9 ms·

From the article: "Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders dis

by 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).
AlfaWolph 15y ago
Sounds like there is room for some creative approaches funded by entrepreneurs in this area just as has been happening in space exploration.
mortenjorck 15y ago
The article doesn't touch on one aspect of the research likely to have been particularly unpalatable to pharmaceutical companies: Potential cures are bad business. Of course, there is no conspiracy here. It's just the human tendency to rationalize when money is involved. Imagine you run a pharmaceutical company: Your products save lives, right? You want to be able to continue saving lives, so you have to stay profitable. And to stay profitable, you have to make good investments. Products that are used in long-term treatments are good investments. One-time cures aren't.
- derobert 15y ago
  Quick research tells me that there ar about 45,000 cases of leukemia in the US per year. Equally quick research tells me traditional treatment easily comes to $400k, and comes with terrible side effects. So, if you had a fairly reliable (at achieving remission) injection, and especially one without the terrible side effects, you should be able to charge at least $400k. Please inform me which pharmaceutical company would not like an $18 billion/year revenue stream.
- curt 15y ago
  Wrong mind set, they could easily charge 100k+ for the treatment and insurance companies would still jump for joy since it's cheaper over the long run.
  - djb_hackernews 15y ago
    Not really a great deal if 20 years of therapeutic treatments would bring in more than that 100k for the "one time" cure. Also not advocating there is some conspiracy going on here.
    - huhtenberg 15y ago
      offtopic -- just curious, are you http://cr.yp.to/djb.html http://cr.yp.to/djb.html or somebody else?
    - Symmetry 15y ago
curt 15y ago
This is what I wanted to do and the exact reason why I left the biotech industry. They don't like crazy ideas.
DennisP 15y ago
Several years ago I read an article in Fortune about cancer research. Government funding is extremely conservative. They're happy to pay you to nail down another tiny detail about some kind of cancer, but try an innovative cure and they balk. They also take three years to get the money to you, by which time your research might be obsolete. When Michael Milken got out of prison, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and started a foundation to fight it. He asked researchers for the crazy ideas they really wanted to work on, and got the money to them in three months. In return, he insisted researchers immediately share what they learned. No patents, no waiting for prestigious publication. According to Fortune, people in the field generally credit Milken's foundation with cutting prostate cancer death rates in half. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/11/29/8192713/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/...
- bh42222 15y ago
  According to Fortune, people in the field generally credit Milken's foundation with cutting prostate cancer death rates in half. If this is true, it's crime we have not reproduced Milken's strategy for all deadly diseases.
  - Iv 15y ago
    "Criminal" is a good qualifier for the way most medical research decision are done. I was once told, out of the blue, by a commercial in the field, that research for a HIV cure was a very low priority given how profitable the tritherapy was.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  I've probably got him to thank for still having a stepfather - he was just treated for prostate cancer and it seems to be working. (In his case, they put tiny radioactive beads into the tumor to kill it over six months, which is really pretty damned awesome.)
ristretto 15y ago
On the other hand, as research tools are becoming more affordable to smaller institutions and universities, we may witness a shift from big pharma to smaller and more focused independent research.
JunkDNA 15y ago
The problem here is one of sampling bias. You're seeing an example of one "outside the box" idea that worked out of thousands that didn't. The NIH and pharmas are constantly getting pitched on (and funding) ideas for innovative new therapies. The problem is that cancer therapies under development fail at a rate >95% in the clinic. Therefore, most new approaches to cancer treatment turn out to be abject failures. The fact that funding agencies and pharmas passed on this specific one isn't surprising. They just can't fund everything. The good news is, these guys should have no trouble getting funding now.
- klenwell 15y ago
  This is an important point. Medical innovation can be perilous. I'm reminded of the setbacks for gene therapy in the 1990s. The case of Jesse Gelsinger was emblematic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger Speaking of radical therapies, this also reminded me of this New Yorker article I read years ago: http://www.michaelspecter.com/2001/02/the-outlaw-doctor/ http://www.michaelspecter.com/2001/02/the-outlaw-doctor/ Every time I recall this, I mean to lookup whatever became of this guy. Finally did. A bit of a follow-up here: A test of his protocol, published in 2009, found that Gonzalez's patients died faster than those treated with conventional chemotherapy, and had significantly worse quality of life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Gonzalez_%28physician%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Gonzalez_%28physician%...
- JunkDNA 15y ago
  Just to update this since there was so much interest, I looked into the literature a bit more closely. First off, at the end of the article it says "Supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (K24 CA11787901, 1PN2-EY016586, and R01CA120409), the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (7000-02)." So the funding system was working as expected. It also looks like people have been trying this for a long time and for various reasons it has actually not worked very well. This paper is noteworthy not because they used the HIV modified T-cells. It's noteworthy because people have been banging their heads against this specific brick wall for a long time and coming up empty-handed. The key innovation appears to be the addition of extra machinery that made the T-cells more potent and also the ability for the T-cells to hang around and expand in the patient. Also, to give people a sense of how much time something like this takes. This specific viral mechanism was tested by the same group in mice first and published in August of 2009 (open access: http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/v17/n8/full/mt200983a.html http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/v17/n8/full/mt200983a.html)
WalterBright 15y ago
Breakthroughs usually come from unexpected sources that are not in the mainstream thought. Mainstream funding will only fund mainstream thought.

by iqster 15y ago

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).

AlfaWolph 15y ago

Sounds like there is room for some creative approaches funded by entrepreneurs in this area just as has been happening in space exploration.

mortenjorck 15y ago

The article doesn't touch on one aspect of the research likely to have been particularly unpalatable to pharmaceutical companies: Potential cures are bad business. Of course, there is no conspiracy here. It's just the human tendency to rationalize when money is involved. Imagine you run a pharmaceutical company: Your products save lives, right? You want to be able to continue saving lives, so you have to stay profitable. And to stay profitable, you have to make good investments. Products that are used in long-term treatments are good investments. One-time cures aren't.

derobert 15y ago
Quick research tells me that there ar about 45,000 cases of leukemia in the US per year. Equally quick research tells me traditional treatment easily comes to $400k, and comes with terrible side effects. So, if you had a fairly reliable (at achieving remission) injection, and especially one without the terrible side effects, you should be able to charge at least $400k. Please inform me which pharmaceutical company would not like an $18 billion/year revenue stream.
curt 15y ago
Wrong mind set, they could easily charge 100k+ for the treatment and insurance companies would still jump for joy since it's cheaper over the long run.
- djb_hackernews 15y ago
  Not really a great deal if 20 years of therapeutic treatments would bring in more than that 100k for the "one time" cure. Also not advocating there is some conspiracy going on here.
  - huhtenberg 15y ago
    offtopic -- just curious, are you http://cr.yp.to/djb.html http://cr.yp.to/djb.html or somebody else?
  - Symmetry 15y ago

curt 15y ago

This is what I wanted to do and the exact reason why I left the biotech industry. They don't like crazy ideas.

DennisP 15y ago

Several years ago I read an article in Fortune about cancer research. Government funding is extremely conservative. They're happy to pay you to nail down another tiny detail about some kind of cancer, but try an innovative cure and they balk. They also take three years to get the money to you, by which time your research might be obsolete. When Michael Milken got out of prison, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and started a foundation to fight it. He asked researchers for the crazy ideas they really wanted to work on, and got the money to them in three months. In return, he insisted researchers immediately share what they learned. No patents, no waiting for prestigious publication. According to Fortune, people in the field generally credit Milken's foundation with cutting prostate cancer death rates in half. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/11/29/8192713/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/...

bh42222 15y ago
According to Fortune, people in the field generally credit Milken's foundation with cutting prostate cancer death rates in half. If this is true, it's crime we have not reproduced Milken's strategy for all deadly diseases.
- Iv 15y ago
  "Criminal" is a good qualifier for the way most medical research decision are done. I was once told, out of the blue, by a commercial in the field, that research for a HIV cure was a very low priority given how profitable the tritherapy was.
Vivtek 15y ago
I've probably got him to thank for still having a stepfather - he was just treated for prostate cancer and it seems to be working. (In his case, they put tiny radioactive beads into the tumor to kill it over six months, which is really pretty damned awesome.)

ristretto 15y ago

On the other hand, as research tools are becoming more affordable to smaller institutions and universities, we may witness a shift from big pharma to smaller and more focused independent research.

JunkDNA 15y ago

The problem here is one of sampling bias. You're seeing an example of one "outside the box" idea that worked out of thousands that didn't. The NIH and pharmas are constantly getting pitched on (and funding) ideas for innovative new therapies. The problem is that cancer therapies under development fail at a rate >95% in the clinic. Therefore, most new approaches to cancer treatment turn out to be abject failures. The fact that funding agencies and pharmas passed on this specific one isn't surprising. They just can't fund everything. The good news is, these guys should have no trouble getting funding now.

klenwell 15y ago
This is an important point. Medical innovation can be perilous. I'm reminded of the setbacks for gene therapy in the 1990s. The case of Jesse Gelsinger was emblematic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger Speaking of radical therapies, this also reminded me of this New Yorker article I read years ago: http://www.michaelspecter.com/2001/02/the-outlaw-doctor/ http://www.michaelspecter.com/2001/02/the-outlaw-doctor/ Every time I recall this, I mean to lookup whatever became of this guy. Finally did. A bit of a follow-up here: A test of his protocol, published in 2009, found that Gonzalez's patients died faster than those treated with conventional chemotherapy, and had significantly worse quality of life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Gonzalez_%28physician%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Gonzalez_%28physician%...
JunkDNA 15y ago
Just to update this since there was so much interest, I looked into the literature a bit more closely. First off, at the end of the article it says "Supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (K24 CA11787901, 1PN2-EY016586, and R01CA120409), the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (7000-02)." So the funding system was working as expected. It also looks like people have been trying this for a long time and for various reasons it has actually not worked very well. This paper is noteworthy not because they used the HIV modified T-cells. It's noteworthy because people have been banging their heads against this specific brick wall for a long time and coming up empty-handed. The key innovation appears to be the addition of extra machinery that made the T-cells more potent and also the ability for the T-cells to hang around and expand in the patient. Also, to give people a sense of how much time something like this takes. This specific viral mechanism was tested by the same group in mice first and published in August of 2009 (open access: http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/v17/n8/full/mt200983a.html http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/v17/n8/full/mt200983a.html)

WalterBright 15y ago

Breakthroughs usually come from unexpected sources that are not in the mainstream thought. Mainstream funding will only fund mainstream thought.