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Is This How We'll Cure Cancer?
- ihodes 12y agoIt's one way we're curing cancer. Other promising avenues include personalized cancer vaccines which essentially recruit your immune system to attack the tumor[1], or other viral vectors such as the recent Mayo success[2] using the measles vaccine to counter cancer. [1]: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-health-cancer-measles-idUSKBN0DV1Y120140515 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-health-cancer-m... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_vaccine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_vaccine
- christkv 12y agoThe good news is that this is happening faster than you would think. Having a father who is a leader in the field I can tell you the initial trials look very promising. However vaccines might not be the cure to end all cures. A very aggressive cancer might kill you before your immune system is able to re-engage to fight the cancer. So a combination of vaccines and more traditional treatments is likely to be the answer in this case. My understanding is that one of the main benefits of vaccines will be to make relapse much less likely as the stimulated immune system will eradicate any leftover cancer cells in the body.
- ihodes 12y agoMaybe not faster than I'd think :) I work in the field as well. Maybe even with your father!
- christkv 12y agoYou might have :). Here's the most relevant paper http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00262-013-1453-3 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00262-013-1453-3 But from what I understand the process is pretty universal so can be applied to more than one cancer type.
- yulaow 12y agoI'm a total "noob" in this field so I'm sorry if I can sound stupid: I thought that traditional methods to cure cancer (like chemio or radio therapy) have all the side effect of partially (or even totally) destroy the patient immune system. So how can we combine those with these special vaccines which surely need a strong immune system to be effective?
- ihodes 12y agoNot at all a stupid question. I don't even have a great answer for you. My understanding is that, at least for some cases, you can target e.g. radiation enough to shrink the tumor enough for these therapeutic vaccines to be effective.
- clusterfoo 12y ago> The good news is that this is happening faster than you would think. The research might be moving fast, but access to these new treatments still moves at a glacial pace. At least for the people who need them... patients have to wait years until drug trials run their full course, even when preliminary results consistently show these treatments are effective. One can understand why these rules and regulations are in place, but surely there's a better way of assessing the risk/benefit of prematurely approving certain treatments for diseases that will almost certainly kill (or gravely, permanently debilitate) those who suffer from them long before the drug is approved. Speaking from personal experience dealing with this right now, it's extremely frustrating that these treatments are just out of reach because access to them is surrounded by so much red tape -- If you don't have $120k sitting in your wallet, that is.
- ngoede 12y agoJust started reading http://www.amazon.com/Feed-Mira-Grant-ebook/dp/B003GFIVSE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400788634&sr=8-1&keywords=feed http://www.amazon.com/Feed-Mira-Grant-ebook/dp/B003GFIVSE/re... So yeah, hope we don't cure the common cold with a mutated virus any time soon LOL.
- givan 12y agoWhy not go to the root cause instead of using hacks to fix the symptoms? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Causes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Causes We need to fix our environment instead of hacking ourselves to deal with a broken one.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago"Fixing our environment" won't fix cancer. Cancer exists because you don't need to live to 150 years old to successfully reproduce. It costs too much from a biological perspective to prevent cancer, calories and nutrients better spent on raising children and to some extent grandchildren. People got cancer back when the environment was pristine, they were just more likely to get eaten by the crocohippo first.
- beached_whale 12y agoChrocohippo is the coolest cross bread I have heard in a while. Thank you
- givan 12y agoThere is a max 10% genetic risk and also getting older makes the body more fragile for every illness not just cancer but the causes as outlined in wikipedia are 90% environmental.
- thomasmeeks 12y agoEnvironmental doesn't necessarily mean it is something we've done to the environment. Even if the world's environment were reverted to "untouched by humans" status, you can still get melanoma from too much sun exposure, and that would still be an "environmental" factor. Unhealthy eating (especially very salty/spicy/fermented foods), alcohol use, and so on also classify as environmental factors. But they are not caused by pollution or chemical-laden foods, merely bad life choices. Copious quantities of red meat isn't good, organic or no. I don't meant to imply our bad handling of the planet causes no cancer, it certainly does. But it does not cause anywhere close to 90% of cancer cases. Not by a long shot.
- nollidge 12y agoBetteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
- ChuckFrank 12y agoCorrect. The answer is 'No'.
- charlesism 12y agoThat "law" occurred to me too, but I kept an open mind until I reached the sentence: "On paper Jimenez seems an unlikely backer for one of the most revolutionary medical breakthroughs any company has ever tried to develop. He’s a marketer by trade" At that point I stopped reading. The answer is indeed "no."
- wvenable 12y agoFrom the article: "The current CARTs kill not just cancer cells but any B-cell, the type of white blood cell that goes wrong in leukemia." So this really isn't an cancer cure at all; it is B-cell cure. I'm surprised this isn't a more significant detail in the article. It's really the cell-equivalent of cutting off a cancerous limb.
- protomyth 12y agocontinuing that quote "The current CARTs kill not just cancer cells but any B-cell, the type of white blood cell that goes wrong in leukemia. Patients are likely to get injections of a protein that B-cells make, called gamma globulin, for the rest of their lives; if the treatment becomes popular there may not be enough gamma globulin to go around." So, not scalable?
- quasque 12y agoYes, it lacks scalability because the source of the replacement immunoglobulin (antibodies) is blood donors, of which there are a limited amount.
- suby 12y agoI know nothing about this so forgive my ignorance, but could synthetic blood provide what's needed? From what I understand we're making progress with synthesizing blood. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10765132/Artificial-blood-will-be-manufactured-in-factories.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10765132/Artifi...
- ghkbrew 12y agoPretty much no. Most synthetic blood efforts are focused on replacing the oxygen-carrying components of blood i.e. red blood cells and the hemoglobin they contain. That is what's needed in emergency settings and surgery where lack of blood flow can kill tissues in minutes. Immunoglobulins (aka antibodies) are important for preventing infection and thus long term health but they would be difficult to impossible to produce synthetically.
- thret 12y ago"Of 25 children and 5 adults with Emily’s disease, ALL, 27 had a complete remission, in which cancer becomes undetectable." It does seem more promising than http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_remission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_remission.
- opencheckbook 12y agoOne must wonder. Did the other 3 die?
- DominikR 12y agoUsing viruses to fight diseases might seem dangerous compared to current therapies, but viruses are already in use for therapeutic purposes on a large scale for almost 100 years. Most people here don't know about it, because it's in use since ~1920 in the sowjet union/russia/eastern europe and not in the west. (for example to fight bacteria, that is resistant to all antibiotics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
- grifpete 12y agoThe virus isn't used to fight the disease, is it? Isn't it just used as a vector to introduce the treatment?
- kator 12y agoAll I know is I lost a loved one last weekend to Cancer and until you've been that close to the process you have no idea how you hope and pray for anything that will help no matter how radical.
- noname123 12y agoGlad to see NIBR/Novartis getting some love here. Any NIBR peeps on HN?
- higherpurpose 12y ago> Patients stay on it for years, and it is so valuable that Novartis has quadrupled its annual price from $24,000 per year in 2001 to more than $90,000 today. Even the stingiest insurers pay, though some patients get it free. I understand supply and demand...but come on! We're talking about people's lives here. This just sounds like exploitation. The fact that the insurance company has to pay doesn't make it any better. Just easier to get the money.
- landryraccoon 12y agoSo, there's a compromise. The high price of the drug also drives other companies into cancer research as they also want a piece of the pie. That leads to better treatments for everyone. If prices were lower, then there would be less motivation to develop the drugs.
- tszyn 12y agoPeople need monetary incentives to fight against the worst disease on the planet? Helping millions of people is not motivation enough?
- egypturnash 12y agoResearchers gotta eat too.
- sergiosgc 12y agoYes and no, respectively. Capitalistic societies work like that. It's awful and beautiful at the same time.
- saalweachter 12y agoI wholly believe there are hundreds of thousands of researchers who would happily spend their lives in poverty researching cures. The difficulty is that you can't research a cure to anything that's still uncured in a garage with the money you make begging on the street, or manufacture whatever cures you do discover. The corporations who have billions and billions to spend on it, they need a profit motive to give someone a research budget. It's why they have the billions and billions. It's not the only system imaginable, but it's the one we got.
- adnam 12y agoMy main takeaway from this is that Novartis is seeking a return on a $10M investment.
- dredmorbius 12y agoWell, considering the success rate of most other therapies for major cancers is at best quite modest, and likely mostly a result of lower smoking rates, maybe. http://redd.it/266xdj http://redd.it/266xdj
- giarc 12y agoI think we should stop saying things like "Is this how we will cure cancer". It's like saying "X will stop accidents". There are many different types of accidents, just like there are many types of cancers. We should be saying "Is this how we will cure a cancer?"
- micro_cam 12y agoCancer is a diverse phenomena (even within a single type) but there are lots of similarities in how cells evade programmed cell death or how tumors feed themselves that could be targets for wide reaching therapy. the idea that we've identified meaningfully separate types of cancers may be the flawed one...it is usually just based on where the cancer occurs not how it works or looks ona genetic level and other classifications may be possible.
- _kst_ 12y agoWould it be fair to say that cancer is a symptom rather than a disease, or is that completely off the mark?
- pak 12y agoCancer is the inevitable outcome of aging in a long-lived multicellular organism. It is a fundamental principle of evolution that things that replicate faster and survive better will prevail. We are made of coordinated, replicating cells. They happen to be in a mutual "truce" to act as one organism at the expense of individual cell survival. Most cells that break the truce do badly on their own and die out. However, given enough tries at the prize, some cells will find a way to beat the system and replicate at the expense of the other cells still serving the whole body. Some people have genetic deficiencies that give potentially malignant cells a jump start on the process. Certain environmental exposures will increase the rate of errors and therefore the frequency of tries that cells will get to become cancerous. But the outcome will always be the same; as we prolong human life through better medical care the incidence of cancer can only rise. It would be most accurate to say that cancer is an evolutionary phenomenon that occurs between cells of a multicellular organism and causes a heterogenous group of diseases.
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- benjvi 12y agoInteresting article, but as it mentions, this is the latest in a series of breakthroughs in cancer treatment. What is missing for me in there is any idea of the number of people that this could affect. Medical statistics ( http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/survival/all-cancers-combined/ http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/surv... )show that overall cancer survival rates have been improving according to a linear trend - by an absolute amount of ~0.65% per year. This would put the date at which cancer is "cured" at somewhere in the 2090s. So, are we talking about continuing this trend or surpassing it? How much of a step forward is this and is it likely to be applied trivially to other forms of cancer?
- SoftwareMaven 12y agoCancer survival rates are usually five year survival from diagnosis. We've gotten better at detecting cancer earlier, meaning people are more likely to make it to five years, but, from what I've read (and I'd love to see research showing what I've seen is wrong!), the number of people living longer than they would have 30 years ago has not gone up as dramatically (there are some cancers that have seen tremendous improvement, though). Does anybody have numbers on 10-20 year survival?
- benjvi 12y agoThe linked stats show 1,5 and 10 year survival rates, which are all roughly following the same trend
- Havoc 12y ago>rheumatoid arthritis drug that stopped the immune system storm Damn...that must have been some industrial strength RA meds to work that fast. Plus that is quite a leap of faith even in isolation...those meds don't always drop the white cell count as expected.
- jhartmann 12y agoWas probably Remicade, it blocks Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha which is a main component to the inflamation response. If you are currently experiencing a cytokine storm (which is basically run away inflamation) it will do the trick quite quickly. It is basically an artifical antibody that binds to free TNF alpha and doesn't let it interact with cells to cause its normal immune response. Very effective, and it is an IV delivered drug so it immediately starts binding to the factors that are causing the inflamation. I took it before for Ankylosing Spondylitis and you can feel better quite quickly. If its not Remicade it is probably something in that family of therapies and would have similar quick effects against a cytokine storm.
- Havoc 12y agohmmm...didn't know those things work so fast. They gave me a low dose MTX and that took forever to kick in (month+). Then again there was no major hurry.
- gambiting 12y agoNovartis also produces Glivec, which turned my dad's GIST stomach cancer(which normally has <1 year survival prediction) to living for over 8 years cancer free now. Good thing we live in a country which pays for the treatment,as my dad has to take two boxes a month, and they are ~$3000 each.
- Florin_Andrei 12y agoSo... not the US.
- tanzam75 12y agoIncluding the US, for now. Under Obamacare, there is a $6,350 annual out-of-pocket maximum. There is also cost-sharing for people with low incomes. However, Obamacare is guaranteed to remain in effect only so long as the Democrats retain control of the Senate and the Presidency. If the Democrats lose one of them, then it will depend on whether certain vacancies open up on the Supreme Court. If they lose both, then that's the end of Obamacare.
- gambiting 12y agoIt's in Poland. There is no out-of-pocket maximum - my dad pays literally nothing for the drug. He also had to have two operations to remove parts of his stomach,and then stay at hospital for a month at a time - also paid nothing. He also doesn't have to pay national insurance because due to his illness he qualifies for an exemption. Even if he didn't, he would pay less than $1000 a year for national insurance.
- tanzam75 12y agoI didn't say that your father lived in the US. I was pointing out that "pays for the treatment" does not exclude the US, as Florin_Andrei seems to think. I understand you're having a visceral reaction to the out-of-pocket maximum. But for the patient who has to take Gleevec for the rest of his life, it does not matter if he pays $1 for the premium and $10,000 for the medication, or $10,000 for the premium and $1 for the medication. It's the same $10,001 either way. It's just a matter of what you call it. I think it's great that Poland reduced the premium to $0 for your father. But patients in many other countries still have to pay the premium even after they get sick. And nobody would say that their insurance refused to "pay for the treatment" just because it did not waive the premium. It becomes a matter of degree, not of principles. The US still has the most expensive healthcare even after Obamacare. But at least it is now on the extreme end of the spectrum of universal health insurance. It is no longer off the charts.
- grifpete 12y agoAnd Cambridge University researchers recently reported progress in penetrating solid tumors.
- SeanDav 12y agoThere appears to be billions to be made in profits from anti cancer drugs, no surprise that companies are spending like crazy on cancer research. On finding replacements / alternatives for our fast reducing arsenal of effective antibiotics - not so much. We are on the brink of a very scary phase in modern medicine - where antibiotics may soon become almost useless and very little is being done about it because it is not profitable.
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- known 12y agoTill science catches up, we should believe in statistics. Shun cosmetics. Many cinema celebrities have died of cancer.
- rollthehard6 12y agoIf you've not read of the effects of naltrexone on [Met5]-enkephalin (OGF - opiod growth factor) it's worth doing so. A fascinating area. https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113208 https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113208