quite small (how small, I have no idea).
justinph 15y ago
As someone with a genetic disorder, this type of gene therapy is really amazing to read about.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  What is masked by some of the hoopla around cancer is exactly this, gene therapy is advancing, and it can rewrite your DNA in-situ. This meets pretty much every definition of the term 'game changing' from atheletes who want the Sherpa gene for making more red blood cells to a host of genetic disorders that lead to a myriad of complications in the patients life. Some resarch has been marred by some very serious negative outcomes [1] but if it can be mastered, the world will not be the same, for any of us. [1] http://www.medpagetoday.com/Genetics/GeneralGenetics/6275 http://www.medpagetoday.com/Genetics/GeneralGenetics/6275
  - cal5k 15y ago
    Here's what I don't get about your hypothesis... very rarely is there a single gene for specific trait in humans, right? Usually it's a combination of genes, and often the trait produced is the effect of their impact on embryology. So wouldn't it be impossible (and possibly extremely dangerous) to attempt to change many traits by performing in-situ DNA rewrites?
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - ChuckMcM 15y ago
      Yes, it would be extremely dangerous. As I understand the current research, its focussed on 'fixing' problems where one link of the chain is broken. So when a specific set of enzymes are missing (think lactose intolerance) or immunodeficiencies. Wholesale rewriting chunks of DNA would, as far as I can tell, likely kill the patient. That being said, the potential gain for some to have larger changes to their DNA will no doubt compel someone to try it. A biologist that gave a tech talk at Google on the technology said he had received calls from althetic trainers asking about how his work might be applied to other areas. He was convinced that there was already some efforts at using gene therapy to 'improve' some athletes capabilities.
testcock1 15y ago
One thing I was left wondering about and maybe someone here can shed some more light on this, what happens to the supposedly enormous amount of "serial killer" white blood cells after they're done with the cancer cells? Do they function normally, until a new "infection" comes, basically serving as a permanent leukemia antidote? (I hope no one is offended by my quite flimsy grasp of medicine and the human body)
- camtarn 15y ago
  According to this article: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/hiv-virus-used-to-turn-white-blood-cells-into-cancer-serial-killers-20110811/ http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/hiv-virus-used-to-tur... "More good news stems from the fact that the modified cells remain in the body and have been seen to reactivate and kill new cancer cells as long as 12 months after they were first injected." Incredible stuff :)
  - orblivion 15y ago
    It almost sounds like a cancer vaccine.
- edave 15y ago
  According to the New England Journal of Medicine article, those white blood cells are still targeting and killing the B-cells. From my (non-biologist) reading of the article, they crafted a virus which targeted all B-cell, of which, some were lukemia. Apparently there are treatments to restore B-cells in a person, so the article seemed to imply once the T-cell count (the "serial killer" white blood cells) went down, they would treat him to restore his normal B-cell count. Like you, I'm unclear on what exactly the side-effects are here. If they boost the B-cell count in the patient, do they risk re-introducing lukemia? Are these "serial killer" white blood cells a general immunosupressant? There was a part of the article about a developed resistance in the B-cells that I didn't understand. Either way pretty amazing, and it sounds like while the patient had the worst flu of his life for five days, it's way better than chemo
yxhuvud 15y ago
© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints Ok, so what has happened after the article was printed the first time? EDIT: ok, looks like it was just an error by msnbc. It does seem fresh: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_GENE_THERAPY_LEUKEMIA?SITE=NYWNE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_GENE_THERAPY_L...
curt 15y ago
Came up with an idea (edit: wrote in generalization, took to much credit, sorry, didn't want to bore everyone with details) 10 years ago, everybody thought I was crazy for wanting to inject HIV into people. The idea I had was to treat the human immune system like a computers anti-virus software and upload treatments using the HIV virus. Didn't think the FDA would even allow something like this for at least another decade. Really believe HIV is the key to ending disease in humans, even possibly aging. Wonder how they handled its affinity for mutation? That was the big hurtle. EDIT: xd corrected me. They did it in vitro. Which explains how they got around the FDA.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  This is how zombie movies start.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Zombie movies have also started with re-entering spacecraft and teenage experimentation with the occult. Don't think much of it.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      Fair enough, but at least one person thinks that it could destroy neural ganglia in those who have the herpes virus: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/jekip/new_drug_could_cure_nearly_any_viral_infection/c2bgfes http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/jekip/new_drug_coul... Granted, the odds of this translating to a plague of aggressive carnivores rather than dead quadraplegics are low, but if I were a novelist, I'd sequester myself in the attic and bang out a best-seller.
      - treeface 15y ago
        You appear to be confused. They're not talking about the cancer-destroying t-cells, they're talking about the DRACOs drug suite to kill viruses. Two totally different stories.
- 15y ago
hunterp 15y ago
Most cancers are due to diet. Most rich countries have the worst diets that include processed foods. Most poor countries lack processed foods and industrialized agriculture. But whatever, with all this money you need doctors to create anti-biotics to keep industrialized agriculture "functional" and anti-cancer drugs to cure diseases that only exist due to money in the first place. Honestly, I think its a crock, instead of staring at computer screens and microscopes all day, these scientists could be planting gardens and cooking healthier meals and would probably save more people. But hey...we're rich, and rich people need expensive hobbies and degrees! This map for leukemia correlates clearly rich vs. poor: http://64.19.142.13/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Leukaemia_world_map_-_Death_-_WHO2004.svg/2000px-Leukaemia_world_map_-_Death_-_WHO2004.svg.png http://64.19.142.13/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/t...
ck2 15y ago
So this means it will be $10k a shot in the USA and $500 everywhere else until India clones it?
- oxtopus 15y ago
  $10K? A bargain if you ask me. Especially considering the current cost of Leukemia treatment.
  - ck2 15y ago
    So if you cannot afford the $10k you should just die quietly?
- tomjen3 15y ago
  So? It is better, cheaper and safer than the alternative. 10k is an absolute bargin. But yeah, lots of politicians will complain.
badhairday 15y ago
Wasn't UPenn banned from receiving federal funding for gene therapy research after the whole Jesse Gelsinger controversy in the late 90s? How did they receive funding for this? Also, 3 patients isn't statistically significant. Having this in the national media is going to cause mass confusion in the general public. There needs to be many more studies on this therapy before it's actually used as a treatment.
- ellyagg 15y ago
  Actually, statistical significance has a definition. Not to be snide, but you should look it up before commenting.
  - badhairday 15y ago
    For this particular study the numbers are fantastic, but there is no indication that this therapy will actually cure any other CLL patients. Just last year the NCI estimated there would be 15,000 CLL new patients. A favorable result with just 3 patients isn't a big enough percentage to call this new treatment anything but experimental. However, that wasn't my original point. This therapy is obviously at a very early stage. Headlines like this in the lay media are extremely misleading to the general public, because a majority of people will not take the time to read or understand the entirety of the article.
yaix 15y ago
>> ...several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Great! No greedy corporation to patent it and sell off the method at overpriced rates.
jcfrei 15y ago
has this method of cancer fighting been only applied to leukemia patients or could it work for other types of cancer as well? since T-cells reach almost every part of the body, couldn't they be reprogrammed to kill some other cells apart from carcinogenic white blood cells?
earl 15y ago
Wow, that's amazing. I hope the results hold up. My father died of type 2 non hodkins lymphoma in 1997 when I was 17; he was sick for 4 years from two rounds of lymphoma, plus a marrow transplant. Every time I read about advances like this I feel bad about wasting my life building better advertising instead of doing biomed. I just wish biomed paid better wages -- I much more than doubled my income by leaving a wetlab and doing advertising instead. It's a lesson in what our society really values. And now I feel like Steve Yegge.
- Iv 15y ago
  You can help by working in biomed or by giving them money. In your situation the obvious choice is not to change career.
- tapp 15y ago
  > I just wish biomed paid better wages -- I much more than doubled my income by leaving a wetlab and doing advertising instead. It's a lesson in what our society really values. This bothers me greatly. I don't want to threadjack, but are any HN'ers aware of discussion elsewhere about what concerned members of society who do value biomed progress more strongly than most, but who don't have Milken-level money might be able to do to promote faster progress? I'd be very interested in exploring how YC-like entrepreneurial energy could be unleashed on improving human health, and would be willing to chip in.
  - reasonattlm 15y ago
    The short term solution is venture philanthropy, something that Peter Thiel has spoken on recently: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/peter-thiel-encourages-radical-philanthropy.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/peter-thiel-encou... In short big philanthropy needs a component that looks a lot like the venture capital industry, and doesn't currently have it. Lots of smaller, big risk, potentially game changing bets rather than stultifying into safe big-budget, incremental institutional irrelevance. In this case, for example, this research was rescued from years further of oblivion by a funding source that was willing to take a risk. Much thinking has taken place on this. You might look at some of Aubrey de Grey's early publications on the triangular log jam for example: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/06/the-curious-case-of-the-catatonic-biogerontologists.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/06/the-curious-case-...
rokhayakebe 15y ago
In each of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away I always thought the entire cancerous tissue would be no more than 1/8 pound.
gojomo 15y ago
I am hopeful but also reminded of the opening of 'I am Legend': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aouT6EMJh8#t=00m21s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aouT6EMJh8#t=00m21s (The distracting leading quote and music has been added by the uploader... but I can't find an alternate clip of this set-up scene that also includes the important cut to 'three years later' at the end.)
sweetchar 15y ago
This is definitely promising!
Vadoff 15y ago
I love how they didn't get any funding. If the government stopped wasting it's money by funding a needless war, and actually put that money to good use in research and education... maybe America could be a leader in innovation once more.
kingkawn 15y ago
Great outcomes for those patients, but it has to go >3 patients, and survival >5 years before people get worked up. This is a difficult disease and people will get hyped up quickly.

289 points by xd 15y ago

Original New England Journal of Medicine paper on this subject: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849

spottiness 15y ago

I voted up your posting, but please use the original title "New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations'". The HIV part is pretty irrelevant.

xd 15y ago
Makes sense. Changed.
ryanisinallofus 15y ago
To me the use of a harmless, modified HIV was the most interesting part.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Me too, I'd like to know whether a consensus exists that this HIV is harmless or whether it's just these researchers' opinions.
  - xd 15y ago
    The HIV is used to modify white blood cells .. so I'd wager harmless as they are not putting the HIV into the patient. This is why I changed the title after a little nudge, to avoid people getting the wrong end of the stick.
  - jforman 15y ago
    I haven't studied the details of the vector they used, but as a general comment HIV is a very well-understood virus, so removing its potential to infect a human should be easy to do in theory. Practice is another matter, since molecular biology is quite messy.
- scarmig 15y ago
  Thing is, even if the HIV were as deadly as regular HIV, it'd likely give them a longer lifespan than they'd have without it.
  - epochwolf 15y ago
    At the risk of infecting someone else?
    - scarmig 15y ago
      Of course, it'd create that risk. You can expect to live for a decade or two at more or less your current lifestyle until near the very end, while with aggressive forms of cancer we're talking more about months of extreme pain and suffering. If you (a) use protection and (b) are taking medicine as prescribed, however, even the risk of infecting someone else isn't that high. Your viral load remains very low; I remember a study in Switzerland that suggested that two HIV-discordant monogamous partners engaging in anal sex aren't at significant risk of seroconversion even without a condom, if the HIV-positive partner uses his drugs at prescribed and there aren't compounding factors like STDs. Which isn't to say it's a good idea. It's definitely a trade I'd make in a second, though. Then again, I've seen people waste away from leukemia and not from AIDS, so my perspective is admittedly skewed. Edited to add: that study is most definitely not a license to have unprotected sex with someone who has HIV. Just to be clear.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  the Nature has perfected the viruses as effective delivery system of genetic material ("DNA patches") into cells. We just need to produce correctly working "patches". Another example: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/smnrescue.htm http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/smnrescue.htm
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

iqster 15y ago

From the article: "Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration." The keywords are "experiment was too novel, and thus, too risky for consideration". Unfortunately, this seems to have become the rule rather than the exception in scientific research. All the young folks (pre-tenure) are on a treadmill to get funding and publish something in the top journals/conferences. I wish there was some accountability in the system ... the geniuses who rejected funding this research will go about completely unaffected.

msie 15y ago
NYTimes article on the sad state of National Cancer Institute funding: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.h...
Alex3917 15y ago
The entire pharmaceutical industry is basically going to collapse by the end of 2014 anyway, so it's largely irrelevant. There will be much less funding for everything no matter how promising it is, unless the government steps in and reinvents the entire process. Seems unlikely at this point though: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/07drug.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/07drug.html?_r=1
jobu 15y ago
My guess is they balked when the researchers decided to use a modified HIV virus to implant the new genes. If it went badly everyone would point to the HIV and the bad press could be devastating. Thankfully these researchers were able to take some big risks and prove out the theory in a fairly successful trial.
- jdkoeck 15y ago
  HIV is used to insert the genes into the white cells in-vitro. They are not inserted in the patient. So I guess the risk of HIV infection is quite small (how small, I have no idea).

justinph 15y ago

As someone with a genetic disorder, this type of gene therapy is really amazing to read about.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
What is masked by some of the hoopla around cancer is exactly this, gene therapy is advancing, and it can rewrite your DNA in-situ. This meets pretty much every definition of the term 'game changing' from atheletes who want the Sherpa gene for making more red blood cells to a host of genetic disorders that lead to a myriad of complications in the patients life. Some resarch has been marred by some very serious negative outcomes [1] but if it can be mastered, the world will not be the same, for any of us. [1] http://www.medpagetoday.com/Genetics/GeneralGenetics/6275 http://www.medpagetoday.com/Genetics/GeneralGenetics/6275
- cal5k 15y ago
  Here's what I don't get about your hypothesis... very rarely is there a single gene for specific trait in humans, right? Usually it's a combination of genes, and often the trait produced is the effect of their impact on embryology. So wouldn't it be impossible (and possibly extremely dangerous) to attempt to change many traits by performing in-situ DNA rewrites?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Yes, it would be extremely dangerous. As I understand the current research, its focussed on 'fixing' problems where one link of the chain is broken. So when a specific set of enzymes are missing (think lactose intolerance) or immunodeficiencies. Wholesale rewriting chunks of DNA would, as far as I can tell, likely kill the patient. That being said, the potential gain for some to have larger changes to their DNA will no doubt compel someone to try it. A biologist that gave a tech talk at Google on the technology said he had received calls from althetic trainers asking about how his work might be applied to other areas. He was convinced that there was already some efforts at using gene therapy to 'improve' some athletes capabilities.

testcock1 15y ago

One thing I was left wondering about and maybe someone here can shed some more light on this, what happens to the supposedly enormous amount of "serial killer" white blood cells after they're done with the cancer cells? Do they function normally, until a new "infection" comes, basically serving as a permanent leukemia antidote? (I hope no one is offended by my quite flimsy grasp of medicine and the human body)

camtarn 15y ago
According to this article: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/hiv-virus-used-to-turn-white-blood-cells-into-cancer-serial-killers-20110811/ http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/hiv-virus-used-to-tur... "More good news stems from the fact that the modified cells remain in the body and have been seen to reactivate and kill new cancer cells as long as 12 months after they were first injected." Incredible stuff :)
- orblivion 15y ago
  It almost sounds like a cancer vaccine.
edave 15y ago
According to the New England Journal of Medicine article, those white blood cells are still targeting and killing the B-cells. From my (non-biologist) reading of the article, they crafted a virus which targeted all B-cell, of which, some were lukemia. Apparently there are treatments to restore B-cells in a person, so the article seemed to imply once the T-cell count (the "serial killer" white blood cells) went down, they would treat him to restore his normal B-cell count. Like you, I'm unclear on what exactly the side-effects are here. If they boost the B-cell count in the patient, do they risk re-introducing lukemia? Are these "serial killer" white blood cells a general immunosupressant? There was a part of the article about a developed resistance in the B-cells that I didn't understand. Either way pretty amazing, and it sounds like while the patient had the worst flu of his life for five days, it's way better than chemo

yxhuvud 15y ago

© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints Ok, so what has happened after the article was printed the first time? EDIT: ok, looks like it was just an error by msnbc. It does seem fresh: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_GENE_THERAPY_LEUKEMIA?SITE=NYWNE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_GENE_THERAPY_L...

curt 15y ago

Came up with an idea (edit: wrote in generalization, took to much credit, sorry, didn't want to bore everyone with details) 10 years ago, everybody thought I was crazy for wanting to inject HIV into people. The idea I had was to treat the human immune system like a computers anti-virus software and upload treatments using the HIV virus. Didn't think the FDA would even allow something like this for at least another decade. Really believe HIV is the key to ending disease in humans, even possibly aging. Wonder how they handled its affinity for mutation? That was the big hurtle. EDIT: xd corrected me. They did it in vitro. Which explains how they got around the FDA.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
This is how zombie movies start.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Zombie movies have also started with re-entering spacecraft and teenage experimentation with the occult. Don't think much of it.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Fair enough, but at least one person thinks that it could destroy neural ganglia in those who have the herpes virus: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/jekip/new_drug_could_cure_nearly_any_viral_infection/c2bgfes http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/jekip/new_drug_coul... Granted, the odds of this translating to a plague of aggressive carnivores rather than dead quadraplegics are low, but if I were a novelist, I'd sequester myself in the attic and bang out a best-seller.
    - treeface 15y ago
      You appear to be confused. They're not talking about the cancer-destroying t-cells, they're talking about the DRACOs drug suite to kill viruses. Two totally different stories.
15y ago

hunterp 15y ago

Most cancers are due to diet. Most rich countries have the worst diets that include processed foods. Most poor countries lack processed foods and industrialized agriculture. But whatever, with all this money you need doctors to create anti-biotics to keep industrialized agriculture "functional" and anti-cancer drugs to cure diseases that only exist due to money in the first place. Honestly, I think its a crock, instead of staring at computer screens and microscopes all day, these scientists could be planting gardens and cooking healthier meals and would probably save more people. But hey...we're rich, and rich people need expensive hobbies and degrees! This map for leukemia correlates clearly rich vs. poor: http://64.19.142.13/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Leukaemia_world_map_-_Death_-_WHO2004.svg/2000px-Leukaemia_world_map_-_Death_-_WHO2004.svg.png http://64.19.142.13/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/t...

ck2 15y ago

So this means it will be $10k a shot in the USA and $500 everywhere else until India clones it?

oxtopus 15y ago
$10K? A bargain if you ask me. Especially considering the current cost of Leukemia treatment.
- ck2 15y ago
  So if you cannot afford the $10k you should just die quietly?
tomjen3 15y ago
So? It is better, cheaper and safer than the alternative. 10k is an absolute bargin. But yeah, lots of politicians will complain.

badhairday 15y ago

Wasn't UPenn banned from receiving federal funding for gene therapy research after the whole Jesse Gelsinger controversy in the late 90s? How did they receive funding for this? Also, 3 patients isn't statistically significant. Having this in the national media is going to cause mass confusion in the general public. There needs to be many more studies on this therapy before it's actually used as a treatment.

ellyagg 15y ago
Actually, statistical significance has a definition. Not to be snide, but you should look it up before commenting.
- badhairday 15y ago
  For this particular study the numbers are fantastic, but there is no indication that this therapy will actually cure any other CLL patients. Just last year the NCI estimated there would be 15,000 CLL new patients. A favorable result with just 3 patients isn't a big enough percentage to call this new treatment anything but experimental. However, that wasn't my original point. This therapy is obviously at a very early stage. Headlines like this in the lay media are extremely misleading to the general public, because a majority of people will not take the time to read or understand the entirety of the article.

yaix 15y ago

>> ...several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Great! No greedy corporation to patent it and sell off the method at overpriced rates.

jcfrei 15y ago

has this method of cancer fighting been only applied to leukemia patients or could it work for other types of cancer as well? since T-cells reach almost every part of the body, couldn't they be reprogrammed to kill some other cells apart from carcinogenic white blood cells?

earl 15y ago

Wow, that's amazing. I hope the results hold up. My father died of type 2 non hodkins lymphoma in 1997 when I was 17; he was sick for 4 years from two rounds of lymphoma, plus a marrow transplant. Every time I read about advances like this I feel bad about wasting my life building better advertising instead of doing biomed. I just wish biomed paid better wages -- I much more than doubled my income by leaving a wetlab and doing advertising instead. It's a lesson in what our society really values. And now I feel like Steve Yegge.

Iv 15y ago
You can help by working in biomed or by giving them money. In your situation the obvious choice is not to change career.
tapp 15y ago
> I just wish biomed paid better wages -- I much more than doubled my income by leaving a wetlab and doing advertising instead. It's a lesson in what our society really values. This bothers me greatly. I don't want to threadjack, but are any HN'ers aware of discussion elsewhere about what concerned members of society who do value biomed progress more strongly than most, but who don't have Milken-level money might be able to do to promote faster progress? I'd be very interested in exploring how YC-like entrepreneurial energy could be unleashed on improving human health, and would be willing to chip in.
- reasonattlm 15y ago
  The short term solution is venture philanthropy, something that Peter Thiel has spoken on recently: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/peter-thiel-encourages-radical-philanthropy.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/peter-thiel-encou... In short big philanthropy needs a component that looks a lot like the venture capital industry, and doesn't currently have it. Lots of smaller, big risk, potentially game changing bets rather than stultifying into safe big-budget, incremental institutional irrelevance. In this case, for example, this research was rescued from years further of oblivion by a funding source that was willing to take a risk. Much thinking has taken place on this. You might look at some of Aubrey de Grey's early publications on the triangular log jam for example: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/06/the-curious-case-of-the-catatonic-biogerontologists.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/06/the-curious-case-...

rokhayakebe 15y ago

In each of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away I always thought the entire cancerous tissue would be no more than 1/8 pound.

gojomo 15y ago

I am hopeful but also reminded of the opening of 'I am Legend': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aouT6EMJh8#t=00m21s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aouT6EMJh8#t=00m21s (The distracting leading quote and music has been added by the uploader... but I can't find an alternate clip of this set-up scene that also includes the important cut to 'three years later' at the end.)

sweetchar 15y ago

This is definitely promising!

Vadoff 15y ago

I love how they didn't get any funding. If the government stopped wasting it's money by funding a needless war, and actually put that money to good use in research and education... maybe America could be a leader in innovation once more.

kingkawn 15y ago

Great outcomes for those patients, but it has to go >3 patients, and survival >5 years before people get worked up. This is a difficult disease and people will get hyped up quickly.