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FDA Approves Vaccine For Prostate Cancer
reverseengineer writes "The US Food and Drug Administration has given its first first approval for a therapeutic cancer vaccine. In a clinical trial 'involving 512 men, those who got Provenge (sipuleucel-T) had a median survival of 25.8 months after treatment, while those who got a placebo lived a median of 21.7 months. After three years, 32 percent of those who got Provenge were alive, compared with 23 percent of those who got the placebo. ... "The big story here is that this is the first proof of principle and proof that immunotherapy works in general in cancer, which I think is a huge observation," said Dr. Philip Kantoff, chief of solid tumor oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the lead investigator in Dendreon's largest clinical trial for the drug. "I think this is a very big thing and will lead to a lot more enthusiasm for the approach."'"
2. View the #2 in your post. They have to struggle in a market that's immediately artificially saturated by Company A's wonder drug. This is like Pepsi trying to show up and claim "we can quench your thirst", but regulations say that, for the first n number of years, people have to drink a full coke before they can drink a Pepsi. Hope you're still thirsty after that coke, and if you're not, then hopefully the pepsi will quench your thirst when the coke did not!
And there, spelled out in soda, we have the well-meaning recipe for disaster in American healthcare -- the one that isn't fixed by the government plan, but needs to be before the government plan sends us headlong into a depression because of this unresolved bug.
That's not at all a good understanding of the market or of biomedical research.
Anyone else is free to come up with a treatment that works better using the same principles. It just can't be the same exact protocol.
Similarly, to spell it out in soda for you, Pepsi can't produce soda using Coke's recipe and charge less for it.
Drug patents are woefully short-lived in the US, and only give the company a few years (unlikely to reach a decade, even under the fastest FDA review) to make their research money back, make a profit, and finance further research. For all the negative press patents get, the are still essential for stimulating development by rewarding innovation.
Unlike other IP, however, drug patent periods haven't been climbing up in duration, and as a result we can all enjoy levostatin, ezomeprazole, and the rest of the drugs that used to be sought-after prescription drugs, and are now cheap generics.
Propecia on the other hand (the stuff for baldness) has been shown to help the prostate.
Not surprising at all. Proscar, a prostate medication, had the side effect of making people grow extra hair. So Merck marketed a lower dose of the same substance, and called it Propecia.
Lose = not win
I other OLD news, men who ejaculate 5 times per week had a 66% less chance of prostate cancer EVER in their life than men who only did once or less per week. They has to be started young and you must continue this into your 50s. 3 different studies on this from 3 different universities in 3 different countries and all 3 go roughly(damn near the same) the same results even though they went about different ways of testing. They one test alone was a periodic questioner that followed over 30,000 men. Is that a good sample size? There seems to be a semi linear link, so each day you clean the pipes per week gives you and ~X% reduced chance of getting this dreaded disease.
I say an orgasm of prevention is worth more than a pound of cancer.
The current theory is that the prostate is great at concentrating carcinogens because of how it excretes and re-absorbs fluids which essentially filters and captures bad crap. Gotta flush it out.
Remember, a 66% reduction of the chance of cancer is like saying "you have a 200% INCREASED chance of caner if you don't".
P.S. remember to tell your wife to put out or close the door, because you're busy curing cancer.