If We Can't Kill Cancer, Can We Control It?

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The New Yorker: In April, [Dr. Eytan Stein] presented his findings to a packed auditorium at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in San Diego. It was the first public airing of the results of AG-221; patients with progressive [acute myelogenous leukemia] had never improved so quickly and definitively. ... The breakthrough is notable in part for the unconventional manner in which the drug attacks its target. There are many kinds of cancer, but treatments have typically combated them in one way only: by attempting to destroy the cancerous cells. Surgery aims to remove the entire growth from the body; chemotherapy drugs are toxic to the cancer cells; radiation generates toxic molecules that break up the cancer cells' DNA and proteins, causing their demise. A more recent approach, immunotherapy, co-opts the body's immune system into attacking and eradicating the tumor. The Agios drug, instead of killing the leukemic cells — immature blood cells gone haywire — coaxes them into maturing into functioning blood cells. Cancerous cells traditionally have been viewed as a lost cause, fit only for destruction. The emerging research on A.M.L. suggests that at least some cancer cells might be redeemable: they still carry their original programming and can be pressed back onto a pathway to health.

Comments

Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

Cancer could have been cured years ago. In fact, there are potential cures out there, but none of them will ever see the light of day. The truth is, cancer cure research has been suppressed to protect big pharmacy's profits.

Think about it: If we cure it, then it's just a one time treatment and payment. If we merely treat it, the pharmaceutical companies get a steady source of income. The goal is to get patients to live as long as they can, but still be dependent on the medical treatment.

Re:Of course we can

[pbjones]

you are full of shit. As a cancer victim I can say that it is down to risk, if the numbers are against you, age, over weight, lack of exercise, genetics, environment exposure, then you'll be more likely to get some form of cancer. These may go undetected for years, at which point it is too well established to be totally eradicated. Early detection is very important, survival is dependant on early detection and the effectiveness of treatment, sadly the cost of drugs is high and people are not always able to afford them, even in 1st world countries. As for the conspiracy theory, improvements are there, but the thoughts that there are magic bullets out there, being suppressed, is crap. If you want to survive, do the right things, loose weight, build fitness, eat better, look out for body changes, get regular check ups. You can't live forever.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't live forever.

I think this is the key thing to understand.

If we stopped aging, and everyone was age 21 forever, we would find that accidents and illness, especially cancers, would be the bane of humanity.

We are all going to die, one day. If not from old age, then it'll be ness or accident. It's important to realise that, as time goes on, the likelihood of a fatal accident would tend toward 1.

Each of us is going to die.

Also, fuck you Slashdot:
This resource is no longer valid. Please return to the beginning and try again.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

We are all going to die, one day. If not from old age, then it'll be ness or accident.

I'm going to die from Ness?

Re:Of course we can

[sillybilly]

Fuck cancer and fuck big pharma fucking patients over over money, so fuck money too.

Re:Of course we can

[Yaotzin]

Think about it: If a company finds a cure for all cancers (emphasis on the plural form, cancer is not just one disease) they could demand any price at all and people would pay it. "Let's discuss payment plans." The inventors would receive hero status and could retire rich as kings of old. You don't think this would sound appealing to the people allegedly sitting on this cure-all?

Re:Of course we can

[Applehu Akbar]

I've seen one analysis that estimates that if all medical causes of death were eliminated, we would enjoy an average lifespan of about 650 before some accident would kill us. With a lifetime like that, imagine the tall tales you could tell your descendants. And if, in such a society, the most cautious individuals made it to age 1000, would they get birthday cards from Skynet?

Re:Of course we can

[Applehu Akbar]

My response to those "they're sitting on a cure" conspiracy theorists is that though pharma may be the most powerful lobby in the US, there's a whole world out there. A number of other countries would love the sheer prestige attached to announcing a cure. And even if they gave that treatment away through nationalized health care systems, they would reap huge income from American medical tourists.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, no. Human DNA can undergo a limited number of divisions, and that limit appears to be hit around 120 years.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently thinking is not something you are good at.

Re:Of course we can

[zippthorne]

Which would be a medical cause of death....

Re: Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't happen. If any country finds a cure we'll bomb the shit out of them because, as Madeleine Albright stated so clearly, WE ARE AMERICA. Submit to our rule or be destroyed!

Re: Of course we can

[ColdWetDog]

Won't happen. If any country finds a cure we'll bomb the shit out of them because, as Madeleine Albright stated so clearly, WE ARE AMERICA. Submit to our rule or be destroyed!

Could you please go back to reading the backs of road signs and trying to map out UN invasion routes?

Re:Of course we can

[the gnat]

If a company finds a cure for all cancers (emphasis on the plural form, cancer is not just one disease) they could demand any price at all and people would pay it.

It's even bigger than that. The best statement I've ever seen on the subject came from a Slashdot poster, and since I can't remember the specific post (or user, sorry!), I'll just paraphrase:

"Curing cancer" implies an incredibly high level of technical competence, so advanced that anything you touch would turn to gold. You could start to treat aging as a chronic disease.

This should ring true to anyone who understands the biological basis for "cancer". To start with: it's not one disease, it's many, they just all happen to take the form of uncontrolled cell proliferation, which can have many different triggers. Attacking specific molecular mechanisms is difficult because there are so many to choose from (and the targets tend to further mutate over time within each patient anyway, decreasing the efficacy of drugs). Also difficult: killing cancer cells without killing the rest of the patient. To actually treat all cancers at once - without lethal side effects - would require extraordinarily advanced knowledge of human biology and most likely a degree of personalization beyond anything we've experienced. It's the stuff of science fiction.

The supposed "cures" that are being suppressed are either poorly tested experimental leads (pharma companies have more than enough of these already), or dodgy experimental therapies that haven't undergone real testing either, some of which may be outright scams.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

These may go undetected for years, at which point it is too well established to be totally eradicated.

Sorry bud. But that is some tiny thinking. There will be time, soon enough, where cancer will be no more dangerous than a simple infection.

Human cells get "cancerous" ALL THE TIME. But it's only some very specific ones that are ignored by the immune system and grow. The key to kill ALL types of cancers is to find a markers that the immune system can be stimulated to clean up. That is all.

These are not easy things to do and definitely require research, but these are not insurmountable problems. The days of broad spectrum chemo cocktails are numbered along with notion that "cancer is deadly".

Early detection is very important, survival is dependant on early detection and the effectiveness of treatment

This depends. One tumor is not like another. For example, with breast cancer today, it has been shown that all the effort spent on early detection do not really increase survival. Routine mammograms do increase false positives though. Another example is most common types of prostate cancer. On the other hand, melanoma is critical to have early detection.

sadly the cost of drugs is high and people are not always able to afford them, even in 1st world countries.

That is not a 1st world problem, except in America. Virtually everywhere else, these costs are socialized, as they should be.

do the right things, loose weight, build fitness, eat better, look out for body changes, get regular check ups. You can't live forever.

That is very true. You may not live longer, but you sure as hell will live better. There is a difference between living your last 10 years sitting in a wheel chair attached to oxygen tank, or being able to walk and run and swim.

Re:Of course we can

[Khashishi]

That depends on what you mean by die. Seems pretty clear today, but technology is always blurring things. Did Henrietta Lacks die in 1951?

Re:Of course we can

[Khashishi]

We're not ready as a society for elimination of aging. Currently, with money and power generally growing with age, death is the great equalizer. Rich or poor, everybody dies. This is the only thing stopping unfettered hoarding of wealth. Would Bill Gates give away his money if he never aged? I don't know, but it does seem less likely. We'd be stuck in a society where the elders own and control everything, and the young would fight to survive. Murder would replace age-related illness as the leading cause of death.

For this society to work, the time value of money has to be negative, not positive. Money has to decay with time, not grow. This is the way money should work today, but good luck convincing our overlords.

Re:Of course we can

[Khashishi]

Isn't every cause of death medical?

Re:Of course we can

[Applehu Akbar]

Just like all the other times, we will have to adapt to the elimination of aging when the time comes. In the good old days before civilization and technology, there was no such thing as grandparenthood. As soon as the longest-lived individuals started to survive plague and war to live that long, we adapted to the new reality.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time we have cured aging, the cost of living will have dropped dramatically and the standard of living will have risen.

That or we all die off from bioterror or climate change.

Re:Of course we can

[GodWasAnAlien]

> This is the only thing stopping unfettered hoarding of wealth.

Except for corporations, which have no lifespan limit.

Re: Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can't live forever."

Provably not, but a good few hundred years seems achievable. We are only taught exactly what you said, but that doesn't need to be the end of it. A different view of aging seems in order as we go forward, rather than your defeatist attitude.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't give in to the "sitting on a cure" thing myself, I don't really consider all of the pharma industries in the world just waiting at the edge of their seats to announce they found a cure either.

They're businesses. They gotta keep the money rolling in.

If they found a cure that worked very well, was easy to administer, safe to administer, and cheap to produce - it'd mean they'll be throwing out their billion dollar -treatment- routines that people keep having to come back to otherwise.

So I wouldn't be surprised they'd delay those kinds of cures as long as possible with "extensive testing and research".

If they found a cure that worked but they could conceivably charge a lot more for than treatment options.. sure. Since it'll only be the richest of the rich that will be able to afford it anyway and the treatments will still sell for the rest.

Re:Of course we can

[Luckyo]

All accidents are "medical" in nature in that they cause damage to the body that is medically treatable to an extent, just like any other illness. Therefore, if we could "eliminate all medical causes of death", we would be immortal.

How our minds would survive such an ordeal is a whole different story.

Re:Of course we can

[Khashishi]

I'm pretty sure grandparents existed long before agriculture.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've seen one analysis that estimates that if all medical causes of death were eliminated, we would enjoy an average lifespan of about 650 before some accident would kill us."

I've seen an analysis that shows that I'm the Queen of Roumania.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, she died, just as parents die even though their children carrying their DNA live on.

Re:Of course we can

[flyneye]

Go to Youtube and search for "Run from the Cure"
It seems marijuana cures most cancers and many other diseases.
Of course, this will never be official news due to the Medical Industry, the Government with their U.N. treaty against marijuana, the Media with their livelihood dependent on government and all the people who see it as "too good to be true" because they never heard it from a doctor, the government or the media.
Not actually medicine that makes you high, this comes from vegetative plants in the pre-flower stage. You can't patent marijuana, so the medical industry will never be producing this cure.

Re:Of course we can

[alva_edison]

If they found a cure that worked very well, was easy to administer, safe to administer, and cheap to produce - it'd mean they'll be throwing out their billion dollar -treatment- routines that people keep having to come back to otherwise.

That's what patents are supposedly for. No matter how cheap it is to produce, they would have a limited monopoly on it, so they could charge much more than a free market would normally allow.

Not that I normally endorse free markets, I believe from a consumer point of view they break in half once you get two or three large players that shut out other competition.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless the country would suddenly become a "terrorist country", and punished accordingly...

Re:Of course we can

[beldon]

I know I'm very late to this discussion, but here goes anyway-- I work in a non-scientific role for the American Association for Cancer Research, so I'm pretty close to most of the research that goes on nowadays. There is no conspiracy to hide a real cure to cancer because cancer isn't one disease-- it's over 200 different diseases. They all involve irregular cell growth, but the similarities pretty much end there. The causes and mechanisms of cancers are many and varied and so the idea that there can be "a cure" for all cancers is ridiculous. There is one thing-- not a conspiracy, but a sad fact. As government research funding gets gutted in the interest of "fiscal responsibility" or some such nonsense, prevention research is suffering. Basic research into human physiology, biochemistry, and other subjects may not yield results for decades. Neither a corporation nor a philanthropic billionaire wants to wait to see the fruits of their efforts. That's where the government is in a unique position to take the reins and do this kind of long-term thing. The AACR is a key partner in the Rally for Medical Research. This is an alliance of over 100 organizations that are about all sorts of conditions and diseases-- not just cancer. They sponsor rallies and "Hill Days" to bend the ears of representatives in Washington, DC. I highly encourage anyone who is genuinely interested to get involved. Also, if you're looking for information on where we are in the fight against cancer from a reliable source, check out http://cancerprogressreport.or... We publish one of these every year at this time. The 2014 report will be released tomorrow and gives a great overview as to where progress has been made and where we are maybe losing ground and why (if we know).

Re:Of course we can

[bwwatr]

Depends on semantics. By some definitions, you could say an accident/trauma isn't medical, while a heart attack is. I've certainly heard the word used that way. In any case, I think the point was: (i) consider aging to be a medical process, (ii) eliminate all medical reasons for death, (iii) it'd take an average of 650 years for a lethal accident to find you. Kind of a neat exercise.

Re:Of course we can

[Carnildo]

I've seen one analysis that estimates that if all medical causes of death were eliminated, we would enjoy an average lifespan of about 650 before some accident would kill us.

The interesting thing with this is not the average, but the change in the distribution. Currently, the population curve has a sharp drop-off around the age of 70; with the elimination of medical causes of death, the curve will assume the shape of a decaying exponential, making that 650-year life expectancy more akin to a "half life".

If such a change happened today, of the 6 billion or so individuals currently alive, at least one of them could be expected to reach an age of over 20,000 years.

Re:Of course we can

[Applehu Akbar]

And if you don't like the politics of today's 60-year-olds, imagine the political values o cautious, ultraconservative 20,000-year-olds.

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

"...cancer isn't one disease-- it's over 200 different diseases. They all involve irregular cell growth, but the similarities pretty much end there"

This is incorrect, nearly all (possibly all) cancer cells are aneuploid.[1] This was originally thought to be the "cause of cancer", but was largely abandoned because researchers could not find any *specific* anueploidy related to a given cancer.[2] As we know now, multiple genotypes can result in the same phenotype so the idea that the aneuploidy theory was wrong for that reason is incorrect. Now, even if aneuploidy is not the cause of cancer, it is definitely a shared characteristic of the vast majority. If we had a way of targeting non-diploid cells we would have a general "cure for cancer". We do not currently have a way of doing this, but there has also been very little funding for it.

One reason that this is so sparsely studied is because the main proponent of this theory since the 1980s has been Peter Duesberg, who combined this claim with one that HIV does not cause AIDS in a 1987 paper: "Indeed transformation appears to be a virus-independent, cellular event for which chromosome abnormalities are the only specific markers. Likewise the AIDS viruses are shown not to be sufficient to cause AIDS, and the evidence that they are necessary to cause it is debated."[3] Duesberg was then essentially blacklisted for the HIV claim and could no longer get sufficient funding for his projects.

Since then some researchers fear that if they are associated with him or his ideas the same will happen to them. Others are simply are not aware of this relationship, or do not put much effort into it since the main proponent has been "discredited". For example, I was not exposed to the relationship between aneuploidy and cancer *at all* during my graduate training. If there is near 100% correlation between aneuploidy and cancer it seems like something to mention, regardless of whose idea it was. So please, raise awareness of the anueploidy-cancer relationship amongst those you work with.

I personally was quickly convinced that this approach should receive far more attention/funding at the expense of the attempts at targeting specific point-mutations or signal transduction pathways. These approaches should not be expected to work long-term because cancer cells are genetically unstable and thus will acquire drug resistance. This is why generic chemo and radiation (targeting cell-division) are still the treatments of choice.

1) The chromosomal basis of cancer. Cell Oncol. 2005;27(5-6):293-318.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16373963
Also available here: http://www.davidrasnick.com/Claims_of_diploid_cancer_files/2005%20Cell%20Oncol%20Duesberg%20et%20al.pdf
2) Aneuploidy vs. gene mutation hypothesis of cancer: recent study claims mutation but is found to support aneuploidy.. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Mar 28;97(7):3236-41.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10725343
3) Retroviruses as carcinogens and pathogens: expectations and reality. Cancer Res. 1987 Mar 1;47(5):1199-220.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3028606

Re:Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

lol no doubt..scientists in general can also be some of the most ego driven people alive, and there is a LOT of cancer researchers out there. we couldn't keep our own hemorrhoids secret if they were publishable. probably not a chance in hell any of us could sit on any significant finding without our head exploding. getting a well-cited paper in a high impact factor journal is too critical to career and epeen/testicular fortitude. hell, i'd kill everyone in my current lab for a Cell paper. :

      with more and more targeted therapies showing promise, cancer treatment will continue down the path of personalized medicine to hopefully make cancer a more manageable disease like diabetes. it's a part of us and isnt going anywhere. but, all the magic bullets in the world wont stop the need for the nasty chemo agents/nuclear medicine any time soon, but they do lower the dose needed/side effects felt and raise effectiveness. (usually)

      the great hope of priming the immune system has been around forever and just has not been as successful as hoped. it's a HUGE area of research, and should be, but generally speaking any tumor that grows to 1cm+ is pretty much invisible to immune surveillance. getting RNAi more viable as a human therapeutic, and to the needed area, will go a long way towards truly tailoring the cocktail to the patient's tumor and should be a monumental gain, in all aspects of patient care...not just cancer. too early to know how that will play out...complicated shit-storm of off-target effects and inflammation currently. works well in the eye though...

someone mentioned cost: when i was in school a question on my comps was the cost of ID/development and moving a lead target to FDA trials. i think it was ~$300-400 million for the tail end, and since most compounds fail clinical trials....well, there's no small pharm companies for a reason. that was well over 10 years ago. the newest drugs out can cost $7-12k+/month but it's not like those drugs are big money makers. (im not defending big pharm, they're more evil than ppl know.)
 

Cure is ozone...

[AlanDenny]

I made contact, they gave me a peace offering, the cure for cancer is ozone. Needs to be developed, not sure how though.

Re:Cure is ozone...

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about, aliens?

Re:Cure is ozone...

[HiThere]

Well, ozone is fatal to most cells, so I suppose that if you exposed cancerous cells to it, it would kill them. Hydrogen peroxide is easier, though, and just as deadly. Hell, even pure O2 is pretty deadly.

My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife just died of breast cancer this week -- she did not live to be 40 -- so articles and research like this give me hope that, when our child grows up, cancer will not be something that takes people's lives away from them so quickly and so young. This is a site for geeks, so I am sure a lot of people know about the brilliant nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, and how his wife Arline Greenbaum died of tuberculosis in the 1940s.

Today of course, tuberculosis is no longer a death sentence the way it was in the mid-20th century, and I think, well before end of this century, cancer will no longer become a death sentence either.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucks, although I'm sure you don't need us to tell you that.

Live and be awesome at it.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat ironically, we finally seem to be making progress in the fight against cancer at the same time we are losing the fight against bacteria. Take tuberculosis, for example, there are only a few drugs left that work. In fact, the fda just approved a drug bedaquiline that would have failed its clinical trial had it been practically any other kind of drug. You see, people who were taking it were dying at an alarming rate. It was approved because we don't have any other weapons against multi-drug resistant TB.

In 2013 in the US more people died of antibiotic resistant bacteria than died of AIDS.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Rich0]

In a sense this is a self-regulating problem. If a LOT of people start dying from bacterial infections you'll see new antibiotics developed. The problem today is that there isn't much public funding for antibiotics, and there isn't much demand for new ones. Sure, the few who need them REALLY need them, but stuff like MRSA is still fairly rare. Nobody wants to pay $100k for a 10-day supply of antibiotics.

The problem is that developing a new antibiotic costs around $100M or so. (Well, it would be more accurate to say that the new antibiotic would cost $10-20M, but to find it you'd have to spend $80M on a bunch of other antibiotics that don't work out.) Whether you believe in patents or not, SOMEBODY has to spend that money if we want a new antibiotic. The market just doesn't exist for that kind of expenditure, so you won't see private companies doing it until the market grows (ie, more people start dying). Governments don't seem to care much about the issue either - any of the first world nations could easily fund this research but they all want somebody else to do it for them so that they can just do compulsory licensing of the resulting products and get them for cheap (well, the US won't do this since they're in bed with Pharma, but they're busy bombing people in Iraq). Tragedy of the commons...

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

stuff like MRSA is still fairly rare.

No. No, it isn't. You're wrong and are disseminating dangerous disinformation.

I'll go ahead and cite my med school lecture from last week on that, but if you want more feel free to google on your own. I'll throw you a bone from
http://www.mrsasurvivors.org/s...:

MRSA infections and colonization has steadily increased over the years and in 1974. 2% of all staph. aureus infections were MRSA, 22% in 1995 and in 2004 it was 64% with an estimate of over 70% of all staph is now MRSA. In the community, it is estimated that 60% of all skin and soft tissue infections that doctors treat are MRSA infections.

Also, FYI, the current cost to bring a new drug to market is $~1 billion. Plenty of cites trivially available on google for that, too.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[angel'o'sphere]

However it is well known how to prevent that bacteria become "multiple resistant" against antibiotics.
Nevertheless the US does nothing against it ... e.g. forbidding antibiotics in animal breeding (just one thing).

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[angel'o'sphere]

You are an Idiot!
If a LOT of people start dying from bacterial infections you'll see new antibiotics developed.
How do you think that should/could work? Oh, it is like software development: requiremt, a stuff that kills bacteria. Solution: take this. Done.
Moron!
The problem today is that there isn't much public funding for antibiotics, and there isn't much demand for new ones.
The demand is huge, but finding one that "works different" than all the ones before, hence the bacteria are not immune is nearly impossible.
Sure, the few who need them REALLY need them, but stuff like MRSA is still fairly rare.
Rare compared to what? Death by car accidents? MRSA is the next big killer to man kind, it is just waiting to happen. You really have no clue at all, you annoy me, you make me angry!

http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/tracki...
Ten year old news: http://www.webmd.com/skin-prob...

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

stuff like MRSA is still fairly rare.

No. No, it isn't. You're wrong and are disseminating dangerous disinformation.

I'll go ahead and cite my med school lecture from last week on that, but if you want more feel free to google on your own. I'll throw you a bone from
http://www.mrsasurvivors.org/s...:

MRSA infections and colonization has steadily increased over the years and in 1974. 2% of all staph. aureus infections were MRSA, 22% in 1995 and in 2004 it was 64% with an estimate of over 70% of all staph is now MRSA. In the community, it is estimated that 60% of all skin and soft tissue infections that doctors treat are MRSA infections.

Also, FYI, the current cost to bring a new drug to market is $~1 billion. Plenty of cites trivially available on google for that, too.

And you might be better off spending that $~1billion increasing compliance with existing hospital procedures--trainings, leadership, additional staff, anyplace that makes people more likely to wash their hands before patient care. The number of people who get infections in hospitals is really bad.

Ironically, that won't directly help the top hospitals much, where bigger names in the field might rather have the new antibiotics--but it would do wonders for a lot of the non-top hospitals.

Truthfully, of course, we should do both.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[ncc74656]

My wife just died of breast cancer this week -- she did not live to be 40 -- so articles and research like this give me hope that, when our child grows up, cancer will not be something that takes people's lives away from them so quickly and so young.

Mine passed a year ago last Saturday of uterine cancer; she was 33. You're probably feeling absolutely gutted right about now. Things will improve slowly, but they will improve. Just yesterday, I was looking through photos for something to illustrate a fundraising page for a run benefiting cancer research. I got a bit choked up on an engagement photo, but that only served to tell me that was the picture to use. Those kinds of things will most likely keep happening for a long time to come...probably forever, at some level. They'll come along less frequently, though, and mostly around things like birthdays and anniversaries. Keeping busy—with work, friends, hobbies, etc.—might help; it seems to have helped me out, at least.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Rich0]

When I talk to the average person on the street in the US, they talk about ISIS. They might even talk about the NSA. They don't talk about MRSA.

The demand SHOULD be huge, but the reality is that it isn't.

This article suggests that we only JUST started spending $30M per year on antibiotic research. At that pace it seems like it would take years to come up with a viable drug, and that is only if the NSF/NIH spend some of the money on actual development and not just blue-sky research, which they rarely do. Clinical trials are the expensive part, and usually the government just tries to sell the drug to a pharma company and get them to fund those. That means that only the strongest candidates would be pursued, and most likely the resulting drugs will be expensive. If there was money in any of this the drug companies would be spending their own money.

Being rude isn't going to make a cure emerge either. I realize that R&D isn't like building a bridge. There is a lot of serendipity involved. However, if you're spending $0 on R&D you'll probably have a lot less serendipity than if you are spending $100M on it.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Rich0]

The cost to develop a drug is actually a matter of considerable debate. I'll agree that $100M is a lower-end figure for it. Most of the cost depends on how many failed candidates you factor into the calculations. The cost to actually develop a successful drug is probably $50M or so. The problem is that for every one of those you have many failures, but most of those tend to be abandoned before the full $50M gets spent.

My point is just that MRSA isn't commonplace enough to be a priority for private investment. People will pay $25k for a cancer treatment, but not for an antibiotic. Antibiotics aren't taken chronically either.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for spending more on antibiotics. The money should come from taxes, and the resulting antibiotics should be illegal to prescribe except when there is evidence that other antibiotics would be effective (or something to this effect, I'm more than happy to let the experts define the appropriate diagnostic criteria but I certainly don't want to see the NIH spend $1B on a MRSA cure only to see it put in "hand soap").

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[LetterRip]

It doesn't cost anywhere close to that to bring a new drug to market try more like 43 million, but actually a lot less.

http://www.pharmamyths.net/fil...

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[antdude]

Sorry to hear that. I had an online friend who died before he reached 40. Same with my grandqueen. Cancer can hit anyone. :(

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[u38cg]

Wrong. Antibiotics as a chemical class are pretty much played out. There is plenty of funding for research - big pharma would love a MRSA killer. The substances simply don't exist.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[sFurbo]

That figure is misleading in the extreme. Even the 1 billion figure is low-balling it.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Rich0]

I don't really see any evidence for substantial spending on antibiotic R&D. If you can point to some kind of citation for this I'm certainly curious.

Antibiotics aren't really a chemical class either, since there are many mechanisms of action. A chemical class would be something like beta-lactam antibiotics, etc. I suspect that particular class is mostly played-out, but there are potentially as many mechanisms for attacking bacteria as there are unique metabolic pathways in bacteria.

I don't mean to trivialize drug development - it seems to have slowed down across the board which probably reflects that most of the "low-hanging fruit" is gone. I think it is a far stretch to go from that to saying that there won't be any new drugs of any particular kind.

Looking at this, it seems like we have about 75k MRSA cases per year. If you want to make a decent profit of around $100M/yr off of that, then you need to charge about $1500 per case. That wouldn't be an amazing blockbuster, but it probably would be sustainable. If you could charge $15k/case then it would be a solidly profitable drug.

There are a few problems with those numbers. One is whether introducing an antibiotic would reduce the incidence rate. Obviously we would want it to, but that means fewer cases, and so you need to charge more per case. Also, what percentage of those cases are among people with insurance willing to pay those kinds of fees for treatment. If you end up treating people for a reduced charge or for free, then again there isn't much profit.

If some first world nation offered a bounty for a treatment that made up for these shortcomings I bet you'd see a determined effort to discover a new antibiotic.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[u38cg]

Sorry, I meant that the spending capability is there if the financial case justifies it.

And no, there aren't massive swathes of potential avenues of attack. There are only the pathways that bacteria don't share with humans where the drug has no other toxic effect. There will be new antibiotics - no question - but its questionable whether there will ever be another sulphonamide or penicillin.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad to hear of your wife. Tuberculosis (which is a bacteria) is on the rise once again because of multiple resistance amongst bacteria. There are many challenges in medicine and engineering ahead! But as always... How do we get people to want to pay for boring but necessary things like medicines?

Monopolies such as patents and copyrights seem to be crumbling - Marijuana (and other drugs substances) getting legal in more and more places will be competition to patented medicines. There is no worry for copyrighted entertainment - people will always want to be entertained so there will always be money in that in one way or another. But medicines.... people hardly think about those before they (or someone close ) are affected.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

"The average per capita spent across the entire EU (including European Commission and Trans-European Organisation spending) was €2.56 (US$3.30), while the per capita spent in the US was €17.63 (US$22.76)—seven times greater."

It is a bit dated, but.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030267

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. That really is worrying. I was actually asked the other week when donating blood whether I wanted my blood to be in immunology research against tuberculosis. I thought that was a good idea to be. Some people are naturally more resistant to diseases than other. If we can figure out how the body does that.. maybe we can find ways to synthetically mimic those "natural resistances".

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes we really need to find incentivizers for ordinary citizens to invest in boring-but-necessary stuff. Monopolies just won't hold for much longer. Maybe social media could give us clues...

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[Rich0]

This is cancer spending, not antibiotic spending. Cancer gets a lot more attention, probably because most people know people who have died from cancer, many of them relatives, and fear dying from it themselves some day the way they don't fear dying from MRSA.

Re:My wife just died of cancer this week

[angel'o'sphere]

Antibiotics are usually found by accident.
It is pretty difficult to make a systematic search.
However I have no idea how much actually is spent directly for antibiotics research.
I guess to tackle MRSAs a new antibioticum is not enough. I assume phages could perhaps help, but finding or 'crafting' one that attacks exactly that specific bacterium might be similar hard.

Anti-CD47 most promising

[justcauseisjustthat]

Anti-CD47 is just entering the first human trials at Stanford, and shows a lot of promise. We really should start seeing declining deaths rates and better quality of life.

Baking Soda May Help!

[MagickalMyst]

Baking soda may help.

The theory behind it is that cancer grows in an acidic environment. Baking soda neutralizes the acidity making it more difficult for the cancer to grow and easier for the immune system to fight it.

Some examples:

http://drleonardcoldwell.com/2...

http://www.naturalnews.com/042...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

http://www.bibliotecapleyades....

Unfortunately, "mainstream medicine" has yet to accept this treatment as viable and effective; despite the fact that many people have had excellent results. Cancer is big business, and I can't help but think that effective treatments like baking soda are shunned and discredited because big pharma has a vested interest in protecting their profits. That is to say that it is much more profitable to sell someone monthly treatments for the rest of their life than it is to sell them a cure once. Especially if it only costs you 99 cents for a box of baking soda.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always one ...

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[bazorg]

I have two objections on the "big pharma fighting the truth about cancer" point of view... maybe you can give this some thought and comment on them:

1) how can the pharma have a PERFECT bureaucracy that wins EVERY time a new alternative cure comes along? A lot of people say that big pharma has a big cover up operation in place and no cure will ever be publicised or made viable unless it suits big pharma. However, when articles about alternative cures come along, they are always revolutionary and obviously simple. If that's the case, why don't we see something as simple as gathering 100 or 1000 cancer patients, treat them, document the success and only then release the findings on Youtube/P2P/whatever?

2) Consider the annual sales and profits of Big Pharma. Then the same for Big Food. IF there's a simple cure using natural food and basic ingredients that big pharma cannot patent, what's Coca Cola, Pepsico and other similarly large companies waiting for to steal big pharma's lunch?

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[MagickalMyst]

When you have lost loved ones to cancer - and watched them suffer horrendously and miserably after receiving chemotherapy "treatments" - only to have their last days on earth be an agonzing, living hell for them - you start to question the validity of these treatments and begin open yourself up to the possibility that others who have had a very measurable success with unorthodox treatments may very well be onto something very real and special.

Of course, naysayers will always naysay.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

GP here. My mother contracted colorectal cancer, had chemo and radiotherapy and has been clear for the last couple of years. Sure, it's not perfect, more research is needed.

Bu yeah, baking soda. Do the research, conduct some trials.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

The theory behind it is that cancer grows in an acidic environment. Baking soda neutralizes the acidity making it more difficult for the cancer to grow and easier for the immune system to fight it.

This would require modifying the environment within the human body. Your entire body chemistry.

Your body isn't the way it is just because it can be, your body is the end product of millions of years of evolution. Changing the internal structure of it that dramatically will just ensure death.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[MagickalMyst]

Ok, i'll play....

1. Fear.

Many people are afraid to try anything new.

Especially if their doctor tells them "the accepted treatment is chemotherapy.. blah blah blah.." and "...that baking soda stuff - don't believe everything you read on the internet. It's not an accepted medical practice". Doctors can be sued for not following "accepted" practices.

As for documenting successes, I have provided some links. As this is a relatively new discovery I don't know if there are 1000 people who have tried it yet. I think that we will hear more and more success stories with baking soda treatments in the coming years.

However, even if baking soda treatments had only ever cured one single person's cancer (and there have been more than one) then it is still a very important treatment to dedicate serious research to.

Big Pharma does not have a "perfect bureaucracy". If they did we would NEVER hear anything about effective new alternative treatments such as baking soda, marihuana or laetrile.

Instead, the few people who dare to venture into uncharted territories and report their findings to the world are often labelled nutters or conspiracy theorists.

2. There is nothing natural about Coke and Pepsi. They are artificial "slop" drinks and they most likely contribute to cancer. And baking soda cannot be patented.

It may sound silly, but I really don't think that "Pepsi NaHCO3" would be a big money maker anyway.

Personally, if I had cancer I would try everything else before I would accept barbaric chemotherapy treatments. As the saying goes, "if the cancer doesn't kill you, the chemo will".

Enough said.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[MagickalMyst]

Acidity levels in your body are largely affected by your diet.

Eating more alkaline foods - vegetables, generally speaking, and eating less acidic food - such as meats, will also cause acidity levels in the body to change - often dramatically.

This also explains why vegetarians have much lower cancer rates (and health problems in general) than non-vegetarians.

> Changing the internal structure of it that dramatically will just ensure death.

Yes, if it gets too acidic one might be riddled with cancer.

The same principle applies here - the more alkaline the body is the less likely you are to get cancer. If you already have cancer, you have a much better chance of surviving it by adopting an alkaline diet.

Baking soda and most vegetables reduce acidity levels, which helps the body fight cancer.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't diffuse complete nonsense. The pH of the body is regulated within very strict limits, generally 7.35-7.45, and a therapeutic window ie a dose of drug X, in occurrence any alkaline agent, that does not kill the patient while killing the disease does not exist. You either don't kill any cancer cells or die with them by taking too much soda.

It would be extremely easy for any individual researcher to publish this research and become instantly famous. Hell, I could do it tomorrow since I am an oncologist and treat patients with cancer for a living. The problem is that it doesn't work.

Two weeks ago I saw a poor lady who was "treated" with soda infusions. Of course the disease spread and, in addition, she suffered a stroke because of the way the treatment was delivered (via intra-arterial catheter!). It's such a pity that patients, in their considerable emotional distress, actually believe that kind of stuff.

PS: Posting anonymously because the incident with the intra-arterial soda infusions got some legal attention.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Megol]

And some of us have had relatives and friends saved from cancer using the same treatments.

NB that treatment aren't the same all over the world, in the US the therapy will in many cases continue until death occurs while in many other countries the treatment will shift to make the patients remaining time and death as comfortable as possible once it's obvious that the cancer will be lethal.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[ponos]

2) Consider the annual sales and profits of Big Pharma. Then the same for Big Food. IF there's a simple cure using natural food and basic ingredients that big pharma cannot patent, what's Coca Cola, Pepsico and other similarly large companies waiting for to steal big pharma's lunch?

Actually, if a cure was "known" Big Pharma "A" would want to produce it first and charge $$$$$, before Big Pharma "B" does it. It's not like Big Pharma works as a single organism. Multiple companies, competition and all that. Furthermore, don't forget "little pharma". The drug mentioned in the article comes from a little drug company, Agios, not some multi-billion behemoth.Several new drugs have been created by start-ups and were later sold. In fact, Big Pharma mostly does the last part of the pipeline (human trials, FDA accreditations and marketing) but the first part of the drug-discovery process often comes from little inventors who are not afraid to take risks.

I happen to know two people who are in the drug "startup" business and would be quite happy to make $$$$$ selling a cure for cancer to Big Pharma. These are the people that actually do in vitro/in vivo experiments and, trust me, if compound ZZZ were very effective they would be very happy to test it immediately, even if it meant loss of billions for other companies.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[MagickalMyst]

>The problem is that it doesn't work.

Perhaps it didn't work for you, but it has worked for others. And it has been documented. (Chemotherapy usually kills people; but sometimes it helps them too. Nothing is 100% effective.)

>she suffered a stroke because of the way the treatment was delivered

If treatment wasn't administered properly and therefore didn't work, that is not surprising.

> got some legal attention.

Not surprising at all.

> It's such a pity that patients, in their considerable emotional distress, actually believe that kind of stuff.

What's worse is people's blind faith in modern medicine. With the exception of emergency services and a few others, modern medicine is little more than glorified barbarianism. If they aren't shoving your body full of pills, they're cutting pieces out of you.

Prevention is the key here. A healthy diet, regular exercise and a positive attitude goes a long way. As does open-mindedness and not being afraid to try something new.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

This also explains why vegetarians have much lower cancer rates (and health problems in general) than non-vegetarians.

I have a problem with this misleading comment, non-vegetarians is a rather large group. How about we define if further.

Do vegetarians have a lower chance of cancer than those that are obese, eat a lot of processed food not recommended by a dietitian? Sure! These are non-vegetarians

Do those that eat healthy, portion controlled chicken, red meat, pork, fish along with vegetables, fruit, nuts, wholegrains and other natural nutritious foods have a higher incidence of cancer than vegetarians? DO THEY????

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[tomhath]

Those links talk of "studies" and "journals" but don't provide links to them. I did find this link

The main proponent of sodium bicarbonate as an alternative cancer treatment is Tullio Simoncini, MD. ..

According to the Cancer Treatment Watch Web site, "[Dr. Simoncini] has been using unsubstantiated cancer treatments for 15 years in 2003, his [Italian] license to practice medicine was withdrawn, and in 2006 he was convicted by an Italian judge for wrongful death and swindling"

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Acidity levels in your body are largely affected by your diet. "

Nope, there's a control system to keep your pH within narrow limits.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say after seeing whats going on on the research end of things, it is extremely unlikely clinicians are getting good advice. Just look up NHST hybrid, in the vast majority of cases, the way they decide what counts as evidence or not was invented on accident by a guy writing an introductory textbook.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and thats not to say these alternative treatment strategies have anything more going for them. In most cases the situation there is much worse, at least they have the excuse of low funding though.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Applehu Akbar]

If it were anything so simple as ozone or baking soda, we would have known it years ago.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[towermac]

Please don't diffuse complete nonsense. The pH of the body is regulated within very strict limits, generally 7.35-7.45, and a therapeutic window ie a dose of drug X, in occurrence any alkaline agent, that does not kill the patient while killing the disease does not exist. You either don't kill any cancer cells or die with them by taking too much soda.

I'm going to take you at your word that you're an expert, but as a listener you suck. He never said anything about anything 'killing' anything.

He said (to paraphrase): "It seems to make it harder to grow", and, "I'm not a researcher", and "I've seen more than one person go into remission, ostensibly as a result".

It would be extremely easy for any individual researcher to publish this research and become instantly famous. Hell, I could do it tomorrow since I am an oncologist and treat patients with cancer for a living. The problem is that it doesn't work.

Two weeks ago I saw a poor lady who was "treated" with soda infusions. Of course the disease spread and, in addition, she suffered a stroke because of the way the treatment was delivered (via intra-arterial catheter!). It's such a pity that patients, in their considerable emotional distress, actually believe that kind of stuff.

PS: Posting anonymously because the incident with the intra-arterial soda infusions got some legal attention.

Now see I don't think he said that either. Intravenous 'Soda Infusions' sounds like crazy nutter shit to me; I believe his people were eating the baking soda.

He said another thing: If it appeared to cure one person, then it's worth looking into. That's the one thing he said that I am sure is true; there's no such thing as magic, *something* cured them. Of course they are flying blind without scientific training, and only doing it because they feel they have nothing to lose.

What I don't like, is not so much the out-of-hand dismissal, you're entitled to that if you're an expert in the field; but the idea that to even talk about it, is somehow doing a disservice to cancer victims and is a bad thing. Right here in the comments on an article about thinking outside the box in cancer treatment.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, you cite four links.

One is about Vernon Johnston. The second is a Natural News (Mike Adams, arch conspiracy theorist) story about the same guy. Now let's be charitable and take this 100% at face value - real guy, real diagnisis, real remission. Sometimes it does go away, but this is one case. The plural of anecdote is not data.

The we have a clipping from "Weekly World News" - I'm not from the USA but I know this paper's MO - it is not a credible source. Country doctor, maple syrup, yadda, yadda, I'm sure he believes what he's doing, but is just more annecdote with no data to back it up.

And then a story about treatment from a Doctor that got struck off and done for manslaughter and fraud.

If this is the best evidence that you can provide then you fail it.

Maybe it is helpful, who knows, but do the goddamn research, conduct credible trials and prove it's effective. There's not a legitimate researcher on earth who wouldn't be all over this if there was any good evidence that it was effective.

But Big Pharma Consipiracy, yeah, so scientists die of cancer now so that they protect a worldwide cartel who are supressing the "truth". Right,

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[gomiam]

When you have lost loved ones to cancer -

Excuse me if you aren't the only one to have gone through that.

and watched them suffer horrendously and miserably after receiving chemotherapy "treatments" -

Or not. Different people react differently to differente chemotherapy treatments.

only to have their last days on earth be an agonzing, living hell for them -

Sorry for that to be your case. Fortunately, chemotherapy actually avoids that fate in many cases.

you start to question the validity of these treatments and begin open yourself up to the possibility that others who have had a very measurable success with unorthodox treatments may very well be onto something very real and special.

Until you notice that they have had no measurable success, that they are based on quack science (cancer grows on acidity? How does that explain leukemia?), and that, actually, some of them have narrowly escaped being sentenced to prison for manslaughter.

Re: Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

As another doctor and Internist (not the same as the AC), it absolutely hurts to keep talking about the same quackery that has been discussed and dismissed decades ago. It brings false hope to desperate people. It keeps people away from legitimate treatments (Eg: Steve Jobs) which may lead to worse outcomes because of the delay. And it wastes the precious time of both the patient and the medical staff, and promotes distrust of the very people who could likely help cancer patients the most. This is not a benign discussion.

On the technical aspects, anyon

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, I think that the patients on which nonsense treatments actually work, likely were misdiagnosed and didn't have cancer in the first place, but were rather ill from something lesser, which was cured by their immune system as normal.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[ColdWetDog]

I take it that you flunked statistics.
And calculus.
And biology.

But keep it up, positive thinking is good for you.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[wierd_w]

This is true for "general" treatments. (Treatments applied to the whole body, EG-- "General Anesthetic") However, there are also local treatments that are more targeted that can change the environment locally.

Several such treatments exist. In the feild of cancer specifically, you have the various direct radiation treatments, the various nanoparticle+radiowave treatments, and of course, local excision treatments.

In the case of colon cancer, the inner wall of the colon has evoloved to handle some pretty extreme changes in pH, and also insane levels of salinity. Circumstances that if presented in the rest of the body would kill the patient in minutes. (If not seconds).

This tissue is also very thin, only a few millimeters thick.

The crime that the OP really has comitted is assuming that all cancers are interchangable as a general category. They arent.

In the case of colon cancer, a concentrated baking soda enema (or even a supository) would work to keep the ambient pH inside the colon quite low, and would be in direct or nearly direct contact with the cancer spreading in the colon wall at the same time. Healthy colon cells would be easily able to handle this environment, but diseased ones would not.

The major risk of complication comes from disruption of GI Flora from prolonged alterations of the pH in that environment (and from administration of probably not-very-sterile sodium bicarbonate solution directly introducing new microbial strains), and from the risk of possible impaction (if using a supository) or rupture (from overzealous enema use)

As long as the cancer has not yet metasticised, there is no real compelling reason not to couple such a clinically untested treatment like bicarbonate exposure along with a more well documented anti-cancer regimen, but some caveats apply. (If surgery was used to remove the cancer from the colon wall, then common sense applies. Dont use enemas unless directed to do so by your physician. You DONT want your colon to rupture, especially when you are immunosuppressed from having cancer.)

Just understand that not all cancers are created equally. Colorectal cancer is a very real, epidemic form of cancer. However, the ways you treat it are very different from how you would treat, eg, blood cell type cancers, or cancers in bone tissue. You dont need general application of treatment with some forms of cancer.

Re: Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

People who worry can't enjoy life. What is the value of living if you can't enjoy it? You may be surprised if you knew the percentage of people who would rather live in ignorant bliss and happy and not having to worry about all the plagues of the world - until the day their symptoms start showing.

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[demonrob]

Personally, if I had cancer I would try everything else before I would accept barbaric chemotherapy treatments. As the saying goes, "if the cancer doesn't kill you, the chemo will". .

And in my case the chemo mopped up the excess cancer cells from all the cancerous lymph nodes they couldn't remove via (barbaric) surgery. So it might be barbaric but in my case it worked. One more nodule removed, several unremovable but controlled by (barbaric) Avastin. So chemo is bad, very bad, but it can work. Of course there are the alternatives..... (no thanks).

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's not a legitimate researcher on earth who wouldn't be all over this if there was any good evidence that it was effective."

You mean if any good evidence managed to pass through the peer-review system of a prestigious journal. As if they'd dare to be associated with quacksalvery. The problem is how publishing works ( or doesn't work ).

Re:Baking Soda May Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

No it would probably not be very easy to get it published, because the journal won't want to be associated with quacksalvery.

Can't or don't want?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a multi-gazillion dollar pharmaceutical etc business behind cancer that would be very upset if a cure was found. I suspect that If cancer was insta-kill instead of the slow-death-money-milking disease that it is, a cure would have been found a long time ago. Same goes for HIV/AIDS

Re:Can't or don't want?

[Mike Frett]

The thing about AIDS is the fact that while it could have been controlled and extinguished a long time ago, it works on the Human desire to procreate. I know it's really hard to take and will upset people but if we did mass testing on the entire planet and placed all the infected people on a large Island inhabited only by them; AIDS would be a thing of the past for the rest of us. But things like silly morals get in the way of that.

What really bothers new is all the NEW Viruses just in the past 10-20 years. Nobody wants to say it but we all know it's because of overpopulation. Until we do something about that, you can expect more of the same. There just comes a time where you have to throw morals out the window in order to correct things.

Re:Can't or don't want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. I've seen lots of friends die of AIDS in the early 90s. Now HIV/AIDS is under control. It's now a chronical disease that people can live long productive lives with, as long as they take their drugs. When treated early, most infected people will be asymptomatic except for the (relatively mild) side effects of the drugs. I wish we could say that for most cancers.

Of course unlike cancer, HIV is communicable. And unlike Ebola, it killed many rich white men. These factors might have contributed to the success story of its treatment.

Re:Can't or don't want?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've seen lots of friends die of AIDS in the early 90s"

How do you distinguish between dying of AIDS and dying of AZT-treatment?

"Of course unlike cancer, HIV is communicable. "
How many times would one need to have unprotected sex in order to have a 50% change of getting hiv from an infected partner?

Re:Can't or don't want?

[afxgrin]

Technically once? If the chance is 50% that's the odds of a coin flip landing favorably.

Re:Can't or don't want?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can take this as a rough estimate:
"Pooled female-to-male (0.04% per act [95% CI 0.01-0.14]) and male-to-female (0.08% per act [95% CI 0.06-0.11]) transmission estimates in high-income countries indicated a low risk of infection in the absence of antiretrovirals."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19179227

Re: Can't or don't want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you go first. Kill yourself. There goes part of the problem. Oh, are you telling me you will not because you're oh-so-special? You're part of an elite of superintelligent individuals whose survival is critical to civilization? Well, let me tell you one secret: you're not. You're shit, a piece of scum, a pile of crap. You are worth nothing. A waste of oxygen. I would suggest driving a screwdriver into your thick skull but there's nothing contained within worth skewering. Die in a fire, turd.

Re:Can't or don't want?

[the gnat]

If cancer was insta-kill instead of the slow-death-money-milking disease that it is

This ignores a basic fact about cancer treatment: standard chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery aren't very profitable for pharmaceutical companies, and for many cancers, that's all we have. They may be profitable for other sectors of the medical system, but these are also a huge drain on the economies of rich-world countries, who have a big incentive to keep costs down. If you get one of the cancers for which there isn't a $100,000/year drug, your only option is a quick course of debilitating treatment aimed at eliminating metastases, which will either work and leave you cancer free (if you're "lucky" and have one of the less aggressive types of cancer, and/or catch it early), or not work, and you'll die in a relatively short time. Or, if you're especially unlucky, the therapy itself will kill you. No pharma company is getting rich off these patients.

If you do get to take the $100,000/year drug, there's a good chance you'll only add a few years to your lifespan anyway. Which is part of the reason why these drugs are so expensive, of course. On the other hand, a drug that could either a) eliminate cancer outright, or b) suppress cancer permanently for as long as it's taken, would be worth an incredible amount of money, either up-front or over the course of decades. And insurance companies and governments would be much happier shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a treatment that might actually "cure" the patient in some meaningful sense (and enable him or her to keep paying taxes and/or insurance premiums!), rather than a treatment that probably isn't going to work over the long term.

Innovation

[Iamthecheese]

I feel medical publishing needs to move away from the current paradigm even more than the open-access journals that have been discussed so widely. The company that made this advance, Agios doesn't seem to be a typical "big pharma" company: They are running lean on market cap (350 million in outstanding shares) and big dreams. Imagine a world with a hundred more companies like this could be creating equally innovative solutions. Then realize that the biggest drug company has a market cap that could be funding over 500 Agios's.

Given advertising costs that number is a little deceptive. Nevertheless we are talking about human trials in the US, an enormously expensive process. It's popular to be conservative about medicine, especially in the US and there's a good reason for that but there's a line between looking for more likely results and wasting money on almost exclusive focus on incremental improvements. We've crossed that line.

Medicine is science and science is moving faster all the time. As a society we need to keep up by focusing capital on smaller, more agile companies, not only to prevent the tragedy of unaddressed new problems but to move the state of the art forward as fast as possible. There are lives to be saved.

Cancer is too profitable

[Anonymous Coward]

The Republicans have blocked every good treatment so far so why should we expect their kind to allow this? No. They want us to die.

Re:Cancer is too profitable

[Anonymous Coward]

greenwow, you need another hobby besides trolling on slashdot. Moron.

Re:Cancer is too profitable

[ncc74656]

The Republicans have blocked every good treatment so far so why should we expect their kind to allow this?

Choke on the barbed cock of Satan, asshole.

Opportunity to help someone with cancer

[BiggerIsBetter]

This is a link in case anyone on /. is feeling generous and wants to help someone try to survive their fight against cancer... https://www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/savesally/

What a load of bull

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, a load of bull. "If we can't kill Cancer". You'd like that, wouldn't you? No, the Medical industry and corporations would like that disinfo so they can keep selling placebo medicine and useless overpriced medicine to people, as well as all the devices and aperture. If we get a cure for Cancer, the corporations and medical industry stand to lose billions and trillions in the long term.

We've had the means and we know the means, to kill Cancer, for years. We've had the means to make a special bacteria, or use a special solution, that identifies a specific type of cell in the human body, any specific type.
If you have the means to identify it and designate it, then you have the means to eliminate it. Nano-technology helps there, if not specially designed bacteria.

Re:What a load of bull

[ColdWetDog]

Seriously, a load of bull. "If we can't kill Cancer". You'd like that, wouldn't you? No, the Medical industry and corporations would like that disinfo so they can keep selling placebo medicine and useless overpriced medicine to people, as well as all the devices and aperture. If we get a cure for Cancer, the corporations and medical industry stand to lose billions and trillions in the long term.

We've had the means and we know the means, to kill Cancer, for years. We've had the means to make a special bacteria, or use a special solution, that identifies a specific type of cell in the human body, any specific type.
If you have the means to identify it and designate it, then you have the means to eliminate it. Nano-technology helps there, if not specially designed bacteria.

I know! Let's improve this discussion by talking about vaccines.

Here's a crazy idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not work on prevention? Cancer rates have quadrupled in the last century, thanks to our increasing use of synthetic chemicals in food and environment. Why not try to get rid of the causes instead of finding out what other sort of drugs and chemicals we can add to reverse it?

Re:Here's a crazy idea

[tomhath]

How about we do both?

Re:Here's a crazy idea

[u38cg]

A large part of the quadrupling is simply increased survival at all ages increasing exposure to cancer inceptions, plus better diagnostics of boring, non-dangerous cancers.

Re:Here's a crazy idea

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say "large part" it sounds to me like you're trying to say that cancer rates haven't changed that much. The mortality rate has increased seven-fold in the last century in the U.S, despite that methods for early diagnosis and successful treatment have improved tremendously. Today, 1 out of 3 deaths in the U.S is due cancer. This is not normal. You are seriously underestimating the negative effects of pervasive use of synthetic chemicals.

Re:Here's a crazy idea

[u38cg]

We did have a little thing called "smoking" which was quite popular in the 20th century. A second order effect was something called "industrialisation". Another second order effect was the fact you became ten times less likely to die of accident or disease. Yeah, certain cancers in certain cases are driven by environmental exposures, and other cancers have trends we don't have explanations for. From there to "it's getting worse" is an unsupportable leap.

Re:Here's a crazy idea

[Carnildo]

Why not try to get rid of the causes instead of finding out what other sort of drugs and chemicals we can add to reverse it?

We could try it, but I don't think you'd be very happy.

The #1 cause of cancer is old age. People are dying of cancer in droves because they aren't dying of tuberculosis, or pneumonia, or cholera, or epidemic smallpox, or infected cuts, or any of the other causes of death we've eliminated in the past century.

DNA copying isn't perfect. It takes, on average, 70 years for enough mutations to build up to bypass the body's anti-cancer defenses and become cancerous. Life expectancy at adulthood has gone up from 60 years to 75 years in the past century or so, and the resulting explosion in cancer cases is quite predictable.

Re:Here's a crazy idea

[david_thornley]

Look, everybody dies of something, sometime. If you start eliminating various things that kill people, the ones that are harder to treat are going to cause more and more deaths. Saying that a third of Americans die of cancer is meaningless in itself. Is the cancer rate among medically similar people growing?

How about the linked article?

[ponos]

Let me give you a brief summary of TFA:
- Some cancers have IDH1, IDH2 mutations that change cellular metabolism
- This drug is the first targeting the IDH2 enzyme that has been tested in humans
- 6 out of 7 patients whose disease (leucemia) had the specific IDH2 mutations had "objective response" to the drug, ie the disease burden was reduced. Note, this does not mean cure.

Now, this is obviously good news, in the same spirit as previous targeted agents like vemurafenib, erlotinib, trastuzumab, crizotinib, especially since it concerns a new aspect of cellular functioning (metabolism). It's too early to say whether the drug will have long lasting impact, but we'll know more after phase II/III trials. It does seem promising.

For patients with AML or MDS and documented IDH2 mutation, the study (NCT01915498) is still recruiting in several centers around the US and in Paris/France (Institut Gustave-Russy). More information can be found in clinicaltrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=NCT01915498&Search=Search).

Re:How about the linked article?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the cancer cells are aneuploid (like the vast majority apparently are) and thus genetically unstable we shouldn't expect a targeted treatment like this to be effective for long.

Re:How about the linked article?

[ponos]

Well, if the cancer cells are aneuploid (like the vast majority apparently are) and thus genetically unstable we shouldn't expect a targeted treatment like this to be effective for long.

Many targeted treatments have been disappointing in actual practice and very few are effective in the long term (imatinib is a good example). Nevertheless, having a targeted treatment is often better than no treatment at all. Furthermore, due to different, non-overlapping toxicites, these treatments are often feasible in patients who have received chemotherapy in the past or together with chemotherapy (trastuzumab, for example).

In the end, cancer is entropy. That's why it's hard.

Re:How about the linked article?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nevertheless, having a targeted treatment is often better than no treatment at all."

Perhaps, but I doubt there is any good evidence for this. Weak effects and noisy data don't mix well, we are probably taught all sorts of incorrect things based on spurious results. I would suggest getting away from these targeted treatments of at most limited benefit and work on figuring out how to turn aneuploidy as a drug target.

Re:How about the linked article?

[ponos]

"Nevertheless, having a targeted treatment is often better than no treatment at all."

Perhaps, but I doubt there is any good evidence for this. Weak effects and noisy data don't mix well, we are probably taught all sorts of incorrect things based on spurious results. I would suggest getting away from these targeted treatments of at most limited benefit and work on figuring out how to turn aneuploidy as a drug target.

FDA approval typically requires randomized controlled trials, so when a treatment is available it has been tested at least against placebo (if that was the best available treatment at the moment of approval). That's why I say "better than no treatment". A drug that is not better than placebo usually does not make it past the approval stage (and if it does, approval can be quickly revoked, for example bevacizumab in breast cancer: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11...)

What sort of evidence would you expect? For example, the study which established the targeted agent trastuzumab is available online: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1.... Bias and noise are unavoidable, but with my knowledge of statistics the result seems reasonably clear.

Anyway, with respect to your other comment, aneuploidy is not an obvious target but people are working on it and on drugs that interact with the mitotic machinery. Let's hope they will be successful.

Re:How about the linked article?

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a quick look at Romond et al. Usually statistics is the least important issue, it is whether we can conclude anything about the drug from the study even if the "null hypothesis" is false (it is, two groups of people will never have exactly the same average, death rate, etc). The question we want answered is whether there are any alternative plausible explanations for the observed difference (ie effect size) between the groups. For example I could not find any use of the term "blind" in the paper, so we can't say much about that but its discouraging. Figure 2 shows their primary outcome (disease-free survival), if I understand correctly it appears that they lost half their subjects by 2-3 years with this more common in the control group. To me this makes it difficult to extrapolate this effect size to other samples. At the very least that figure is not very clear.

As to what evidence I would expect, I think it is difficult to get high quality evidence on humans. The best we can do is probably to have multiple independent studies reporting similar effect sizes, or better, distributions of outcome. The more detailed the report, the more specific the similarity we can detect, and the more convincing the evidence can be. Most reports are limited by only reporting the mean and error bars.

Also, Is aneuploidy a non-obvious target? I've seen the number that 90-100% of tumors are aneuploid thrown around (eg the Rasnik paper below), but I couldn't easily find where it came from. It seems widely accepted that it is at least very common. Can you point me to a paper where the authors take a normal human cell then introduce a set of point mutations that turns it into a cancer cell? My understanding is that noone has been able to accomplish this.

http://www.davidrasnick.com/Cancer_files/Aneuploidy%20article.pdf

Re:How about the linked article?

[ponos]

Your criticism of the study I mentioned is reasonable, but in the domain of cancer treatment, a hazard ratio for death (a hard endpoint) of 0.67 is good and, in that sense, if you require much stronger evidence and even better trials you may deprive patients of a useful drug in the meantime. The FDA wants to strike a balance between getting an effective drug to patients as soon as possible and not letting pass ineffective treatments. So, as with most things in life, the kind of evidence I cited is often considered "good enough" even though imperfect.

The evidence for the impact of point mutations can be found in several domains, but the simplest observations comes from hereditary syndromes like Li-Fraumeni. A single change in a nucleotide of the TP53 gene and cancer risk increases to almost 100% in affected individuals. This has been repeatedly observed in many different famliies and also in different syndromes (say, retinoblastoma and RB1 gene). Anyway, the evidence for what is called the "somatic mutation theory" is overwhelming and, despite thoughtful criticism, it is probably accepted as the most plausible theory of carcinogenesis (for the moment!). That's why projects like "Cancer Genome Atlas" get massive funding.

So, yes, point mutations are extremely important. Aneuploidy is also important, but in contrast with a well-described mutation, like the BRAF V600E in melanoma, it does not present an immediate, specific target. As I said, people are working on aneuploidy and maybe something new will come from that, but I don't think it's a "low-hanging fruit".

PS Note that somatic mutations do not exclude aneuploidy and vice versa...

Re:How about the linked article?

[Anonymous Coward]

"A single change in a nucleotide of the TP53 gene and cancer risk increases to almost 100% in affected individuals."

Ah, p53 the protein they managed to study for 10 years calling it an "oncogene", then it was determined to be a "tumor suppressor". I mean that's how science works, but it goes to show how long outright wrong ideas can persist. Anyway do you have a cite for that claim? Wikipedia linked to this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12619118. There it does not sound like there is a single point mutation involved, or that any is necessary for LFS to occur. I did not find information on the percent of people with each mutation that develop LFS, but may have missed it.

Since you seem to be informed about this field, I'll take the opportunity to ask again: Can you point me to a paper where the authors take a normal human cell then introduce a set of point mutations that turns it into a cancer cell? It seems like this should be possible or there are specific technical difficulties people have pointed to as an explanation for why not.

Re:How about the linked article?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your criticism of the study I mentioned is reasonable, but in the domain of cancer treatment, a hazard ratio for death (a hard endpoint) of 0.67 is good and, in that sense, if you require much stronger evidence and even better trials you may deprive patients of a useful drug in the meantime."

Same AC. In my earlier post I mentioned that "The question we want answered is whether there are any alternative plausible explanations for the observed difference (ie effect size) between the groups." In that vein, and assuming I interpreted their figure 2 correctly, another explanation for that hazard ratio is that it was more common for members of the control group to feel well and so they were no longer interested in being part of the study, leaving behind only those who were sicker. This explanation would lead us to draw the conclusion that trastuzumab is less effective.

I read the entire discussion and could not find any speculation on possible causes for their result other than trastuzumab, or on why so little follow up data was available. This seems to be a glaring omission to me, that is why I have doubts that I am interpreting that figure correctly. It is not ok to see a difference between groups then jump to the conclusion this is due to the drug, you need to make some effort to rule out other possibilities. I thought up that one relatively quickly so the authors should have as well.

"agios"

[Anonymous Coward]

... did they use the romanized version of the greek word for "saint"?

50% Religious People Pray for a Cure!

[Anonymous Coward]

If 50% of the world's religious people pray for a cure, certainly God would provide one.

Get to work. Stop being lazy. Stop praying for selfish things and do some good for the entire world. Pray 2 hrs a day for a cure to all forms of cancer.

Re: 50% Religious People Pray for a Cure!

[Anonymous Coward]

The research Scientist could be how G-d answers those prayers.

AG-221 quick and unfair summary:

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

This treatment is meant for one type of cancer, leukemia . That too one type of it affecting about 15% of the patients where the root cause is the lack of one enzyme. Supplying that enzyme corrects the defect.

We are far from general cure for cancer.

Who says ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... We can't kill cancer?

Alkaline diet and cannabis... no "drugs" needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously...

Cancer is stupid simple to get rid of and it's happening more and more often in states where cannabis is legal.

No, cannabis itself won't magically cure everyone because people have to stop the habits that are feeding their cancer first. Cannabis will slow the progress of cancer though and once diet/environment is fixed the high cbd versions of cannabis oil is extremely effective at eliminating cancers.

Trillions of dollars into chemicals to fight cancer and all it's done is 'barely' change the statistics of death. Only cancer is showing 100% effectiveness when used properly.

Get real folks, get an education... you've been lied to about cannabis your whole life.

Gleevec - Imatinib Sulfate - doing this for 11 yrs

[Anonymous Coward]

Imatinib Sulfate puts CML and HES into remission in 95% of the patients that can take it (without lethal side effects).

It was approved for use back in 2003 for CML, 2004 for certain types of stomach cancers, and 2006 for HES.

It took doctors almost 4 years to diagnose my HES (Hypereosinophilic Syndrome, a cousin to CML) which was diagnosed in 2009. I have been in remission with the use of Gleevec since 2 weeks after starting it and remain in remission to this day.

Re:Gleevec - Imatinib Sulfate - doing this for 11

[flyingfsck]

Wow, congratulations on beating the devil, but keep on being vigilant.

maybe try some marijuana. CBD helps kill

[Anonymous Coward]

Look it up. CBD helps change cancer cells structure to kill itself when it reproduces. AKA fucks cancer up. Try it, it works

Re:Gleevec - Imatinib Sulfate - doing this for 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks...

The Holy Grail for Pharmaceutical Companies

[theshowmecanuck]

This is what they have been looking for: long term drug therapy they can charge whatever they want for. Pay or die. A cure doesn't pay enough. Yes I am cynical.

Of course we can

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is that you're an ignorant dimwit who uses the standard conspiracist fallacy of affirmation of the consequent. Just because big Pharma benefits from some situation doesn't mean that situation obtains because big Pharma benefits from it. *Intelligent* people deal in *evidence*.

Alkaline or Die

[Anonymous Coward]

Raise your PH level in your body. Cancer cells robbed of oxygen will die.

I really doubt that it's possible

[Cyberax]

I really doubt that it's possible to 'reprogram' cancerous cells. They usually have so many mutations (including seriously weird ones, like chromosome fusion or duplication) that it's a wonder they can still fission.

Hope for future treatment

[MadX]

My daughter was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in July of this year. she is currently in her second round of chemotherapy.
I doubt whether she will be given the opportunity of being part of this research, but I am really glad that there are continuing advancements happening in this field.

And as a personal point of pride, my son (age 15) was tested, and confirmed as a match for stem cell therapy this weekend ! He agreed without hesitation to help his sister.

Another avenue

[kilodelta]

Is telomerase antagonists. The key to all cancers is that the cells use a substance called telomerase to rebuild the telomeres each time the cell divides. In essence it makes the cells immortal. But block telomerase and the cell just undergoes apoptosis after so many divisions.

Understand what cancer actually is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Cancer isn't a "thing" per se.

Think of your thermostat in your house. It normally maintains the temperature in a comfort range. Then imagine "something" in that control loop causes that feedback loop to fail. It could be the thermostat. It could be the furnace/heater. It could be the air conditioner. It could be any number of individual parts in heater or a/c that isn't working right. It could even be that you've left the windows or doors open. It could be the wiring between the thermostat and the hvac equipment. Basically, all of this, which is symptomatically described as "it's too damn hot - something's broken" is what cancer is when you apply the same kind of feedback loop to the human body. Except imagine not just one thermostat - imagine one in each room of the house operating either independently or interdependently. Multi-loop control systems are bleeding edge stuff for engineers - and one truth is that some amount of instability and some minimal variance for a set-point is actually required for such systems to even operate.

So when people say "cure cancer" or have a "war on cancer" it's as nonsensical as saying "I'm going to have a war on my house" because the heat is wrong. You could rip everything out and try to replace it. You could be more nuanced and try to adjust things and repair pieces that seem to be operating wrong. But you really can't "cure" it because even the set point both can't be controlled to arbitrary error levels without creating more instability and the set points of all parts of the system vary with environmental stimulus - when it's humid, the same temperature feels too hot compared to when the air is dry as a bone.