Cancer Drug Proves To Be Effective Against Multiple Tumors (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: 86 cancer patients were enrolled in a trial of a drug that helps the immune system attack tumors. Though they had different kinds of tumor -- pancreas, prostate, uterus or bone -- they all shared a genetic mutation that disrupts their cells' ability to fix damaged DNA, found in 4% of all cancer patients. But tumors vanished and didn't return for 18 patients in the study, reports the New York Times, while 66 more patients "had their tumors shrink substantially and stabilize, instead of continuing to grow." The drug trial results were "so striking that the Food and Drug Administration already has approved the drug, pembrolizumab, brand name Keytruda, for patients whose cancers arise from the same genetic abnormality. It is the first time a drug has been approved for use against tumors that share a certain genetic profile, whatever their location in the body."
The researchers say that just in the U.S. there are 60,000 new patients every year who could benefit from the new drug.

Comments

Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh cool free advertising.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Only $100k per dose. 10 doses minimum. I'm sure.

Remember, only poor people die in the USA.

Re: Mercked

[toonces33]

You can go online and find that 4 vials goes for abound 8-9K$, but I have no idea how many vials you would need for a full round of treatment. At the end of the day what matters more is if insurance companies will pay for it or not. But all other forms of cancer treatment aren't cheap either.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

My mom went through 4 rounds of chemo for her breast cancer, which was a kind that could turn malignant but was caught early (it only spread to one set of lymph nodes). Whatever this new drug costs, it must be cheaper than the hospital cost of a slow lingering death.

Re: Mercked

[MightyYar]

So let the rich pay for the development costs and then in 15-20 years everyone will get the treatment at roughly production cost. In the meantime, companies will still offer their drug to economically disadvantaged people - both for public relations and because they didn't fall asleep during the price discrimination part of Econ class. That's pretty much how the system is meant to work - your idea of how it should work is almost certainly worse.

Re: Mercked

[mspohr]

That's the drug company pricing model. "Your money or your life"

Re: Mercked

[mspohr]

I bet you're one of those people go got a "free" iPhone (with a two year contract to get raped by the phone company).
Who do you think pays for insurance?
Insurance may pay outrageous prices for drugs but they turn around and charge you for it... every single month.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

My biological father went through chemo for his self-inflicted terminal cancer (due to decades of heavy smoking and not quitting when his own family asked him to multiple times). Now he has withered away to almost nothing and is dying.

That's karma. He treated people like shit for his entire worthless life and now he's dying from cancer. LOL.

Re: Mercked

[Doke]

4 50mg vials is around $9k USD. Standard dosage for adults is 200mg every 3 weeks. That's about $156k per year. http://www.merck.com/product/u... https://www.goodrx.com/keytrud... In contrast, my Remicade for arthritis is about $40k / year, but my insurance brings it down to about a $300 / year co-pay. So you don't have to be rich. You just need a job with decent benefits.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's the way it works. Like with the EpiPen.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like you learned a lot from him.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I learned to not smoke and to care for my family because I saw what a failure he was.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did he indulge in such self-destructive behavior?

Re: Mercked

[bestweasel]

This article says Remicade costs the UK NHS on average £1500 ($1900) per patient per year.

"About 100,000 NHS patients are treated with it at a cost of approximately £150m per year."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/bus...

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he was an alcoholic for most of his life. He abandoned his first son and was abusive to his family until we had enough and cut him out of our lives by moving away.

Re: Mercked

[MightyYar]

Why would a poor person buy an EpiPen instead of the cheap generic versions that do the same thing? Even Mylan makes a generic version that is exactly the same as the regular EpiPen without the branding.

Re: Mercked

[dgatwood]

My mom went through 4 rounds of chemo for her breast cancer, which was a kind that could turn malignant ...

I think the word you were looking for is "metastatic". All cancer is, by definition, malignant. That's the difference between cancer and a benign tumor or nodule.

Re: Mercked

[buck-yar]

Bifidobacterium is your free or almost free alternative.

"Next, they compared the effects of bacterial transfer against a checkpoint inhibitor, anti-PD-L1 antibodies. They found that introducing the bacteria was just as effective as treating them with anti-PD-L1 antibodies, resulting in significantly slower tumor growth.

So they began searching for the specific bacteria that made the difference. They identified microbes from the digestive tracts of JAX and TAC mice by large-scale sequencing. Although there were significant differences in 254 taxonomic families of bacteria from the two sets of mice, three groups were prominent.

When they tested the effects of each group on the mice’s immune systems, one group, the Bifidobacterium, stood out. Within two weeks of oral administration, TAC mice that received just Bifidobacterium species had a marked increase in the anti-tumor T cell responses.

Mice treated just with Bifidobacterium, rather than the full fecal transfer, displayed tumor control comparable to those who received the full mixture. The effect was long-lasting. TAC mice exposed to tumors as late as six weeks after the Bifidobacterium transfer were still able to mount a robust immune response."

https://news.uchicago.edu/arti...

Re: Mercked

[someone1234]

This doesn't sound that terrible for poor people on the long run, though. Rich people will stay alive and inbreed with this genetic defect, while poor people will get selectively removed from the gene pool.

Re: Mercked

[Maritz]

You still managed to come across as a complete cunt, so I daresay he managed to pass something on.

Re: Mercked

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, only poor people die in the USA.

Look, dude, everyone dies-- rich and poor.
This drug won't save you.
Making other people give you free stuff won't save you.
And you're an asshole for even trying to force others to pay for your stuff no matter how much you want or need it.
But no matter how much of a tantrum you throw, like an entitled, spoiled little shit, nobody is going to give you free stuff. Fuck you for even demanding it.

Make your own

[110010001000]

Here is the formula:

Formula: C6534 H10004 N1716 O2036 S46

study paper without paywall?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have a link to the study "Mismatch-repair deficiency predicts response of solid tumors to PD-1 blockade" thats not paywalled?

Re:study paper without paywall?

[Razed By TV]

Let me sci hub that for you
https://sci-hub.cc/10.1126/sci...

This is great.

[filesiteguy]

If approved by the FDA, it will be ready to use in 25 years for the 99% who can't afford it now.

Re:This is great.

[interkin3tic]

You mean six months. Assuming the drug actually works that is. The delays come in proving it works.

Re:This is great.

[Njorthbiatr]

He means Merck is price gouging it. So people will be riddled with medical debt (and governments), but don't worry, they no longer have cancer while they eat their ramen soup cups under a bridge.

Re:This is great.

[nanoflower]

No idea if it works but it seems like it should already be approved given that I've been seeing ads for this drug for a while now. It doesn't seem like the company would be paying for ads if they couldn't recoup that money.

Re:This is great.

[ShanghaiBill]

No idea if it works

It works. For more information, try reading the article ... or the summary ... or the headline.

.. but it seems like it should already be approved

It has already been approved. For more information, try reading the article ... or the summary.

Re:This is great.

[fluffernutter]

My country is single payer, so we will help you pay for it at a price that is acceptable to both parties.

Re:This is great.

[markdavis]

>"My country is single payer, so we will help you pay for it at a price that is acceptable to both parties."

You just probably won't have any company ever actually invent any drugs in your country because there is no money to pay for the development.

Re:This is great.

[filesiteguy]

My point being that in 25 years (I may be off) there will be an affordable generic version of the drug.

Re:This is great.

[fluffernutter]

Merick and Co can set the price to whatever they want to when they sell it to a single buyer country. If they don't set it high enough to continue development then that's not exactly the buyer's problem. Besides, there are plenty of people who do this to save lives, not get rich.

Re:This is great.

[Njorthbiatr]

You think that's where most of the money is going? Nah.

Re: This is great.

[fluffernutter]

Yes I'm sure everyone working there is very poor.

Re:This is great.

[mjwx]

>"My country is single payer, so we will help you pay for it at a price that is acceptable to both parties."

You just probably won't have any company ever actually invent any drugs in your country because there is no money to pay for the development.

Guess again.

From the fine article:

The study started in 2013 and is funded by philanthropies; the drugmakerâ(TM)s [Merek] only role was to supply the drug.

So it seems your User pays for everything, then we charge the government to pay for it again system is an utter failure. Merek would never have bothered with this drug if the tests were not conducted by someone else.

The overwhelming majority of life saving treatments are developed using public money. There's no money in curing cancer, especially not when hardness pills and placebo vitamins are so profitable (yes, thats where the majority of private R&D goes, so-called "lifestyle" drugs).

The UK's NHS is not perfect, but here you get the treatment you need, not billed for tests and drugs you dont need.

Re:This is great.

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

You just probably won't have any company ever actually invent any drugs in your country because there is no money to pay for the development.

Ever heard of Beta blockers, or Losec? Just to name a few. Invented and developed by Swedish industry. A country that is very much single payer, with centralised purchasing of all drugs at set prices.

And yet, there's plenty of money to be made...

Re:This is great.

[ChrisMaple]

Drug companies routinely get extorted when they try to set prices outside the US. The country says to the drug company "Sell it for 50 cents a dose or we'll develop a generic and you won't get a cent." The drug companies almost always give in.

Re:This is great.

[fluffernutter]

Again, it's up to them and the American government to come up with some trade agreement that prohibits this if it is a problem. You can't get benefits from the upside of capitalism without facing the downside.. That your product is worth what people are willing to pay for it.

I can only say

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Such inventions which consist of a crazy amount of hard work, many sleepless nights, a lot of talent and ingenuity are the reason why I absolutely love science.

Re:I can only say

[haruchai]

And the people most likely to profit financially from it don't know the 1st thing about science but everything about profiting from your loss.

Re:I can only say

[Anonymous Coward]

Such inventions which consist of a crazy amount of hard work, many sleepless nights, a lot of talent and ingenuity are the reason why I absolutely love science.

Science? Those are the reasons I love my robotic sex doll.

Re:I can only say

[ShanghaiBill]

The people that will profit are the people that paid for the research and clinical trials that made the drug possible.

Re:I can only say

[bugs2squash]

And the patients

Re:I can only say

[Kjella]

And the people most likely to profit financially from it don't know the 1st thing about science but everything about profiting from your loss.

True, but they do know a bit about risk management and they do have incentive to create something useful and then use that to profit big. No results means no income, it's a gamble. You could of course hire some public scientists, but it's very hard to say who is doing anything productive. What I've come to realize more and more about the public sector is that without competition you pass everything straight through to the end user. If McDonald's is losing money and is threatened by Burger King, they'll being doing some real soul searching about their concept, products, processes and all that. Hard decisions will be made on every level and excess fat trimmed.

In the public sector, shit flows straight downhill. If they cut the funding to the planning office, building permits take longer. If they get more money, they can hire more people and do the same job faster. But at no point is there any real pressure to change the way building permits are issued. There's no competing office covering the same area that'll do it faster or simpler. You can't have competition on everything, it's hard to see how you could have competing police, military, courts, IRS, DMV, CPS and many other things. But very few of those are known for their cost efficiency and user friendliness. You can kill medical patents, fund a public behemoth of a research institute instead. But I'm not sure it'd be better.

Re:I can only say

[kanweg]

"And the people most likely to profit financially from it don't know the 1st thing about science but everything about profiting from your loss."

Priests. Praise the Lord!

Bert

Re:I can only say

[umafuckit]

True, but they do know a bit about risk management and they do have incentive to create something useful and then use that to profit big. No results means no income, it's a gamble. You could of course hire some public scientists, but it's very hard to say who is doing anything productive. What I've come to realize more and more about the public sector is that without competition you pass everything straight through to the end user.

What you call "public science" is a pretty competitive career. The currency is just research papers and influence rather than pure financial profit.

Re:I can only say

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say this "cancer cure" is for real - in the sense of curing 50,000 cancers per year. And let's say that the scientists who discovered it were sufficiently clever and hard working that, had they not existed, it would have been another five years before another team of scientists made the same discovery. So, for the sake of argument, let's assume these scientists saved 250,000 lives.

Now, being able to front up to a cocktail party, gaze into the distance drink in hand with a look that says you've been places (intellectually) that no one else has ever been and say, "Yeah, I did actually make a scientific discovery that saved 250,000 people from dying of cancer." Well, for some people that counts for quite a bit. For some people, as long as they were somehow earning enough to live simply but comfortably, if you gave them a choice between having a million dollars for themselves or saving 250,000 lives, well they'd choose to save the lives.

The thing is, for most people, life is deeply humiliating. Even if you can manage to eat some good food and have a family that treats you reasonably well, you and everyone you care about is going to die. And in almost all cases that death will be slow, painful, and, if you live in the USA, very expensive. Basically, death is ultimate humiliation - and it's inevitable.

So, you're lying there dying slowly and painfully. Most of the people you cared about and who cared about you have already died slowly and painfully. Maybe you've got a million dollars in the bank - but so what? You're still dying. But if you saved 250,000 lives. Well, then at least you could look life in square in the eyes with a small shed of dignity "Because of me 250,000 did not die before their time. Even in the face of death I feel that my life had meaning and purpose."

The thing is, though, you can't just let your family starve while you try over and over again to find a cure for cancer. Scientist don't need rewards for their success. The success itself is more than enough reward. What scientists need is security to fail - and still feed their families. There are far more people trained up with fancy PhDs wanting to do scientific research than available jobs.

If you want more cures for cancer, the formula is simple: create jobs for scientists where they can still feed their families when they fail. For example, half the year they teach science and the other half they do whatever they can to find a cure for cancer. But, when they fail to find a cure for cancer, you still pay them a comfortable salary for the teaching that they did.

It's not hard. But it's hard unless you decide to do it.

Re:I can only say

[Anonymous Coward]

That is correct, congratulations to the team that developed this treatment.

Re:I can only say

[bugs2squash]

Nice post

Re: I can only say

[Anonymous Coward]

Use public money but pay it directly to many small teams in large area that work alone but communicate with the world by sharing progress and finfings. Use single database to coordinate what they research

Re:I can only say

[Anonymous Coward]

The people most likely to profit are those that provided the billions of dollars to fund research the scientist are performing. And for fuck sakes the very last thing any scientific endeavor needs is more government involvement. A lot of people have died while waiting for the government to approve the drugs that could have saved or prolonged their life.

Hospitals are so expensive because anyone can walk into a hospital emergency room and be treated regardless of their ability to pay.

"genetic mutation that disrupts their cells' ability to fix damaged DNA"
Wonder how much longer it will take create a genetic mutation that continually repairs senescent that can halt and even reverse the aging process. I put developing a warp drive at the top of my wish list but this comes in a close second place. And we are much closer to achieving this scientific breakthrough than we are developing a warp drive. If this medical breakthrough is successful and able to extend my life a few hundred or even thousands of years I might yet get to see the warp drive.

Re:I can only say

[tlhIngan]

Such inventions which consist of a crazy amount of hard work, many sleepless nights, a lot of talent and ingenuity are the reason why I absolutely love science.

They say the defining moment of science is NOT "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."

Re:I can only say

[guises]

If you read the article you would see that no: Merck, who profits from this $156k/year drug, only supplied it. The study was funded by philanthropies (sic).

Re:I can only say

[Maritz]

In the libertarian, "fuck-you-I-got-mine" culture of slashdot I'm pleased to see this post. Expect it to mainly fall on deaf ears, but so what. ;)

Re:I can only say

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

You could of course hire some public scientists, but it's very hard to say who is doing anything productive.

No, not even remotely true. I'm working much harder and under much higher scrutiny as a publicly funded researcher than I ever did in industry (where I spent ten years of my life).

This is especially true in medicin. Most new drugs are from publicly funded research in the US. While private industry spend a lot of money it's later in the game, commercialising public results.

The public can afford to take cheap (relatively speaking) risks that nothing will result. Corporations won't. They'll play it safe. (Just witness Hollywood...)

Re:I can only say

[micahraleigh]

You seem to suggest stopping profits is more important than saving lives.

Given the drooling over euthanasia and eugenics on slashdot I am inclined to believe your goal is really just wanting as many people to die as possible and marxism is just a stretch of a way to get there.

Re:I can only say

[micahraleigh]

According to the Ken Burns cancer documentary on Netflix the main reason why immunotherapy was so slow to get momentum was there was very little intellectual or academic effort involved. Science isn't really the hero here. Science is just introducing the immune system (which was not by any account created by science) to the cancer.

The elites decided it didn't help their careers much so they were more than happy to throw the cancer funding into the furnace, annually. Business (*yes* BIG PHARMA) is saving the lives here.

Re:I can only say

[haruchai]

You seem to suggest stopping profits is more important than saving lives.
Given the drooling over euthanasia and eugenics on slashdot I am inclined to believe your goal is really just wanting as many people to die as possible and marxism is just a stretch of a way to get there.

I'm suggesting nothing of the sort but have no control over your inclinations.
US Pharma biz however seems to have had no trouble bleeding sick people dry.
A former colleague of mine who has several serious health challenges throughout her life left behind a mountain of debt, well into the millions of dollars.
She may be something of an outlier but still far from unique.

Re:I can only say

[micahraleigh]

So your alternative proposal is the government just disallows this cutting edge tech and people just die?

Maybe a government that forces people to make this decision is flawed?

Or run by murderers?

Re:I can only say

[haruchai]

If that's the conclusion, you reached by reading my posts, I don't think we share a common language family

Re:I can only say

[micahraleigh]

I don't recall seeing anywhere in your posts what your alternative proposal is.

You claim big pharma sucks people dry. How would you address that?

Re:I can only say

[Anonymous Coward]

hell yes. I second that.

POW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late for Batman!

(HE DEAD!)

Re: POW!

[Anonymous Coward]

He found the cure and killed the cancer.

Justice!

Ugh...more commercials

[RogueWarrior65]

The explosion of drug TV commercials is getting annoying. Ok, Keytruda might be able to justify one now but how many people could possibly have "non-24" to the point of justifying the expense of a commercial? And what's the point of it anyway? You can't buy these things unless your doctor prescribes it and I guarantee you that he/she knows more about them that you do. Do not mistake your google search for their medical degree.

Re:Ugh...more commercials

[Anonymous Coward]

guarantee you that he/she knows more about them that you do.

He knows exactly what the drug company marketing and training materials tell him. I doubt my doctor could even open a web browser.

YaNo, Viagra was originally a bathroom de-oderizer

[Anonymous Coward]

Or what the kids used to pop for a quick high in the locker room.

Many tumors, but all same type.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The summary is clear this drug works on tumors caused by one genetic mutation, affecting about 4% of the cancer patients. The tumors appear in many organs but they were all caused by the same genetic mutation.

Cancer can not be cured.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Cancer is not a single disease. It is a collective name for all kinds of failures in the body when an age old covenant among the cells break down.

Evolution can filter out diseases that affect the ability to reproduce very well very efficiently. If a disease takes so long to bake, it does not affect the ability to reproduce, those diseases will never be filtered out. All the cells in the body have the potential to become a cancer. All the cells in the body will become cancerous after so many generations of subdivision.

This drug that helps the 4% of the people with a specific mutation will not help them against the 96% of the remaining kinds of cancer. Even after this treatment, they can get a different cancer. If the general population has probability p of getting cancer, these patients will have 0.96 * p probability of getting some other type of cancer.

Re:Cancer can not be cured.

[110010001000]

You are a ray of sunshine.

Re:Cancer can not be cured.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right! Why did they bother? Stupid scientists.

Re:Cancer can not be cured.

[gringer]

All the cells in the body will become cancerous after so many generations of subdivision.

Naked Mole Rats suggest otherwise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Cancer can not be cured.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Thanks for the citation. I remember some disgusting facts about mole rats, they eat each other's crap. But this is new.

It looks like the naked mole rats have lower levels of metabolism, they undergo cell division at a lower rate. We have seen in humans, people who starve and live under 1000 cal/day live much longer. So one mechanism is known but not very appealing to humans.

The other mechanisms seem to be highly error free cell division, and much lower rates of mutations per generation. R&D here might help the ALL people. If we reduce the mutation rate, effects of ageing will slow down and it would actually be the fountain of youth.

Re:Cancer can not be cured.

[Maritz]

So?

Re:Cancer can not be cured.

[Maritz]

If we reduce the mutation rate, effects of ageing will slow down and it would actually be the fountain of youth.

No. DNA degradation is not the main driver of old age. If it was the main problem we'd be living for a couple of centuries. There are numerous other issues with aging that are more pressing.

In just the USA, only 300 million

[Anonymous Coward]

In just the USA, there are only 300 million people. Assuming half of each person gets cancer once in their life, or 50%, of 80 years, so about 2 million people get cancer each year. Now, if a certain gene effects only 4 percent of cancers, that is only 80 thousand new patients per year. How much cost for a drug that will cost $2 billion to develop? In contrast tens of millions of new copies of Microsoft Windows are sold in the USA every year.

this is great, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Bud,,
this is /. not yahoo news..

get a clue..

that article is spot on, and yes a great miracle.

You, on the other hand are not.

this posting, indicates a true lacking of understanding of the intent of this publication on your behalf.

Re:this is great, but..

[Maritz]

Barely coherent. Are you supposed to be addressing whoever posted the article? Medical breakthroughs count as 'news for nerds' ergo; fuck off.

Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the drug work on Linux?

https://slashdot.org/story/01/06/01/1658258/ballmer-calls-linux-a-cancer