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

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

[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

[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: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.

[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: 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:study paper without paywall?

[Razed By TV]

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

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: Mercked

[mspohr]

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

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: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.