4 ms·

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 a

by 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)

by JunkDNA 15y ago

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)