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Drug Turns Immune System Against All Tumor Types
sciencehabit writes, quoting an article in Science: "A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a 'do not eat' signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells."
The abstract and full paper are freely available. It seems fairly promising: "In mice given human bladder cancer tumors, for example, 10 of 10 untreated mice had cancer that spread to their lymph nodes. Only one of 10 mice treated with anti-CD47 had a lymph node with signs of cancer. Moreover, the implanted tumor often got smaller after treatment — colon cancers transplanted into the mice shrank to less than one-third of their original size, on average. And in five mice with breast cancer tumors, anti-CD47 eliminated all signs of the cancer cells, and the animals remained cancer-free 4 months after the treatment stopped."
What about non-tumor cells, which also display this cell determinant?
This "The doctors are evil conspirators" crap really, really gets old...
Or perhaps they don't want to commit to a cure for human cancers when they've just found a prelminary positive result in an animal model?
That couldn't be it, possibly?
No, must be a conspiracy. *facepalm*
I'm not sure why some people are so sure "big pharma" are disinterested in curing many diseases/conditions. After all, if you can sell a cure for cancer, you just landed in a bucket of money.
Beyond that, the need for a cure is overwhelming. Even corporate greed will often take a backseat because this issue affects us all. If it was a condition associated with a specific population, or with the poor etc then I'm sure the interest would be much less humanitarian.
Every day we get closer to a cure, every piece of research, even if it's only effective on mice takes us when step closer. I for one, appreciate every effort made in this regard.
I do not have cancer and no one close to me has it either. Perhaps just a matter of time.
It won't fly, as antibodies are cheap and not complicated to do. Seriously, do you really believe Big Pharma is going to let it happen ? A treatment simple like this would jeopardize their business, risking billions of dollar. They'll do something to stop this treatment in its tracks. They always do. Sound paranoid ? I wish. It's more like realistic. Their purpose is not really to cure cancer, but getting a maximum profit from it.
I call bullshit. First of all you don't risk anything by finding such a "simple cure". There are a lot of people and a lot of them will get cancer at one time so there is a very large customer base and no shortage thereof in the long term. For the length of the patent you could sell this stuff at almost any price. Do you really think one company would keep an invention locked up (and risk loosing it to someone else) that would bring them truckloads of money?
Not to mention all the free PR you'd get.
Also I don't really believe in conspiracies that rely on large groups of people to keep quiet, make no mistakes and act against their own private interests.
Expressed in other terms:
How may drug company execs will let their children, their spouses, or their friends die of cancer for better shareholder returns? Not all of them. It only takes one whistle blower, or potential whistle blower, to louse up plans like this.
One drug company supposedly had a drug for an inherited, fatal condition, but was going to can development of it, as there probably wasn't enough profit. A board member, who had a friend who's child had that condition basically said, "if you can this drug, I'm going to the press with it." Fearing the backlash, the company introduced the drug and now boasts about how good they are to bring drugs for smaller markets to market.