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Chemotherapy drug reaches brain tumors using novel ultrasound technology
- tibu 3y agoHow much time would it take to make this available for public?
- icegreentea2 3y agoThey are running a phase 2 trial for this right now (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04528680?term=Sonabend&cond=Glioblastoma&cntry=US&draw=2&rank=1 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04528680?term=Sonaben...). It's scheduled to complete in late 2025. Phase 3 will probably be a few years past that, and then probably at least a year or two for approval. That said, the clinical trial is for the combination of a drug treatment + implantable device. The implantable device itself (Sonocloud 9) has been granted fast track status by the FDA (https://www.fusfoundation.org/posts/cartheras-sonocloud-9-system-designated-as-a-breakthrough-device/ https://www.fusfoundation.org/posts/cartheras-sonocloud-9-sy...). The fast track status should help speed up how quickly the FDA authorizes the overall treatment once clinical trials are complete. So... completely pulling a number out of my butt, probably 5-7 years.
- msie 3y agoSigh
- konschubert 3y agoRegulation is important, but it comes with a cost. Sometimes I wonder if we are erring too much on the side of slowing things down.
- mcbain 3y agoMaybe there are some efficiencies to be found, but we are talking about experimental treatments where the efficacy takes weeks to years to measure. You can't run an overnight benchmarking test. But in saying that, if a trial is showing very positive results then it can be fast tracked, as it is unethical to withhold that kind of treatment. Conversely, plenty of trials that look good in phase I/II fail in phase III and are terminated early.
- jszymborski 3y agoTo your point, as soon as enough evidence is obtained in Phase III that the drug is better than standard of care, the trial ends early and patients in the trial get switched to it. At least, that was the case in the case studies we looked at in my lectures.
- jszymborski 3y agoIt will take 2 of those 5 years just to ascertain at what levels it is safe, and then another two years to determine whether it is better than the current standard-of-care. While we're all desperate (some more than others) for a break-through in cancer treatment, it seems perfectly reasonable to demonstrate that something is both safe and better than the current standard-of-care before physicians start rolling this out to everyone affected by the brain tumours this therapy would help. I sympathize with the sentiment that delaying rolling out a therapy like this seems inhumane, it would be no less (and arguably more) inhumane to roll out a therapy where we didn't establish safe doses and effectiveness to the best of our ability. Both potentially result in deaths.
- dangwhy 3y agoYou can chose to participate in clinical trails and get it before then.
- stuaxo 3y ago4 minute procedure to get that into your skull, it looks big ?
- xattt 3y ago> lead investigator Dr. Adam Sonabend Nominative determinism strikes again.
- srcreigh 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism “Nominative determinism is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their names.”
- yieldcrv 3y agoor change their name to be on brand and disassociate from their unremarkable upbringing?
- xattt 3y agoInteresting, because a Google search doesn’t bring up his name until about 2019. I would assume the original name would be captured on a university convocation program PDF within the last decade or two.
- amelius 3y agoI often see this on news items, but at some point I realized that these names could have been semi-jokingly made up by the video editors who simply didn't have a name to put in the clip (or perhaps they used a placeholder name that never got fixed).
- ultrasounder 3y agoYup. Sam Bankman-Fried. His middle name was his chosen avocation.
- sph 3y agoHis vocation, immediately followed by his dramatic downfall.
- tyingq 3y agoThis was also featured on NPR's "All Things Considered" today, just heard it in the car. https://www.npr.org/2008/05/13/90411533/study-ultrasound-boosts-breast-cancer-detection https://www.npr.org/2008/05/13/90411533/study-ultrasound-boo...
- remote_phone 3y agoWhat is the evolutionary reason for the blood brain barrier? It’s absolutely fascinating. No other organ has this, but you would expect through randomness that it would exist outside of the brain.
- BaculumMeumEst 3y agoMany potential neurotoxins are circulating in our blood, including those from endogenous sources such as metabolites or proteins, or exogenous ones such as xenobiotics ingested in the diet or otherwise acquired from the environment. https://fluidsbarrierscns.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12987-020-00230-3 https://fluidsbarrierscns.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186... I would speculate that other areas of the body haven't developed similar protections because their structures are not as vulnerable to stuff that's floating around in your bloodstream.
- John23832 3y agoThe eyes have a similar barrier. I think the current belief is that your body wants to make sure that your T-Cells cannot accidentally nuke your brain and eyes. Those don't grow back and are vitally important, so they have to be protected from the "Nuke it from space" approach of the immune system.
- afthonos 3y agoNit: I’d rephrase to say that your body has no opinions about T-cells. But people who had proto-BBBs survived better than those who didn’t, AND T-cells would nuke the central nervous system from space.
- John23832 3y agoKiller t-cells kill other cells. That’s the mechanism of cell removal by the immune system. That’s what I meant.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
- londons_explore 3y agoI would like to see safety studies of ultrasound. It seems we use ultrasound, for example on every baby, and don't have good data to prove that there are no side effects. Yet research like this shows that there clearly are biological effects of sufficiently powerful ultrasound. What if societies lack of future Einstein's is down to blasting the brains of all of them with ultrasound pre-birth?
- CommitSyn 3y agoIt's certainly been considered and looked at. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=ultrasound+safety&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=ultr...
- rpaddock 3y agoI'm guessing that those that hang out on Hacker News don't come across too many issues of Midwifery Today? This article first appeared in 'Midwifery Today' Issue 80, Winter 2006: "Questions about Prenatal Ultrasound and the Alarming Increase in Autism" https://web.archive.org/web/20070129125421/http://midwiferytoday.com/articles/ultrasoundrodgers.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20070129125421/http://midwiferyt...
- emptysongglass 3y agoWhen will cancer be eradicated in humans?
- gessha 3y agoIn 2 months by a group of 10 humble researchers at a conference in Dartmouth.
- cramjabsyn 3y agoProject manager says next week
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoIn two more weeks. :) In all seriousness, though, is there really such a thing as "the cancer"? Probably not.
- gpm 3y agoYes? There are lots of variations of cancer, but it seems to be a well defined set of conditions. I don't think I've ever seen an argument over whether something is or is not cancer, or suggestion that such an argument could be made. Our current methods of treating it treat it in a piecemeal fashion, targeting one variation or another, but I don't think it's unthinkable that you could managed to target and fix the entire set.
- waboremo 3y agoSet is an understatement here, there are about ~200 types (as of now), and within a numerous amount of mutations per person. This is why one person could have been treated effectively with early enough detection, and others it just keeps spreading despite treatment. What's even worse, even if treatment does work, it can eventually stop working due to these mutations. This is why we deal with it piecemeal, because it's the only way we can actually detect it. This isn't a current technical limitation, this is a "we can't solve something before we know the problem" issue due to how cells work. Even in the very long term future where we have bio implants, the best solution we would have are implants being able to seek cancer cells instantly and remove them.
- EGreg 3y agoI also heard about this: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/03/cancer-hematology.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/03/cancer-hemato... https://www.news-medical.net/amp/news/20230302/Reprogrammed-tumor-cells-could-teach-the-bodys-immune-system-to-fight-cancer.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/amp/news/20230302/Reprogrammed-...