18 ms·
A New Mode of Cancer Treatment
- lelag 3y agoIf 2023 ends up giving us AGI, room-temperature superconductors, Starships and a cure for cancer, I think we will able to call it a good year...
- WithinReason 3y agoIt's time we got compensated for the whole COVID thing
- gadders 3y ago[flagged]
- ImHereToVote 3y agoThe US Federal government paid for the gain of function research under the Trump administration. This is still the most likely source for the novel part of the virus.
- ForRealsies 3y ago[dead]
- 93po 3y agoThis might be the biggest “blame trump” stretch I’ve ever seen
- ImHereToVote 3y agoWho blamed Trump?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- treprinum 3y agoThere is still the threat of WW3...
- ImHereToVote 3y agoDon't worry AGI will make all human modes of warfare disappear for all eternity.
- gregshap 3y agoHopefully that’s not the optimization function we pass the AGI!
- civilitty 3y agoBy disappearing the humans for all eternity. It’s all but a scifi cliche now.
- amelius 3y agoPoliticians don't watch scifi.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoA lot of science fiction has turned into science fact. Having this become science fact, just makes us extra silly goobers for ignoring the lessons in our own stories.
- mrob 3y ago100% successful elimination of all cancers too.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoExactly. Wars can't exist once humans are extinct.
- benterix 3y agoReally? Putin seems to slowly change his mind, even as far as the aims of his "special military operation" are concerned. It looks like he is slowly realizing what he got himself into and his aim is to keep Ukraine unstable to prevent its association with the EU.
- vazma 3y agoI think humanity deserves it after so many consecutive weird years
- ImHereToVote 3y agoI doubt the extinction of the human race via a runaway technological event will turn the planet into a wonderland paradise for the rest of the species that inhabit our planet. The planet itself, being a rock, doesn't care, at all.
- hirundo 3y agoWe're as much a part of the planet as its rocks, and we care. You could say that your bones don't care, but the organism that is you cares. In the same way the planet cares through the subsystem that includes us even if its rocks don't care. You're right if you define a planet as its rocks, and would also be right to assert that humans don't care if you defined a human as its skeleton.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoI think you might have answered the wrong person by mistake.
- incrudible 3y agoWho cares?
- midnitewarrior 3y agoIf room temp superconductivity leads to a practical fusion reactor, a good portion of earth destruction for energy development will end. Starting to fix things first involves stopping the destruction of things.
- luma 3y agoWe already have SC (if expensive to run), how does room temp SC make fusion possible where it wasn’t before?
- nelox 3y agoIt is probably too late with record high temperatures, every few years, for centuries to come.
- tejohnso 3y agoAnd maybe record high atmospheric CO2 concentration every few years as well. We're still on an increasing trajectory. The 2007 IPCC climate change synthesis report specified a deadline of 2015 for peak CO2 in order to meet the lowest mitigation scenario. Of course we've blown past that date and it's still full speed ahead with business as usual. Alas, I try not to blather on about the severity of the climate situation in every thread.
- midnitewarrior 3y agoI'm hopeful that superconductors leading to practical fusion reactors can provide the energy to start pulling some carbon out of the air and ocean. I'm thinking this is the only way to reverse the damage on the human timeframe. I admit it's a longshot, but I think it's the only chance we have. The superconductor news is welcome, we just need to see it get truly confirmed without a doubt.
- highwaylights 3y agoNot to be a bummer but by far the most likely outcome here is that we don’t currently have a room temperature super-conductor, we never pull a consequential amount of carbon out of the atmosphere, and we don’t get significantly workable sustainable fusion in a timeframe that makes a difference. You’d need a bunch of jackpots to come up, in a row, immediately, at this point for technology to provide a way out of the current debacle. To paraphrase Paul Lieberstein’s character on the Newsroom: If we stop drilling globally right this second AND Everyone stops driving their car and starts biking everywhere AND We invest immediately in clean renewable energy THEN I still don’t see a way out of this. edit: found it on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYp6oc37ds https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYp6oc37ds
- 3y ago
- azinman2 3y agoWe’re not getting AGI anytime soon…
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoWhat exactly is your definition of a AGI? Because we’re already passing the Turing test, and so I have to wonder if this isn’t just moving the goalposts.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cubefox 3y agoChatGPT (instruction tuned autoregressive language models) indeed already seems quite general (it's good at conversation Turing tests without faking it like ELIZA), even if the absolute intelligence is limited. Level of generality and intelligence is not the same. Something could be quite narrow but very intelligent (AlphaGo) or quite general but dumb overall (small kid, insect). Okay, ChatGPT is only text-to-text, but Google & Co are adding more modalities now, including images, audio and robotics. I think one missing step is to fuse training and inference regime into one, just as in animals. That probably requires something else than the usual transformer-based token predictors.
- Demotooodo 3y agoYepp. I also see puzzle peaces falling in place with multimodal models. This will be a great strategy very fast. It shows to be quite good for image generation already
- phkahler 3y ago>> I think one missing step is to fuse training and inference regime into one, just as in animals. This has always been an important missing piece. Without it ChatGPT is just a natural language interface to the information it was trained on. Still useful but unable to learn (aside from context).
- 3y ago
- TigeriusKirk 3y agoI'm impressed the replies to this manage to turn your celebration of several positive possible developments into a doomsday discussion.
- claytongulick 3y agoThere's a mental model that many people have which is rooted in negativism. I believe it's a form of intellectual laziness who's roots lie in self-consciousness. Meaning, that some people project internal feelings of inadequacy onto the external world. And I understand the temptation there - if I'm not competing well at a game, the immediate tendency is to blame the game (I stink at golf -> golf is stupid). One of the reasons doom porn is so popular because it's the ultimate "out": I don't need to focus on myself and self-improvement, which is hard, when we're all going to die anyway.
- hinkley 3y agoWhich is exactly the sort of thing people who have no sense of accountability say. It’s not that I’m Friedrich Frankenstein or John Hammond, it’s that you troglodytes wouldn’t know a good idea if it bit you. You’re just jealous. I was there when the foundations for the enshitification of the internet were laid. And there were a bunch of people complaining about the people complaining about taking a beat to decide how this will play out. Well, we were so eager to get to the future and here we are. Lots of naive and goal obsessed people who thought if you build it, they will come. If you chop the last two minutes off of that movie, it is a very dark and different story. Only the miracle at the end saves it.
- claytongulick 3y agoI honestly have no idea what point you're tying to make. Could you please clarify?
- submeta 3y agoPerhaps these rapid advancements are an indication that we've been visited by, or are currently under the guidance of, a significantly more advanced civilization. /s
- boomerango 3y agoWhoever is running the simulation is getting bored. Wild fires, what is sure to be a historic hurricane season, floods, war, and a technological leap.
- jayknight 3y agoEl Niño usually limits the development of tropical storms, so it could be a quiet hurricane season, but who knows.
- distortionfield 3y agoSim city with cheat codes irl
- 93po 3y agoI’m in my 30s and I’m not sure there’s ever NOT been a war for as long as I’ve been alive
- BurningFrog 3y agoOr that the advanced civilization holding us down has left.
- phkahler 3y agoWe are in a tech war with China, so the BTC opened up a bit. That's a reference to "Influx" a book where the Bureau of Technology Control grabs all the great stuff and keeps it secret because humans are unable to handle it.
- acuozzo 3y agoPerhaps those in power got their hands on those sunglasses that fringe church was distributing and put them on!
- gregschlom 3y agoFusion energy will have to wait for 2024 though
- highwaylights 3y ago2022. We’ve just forgotten because there’s been a lot going on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility
- phkahler 3y agoThat doesn't count since there is no way to harness the energy. In that sense we've had H-bombs for 60+ years.
- maximinus_thrax 3y ago> Starships Where? Humanity does not have the capability to travel between planetary systems.
- falcor84 3y agoI assumed the parent was referring to SpaceX's Starship [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
- p_j_w 3y agoStarship isn’t an actual starship, though.
- falcor84 3y agoIndeed, but the parent used a capitalized "Starships". In any case, I think Starship's engineering, and particularly the Super Heavy booster, is bringing us a significant step closer to starships (in lower case).
- maximinus_thrax 3y agoPutting the capitalized 'Starship' in the same sentence with a cancer cure and superconductors plays 'One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)' in my head.
- maximinus_thrax 3y agoNot a starship
- hinkley 3y agoTo paraphrase Brett Goldstein, Elon Musk couldn't fucking build Jefferson Starship. He may get us back into space, but SpaceX won't get us into the solar system. That will come when SpaceX is fat and happy and complacent, and some new company comes in and does to them what they've done to others. And none of us will be alive when a human orbits another star. We might see someone launch, but we won't live to see if they survived the journey.
- flobosg 3y agoNot a medical chemist, but I noticed that three AOH1996 molecules are binding to PCNA. Would it make sense to chain together three AOH1996 molecules with flexible linkers for, I don't know, increased specificity or something like that?
- irdc 3y agoMaybe. But a bigger molecule will be less soluble and less capable of getting into the cell.
- flobosg 3y agoRight! I forgot about good ol’ Lipinski: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipinski%27s_rule_of_five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipinski%27s_rule_of_five
- mallomarmeasle 3y agoNote that a number of well-known drugs violate Lipinski's rules. For instance, digoxin is absorbed by transporters and violates 2 rules. Atorvastatin is another famous example (again 2 rules violated). I believe that it is absorbed through Peyer's patches in the intestine. https://www.pmf.ni.ac.rs/chemianaissensis/wp-content/uploads/filebase/v3n12020/Ivanovic%20et%20al.,%202020,%20tekst.pdf https://www.pmf.ni.ac.rs/chemianaissensis/wp-content/uploads...
- flobosg 3y agoThanks for pointing it out. The Wikipedia article mentions that as well, along with some other examples: > Some authors have criticized the rule of five for the implicit assumption that passive diffusion is the only important mechanism for the entry of drugs into cells, ignoring the role of transporters. > Studies have also demonstrated that some natural products break the chemical rules used in Lipinski filters such as macrolides and peptides.
- panabee 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- shireboy 3y agoGoing to have to start following this Derek Lowe guy. He also had a good balanced bit on room temp superconductor. Well done science reporting without the hyperbole.
- flobosg 3y agoYou’re in for a treat! Check out his “Things I Won't Work With” series.
- jaggederest 3y agoOne of the classics, his take on Chlorine Trifluoride (!!!!) https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo... "It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water --- with which it reacts explosively." - John D Clark, Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
- wiredfool 3y agoThat’s a very interesting book if you have a passing knowledge of chemistry. Findable on the web in pdf form.
- WaffleIronMaker 3y agoThat's a good option, though I also enjoyed the audiobook of Ignition! on Audible.
- r2_pilot 3y agoIgnition! has also now been reprinted and is well worth the purchase and read.
- wiredfool 3y agoCool, when I read it it was pdf or $300 used copies.
- rowinofwin 3y agoWow, sounds like a game changer. A totally different mechanism with almost no effect on healthy cells and it can be used as an adjunct to other chemotherapies? I mean, if it pans out, wow, that would be amazing. I remember reading about how with HIV if you have 1 drug it works for a while but evolves out from under you, 2 drugs extends this time, and a third just flattens it so much there isnt enough popation to mutate away. In the same way adding this as an adjunct could prevent the drift which can happen to some cancers when under selection from a chemo drug. Exciting times.
- adamredwoods 3y agoThat's the hope. I think Keytruda, aka Pembrolizumab, has also been a game-changer. It can run with other forms of treatment as well. I hope we're entering a new epoch. The number of people I've met who've lost loved ones too early. That dragon, cancer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Dragon,_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Dragon,_Cancer
- Metacelsus 3y agoWould the Ames test even make sense, given that bacteria don't have PCNA?
- flobosg 3y agoThe compound might have additional mutagenic mechanisms apart from the described PCNA interaction: it could cause direct chemical modifications to DNA, act as an intercalating agent that disrupts DNA replication and/or transcription, etc.
- siva7 3y agoAm i the only one wondering what this finding really means in practice when we read every other weak a similiar science article that claims to be a breakthrough in cancer treatment?
- Sabinus 3y agoLike solar cell and battery material discoveries, there is an ocean of problems to overcome before the promising results flow into a product. Potentially decades of problems to solve.
- lolive 3y agoA sentence near the end of the article summarizes why cancer is such a nasty disease to deal with: "I hope that human cancers will prove vulnerable to this new mode of attack in the clinic, and that *they are not able to mutate around it with new forms of caPCNA too quickly*, either."
- glonq 3y agoI just got a cancer diagnosis with an ugly prognosis. Wish I could fast-forward a few years to when this treatment might be proven and available!
- ekanes 3y agoSorry to hear that. I hope your prognosis improves.
- asah 3y agosorry :-( Good luck!! and fight the good fight!!
- adamredwoods 3y agoAlways get a second opinion. Find the oncologist that doesn't give up hope.
- glonq 3y agoOh, there's still hope. Just a tough battle and a coin-toss chance of making it. I feel that I'm in good hands. If I was rich, I'd maybe get better care from some more expensive hands but there's no guarantee.
- jhickok 3y agoGood luck! Hoping for the best!
- tim333 3y agoIt may be semi proven and semi available soon. The synthesis looks quite simple so they will probably knock it out in less regulated countries like India or China.
- flobosg 3y agoMartin Shkreli (yes, that Martin Shkreli) is currently running a virtual screen for additional PCNA inhibitors: https://twitter.com/wagieeacc/status/1687137621699436552 https://twitter.com/wagieeacc/status/1687137621699436552
- soVeryTired 3y agoCan you explain what's going on there? Sounds like he's doing something to prevent patenting of drugs but I don't follow what it is.
- flobosg 3y agoVirtual screening[1] is a computational technique where you take an experimentally resolved structure of a protein (PCNA in this case) and sequentially dock a large amount of different compounds to see which ones of them bind favorably to the target protein. It is worth mentioning that virtual screening is a very early step in a drug discovery pipeline. These hits need to be characterized and validated experimentally to see if there is an actual effect. I am not well-versed in intellectual property (so please correct me if I’m wrong), but in this case Shkreli is using a database of commercially available compounds (ZINC) and a hit present in the screen could be patented. He said he won’t do it, and, since this could be considered prior art, nobody else can do a claim. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_screening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_screening
- adamredwoods 3y agoHis history is not good. >> Shkreli bought the exclusive rights to manufacture Daraprim, a drug that can treat a rare parasitic disease, in 2015 and hiked the price from $13.50 per pill to $750, to much controversy. The entrepreneur was ordered in January 2022 to return $64.6 million in profit made by the price hikes and creating what the Federal Trade Commission alleged was “a web of anti-competitive restrictions” to prevent rivals from making a cheaper generic version. https://www.fastcompany.com/90932968/martin-shkreli-dr-gupta-sasha-luccioni https://www.fastcompany.com/90932968/martin-shkreli-dr-gupta...
- akomtu 3y agoThe adaptability of cancer makes me think it's in fact a parasitic distributed lifeform, similar to fungus, that turns cells into zombies.
- Vecr 3y agoCancer is your cells though, that's the problem.
- jbotz 3y agoUsually, yes. But there do exist infectious cancers that spread between individuals. One is the face cancer that's been killing Tasmanian devils[0]... it started in one individual and spreads to others when they fight (biting each other). Apparently there's a similar (although rarer) cancers that's sexually transmitted between dogs. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease
- treprinum 3y agoIsn't it more like dead cells that are being reawakened, switching to fermentation to create as much NAD+ as possible to grow as fast as possible?
- jhickok 3y agoOut of curiosity, would something like Right to Try get earlier access to a drug like this?