4 ms·
It's not as great as you might think, despite all the stories you see like this one. That's because most of the stories are in cells (this one) or mice. The b
by r58lf 4mo ago
It's not as great as you might think, despite all the stories you see like this one. That's because most of the stories are in cells (this one) or mice.
The big success story, about 20 years old now, is testicular cancer. You can have metastatic testicular cancer with tumors all over your body (like Lance Armstrong had) and they can cure it. They use platinum based chemotherapy and it's not really well understood why it works for testicular cancer, but not others.
The story with childhood leukemias is similar. They figured out how to combine a bunch of chemotherapy to get the cure rate up pretty high. Leukemia in a child used to be (1990s) 90% fatal, it's like 10% now.
Besides those, most of the advances in the past few decades come from early detection/ surgery or just prevention (stop smoking).
There is some hope though. When people first started studying cancers at the molecular level, one of the first things they noticed was how often a gene called Ras was mutated in different cancers. It turns out that designing a drug for Ras was really hard, but it finally got done, it's called daraxonrasib. They just released phase III human trials with this drug in pancreatic cancer a week or two ago and it destroyed the standard of care (Chemotherapy), but that is saying people who were dying in 1-2 months were still alive after 5-6 months.
The former senator Ben Sasse was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer last December. Historically, that's like 5% survival rate for 5 years. He is on daraxonrasib. We will see how it works out.
- liveoneggs 4mo agoI think some class of melanomas and small-cell lung cancers went from 6 month survival to now completely "cureable" using immunology drugs
- bglazer 4mo agoYou’re probably thinking about non-small cell lung cancers. Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is still absolutely devastating. The most progress made on SCLC has just been getting people to stop smoking, as its almost exclusively a smoker’s disease. Anyways, I studied SCLC in grad school and saw lots of scans of people with tumors from their heads to their feet, and saw the enormous resources dedicated to caring for SCLC patients and to searching for a cure. It’s hard to overstate how profoundly evil the cigarette companies were and still are. They got people (children) addicted knowing what was coming for them, knowing they were killing them in horrific ways. Now we all get to pay for that in funerals and tax dollars.
- himata4113 4mo agoI guess then a graph of deaths from disagnosed cancer at various stages would be just as awe inspiring. I'd settle for that as well.
- zevets 4mo agohttps://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/annual-cancer-facts-and-figures/2025/2025-cancer-facts-and-figures-acs.pdf https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cance... Page 2 has the figure. Getting people to not smoke has been the most effective treatment in our lifetime. Public health is a really big deal, and RFK et al are a disaster for the nation.
- himata4113 4mo agoOh wow, not as impressive as I thought, but I guess we are looking at broad categories rather than specific types and variants. But overall the trend is down on ever cancer since around a decade ago. Was expecting a sharper drop around 1-2 decades ago, but things just take time when it comes to experimenting with human lives. Will be interesting to revisit this in another decade when a lot of the treatments finally leave the experimental stage.
- parodysbird 4mo agoUnfortunately, we actually don't make the kind of general widely applicable gains in treatment that people believe we have. We're not in a much different place for major cancers than we were 30 years ago, and I don't see much value in assuming we will just suddenly improve.
- arbitrarywords 4mo agoLooking through that, they seem to leave out what would be the most interesting comparison - expectancy adjusted for stage at detection against time? Edit Claude suggests the problem is bordering on intractable, but table 7 in this link is probably as good as it gets https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.70043 https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac...
- jacinda 4mo agoAmen to childhood leukemia rates improving being awe-inspiring. I had a friend I rode the bus with around 2001 who was diagnosed with leukemia and didn't make it. They let us know over the PA system at school. I suspect these days she would have survived.
- unknownfuture 4mo agoI wouldn't understate advances in Melanoma treatment. Immunotherapies have absolutely changed the game in that space. It's not a curable cancer (few are) but it's far more treatable.
- liamwire 4mo agoDr. Richard Scolyer was at the forefront of this, and died only recently after a long battle against brain cancer at 59. His open letter is well worth the read. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-08/professor-richard-scolyer-open-letter-death-cancer/106741140 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-08/professor-richard-sco...
- FunHearing3443 4mo agoThey are starting to ship this out across the country. My uncle has pancreatic cancer and is hoping to get a shipment in the next two months. Apparently you discontinue chemo while on it because it’s so unnecessary at that point.
- vikramkr 4mo agoThat's understating the progress by a lot - many cancers are a lot more survivable now than previously with better chemo/radio/surgery + immunotherapies + car-t etc etc
- sydd 4mo agoThere are lots of other success stories too. For example there is a reason why Keytruda is the most valuable medicine globally -- it does amazing things against melanoma and lung cancer