Fox News & NY Post are reporting a new drug that has killed every kind of cancer it has been exposed to.
Possible? or premature reporting?
Possible.
Definitely possible.
Interesting, but can they ensure that it only blocks the CD47 proteins on cancer cells? Then again that is a risk with a lot of cancer therapies, healthy cells die too.
Either way, this was a test in mice. They still have to test it in humans and get it through all 4 stages of FDA testing and get FDA approval before it goes to market. Even if everything goes right it’ll take 1-2 decades before people see it.
By their testing, we know we could have cancer-free mice. They haven’t tried it in humans yet. Good start, but cancers are tricky. We’ll see.
Edit: /shakes fist at Wesley
I don’t know enough to fairly evaluate it. And there’s very likely some media push to make it sound bigger than it is.
Still, we live in an age of wonders. So I wouldn’t write it off…just search for confirmation.
Fox and NY Post are, needless to say, the most honest reliable news sources around.
Most candidate drugs that work on mice do not on men. One thing that really bothers me about this kind of research is they might happen on something that fails on mice, but would be a miracle drug for man. Every animal is different in small and large ways. The fact, for example, that chocolate is such a delight for us and poison for dogs is really startling.
I believe grapes and Xylitol (found in Orbit sugar free gum) also are good for humans but deadly for dogs
Xenograft models (human tumors into mice) are notoriously easy to treat. There are dozens upon dozens of publications in minor journals every month showing an antibody that inhibits growth of xenografted tumors. I have a few myself, and even when I published them, I knew they were not viable therapeutics.
Wait and see.
To be fair, chocolate is a delight for dogs, as well. It’s the dying they don’t like.
Human (safety) trials could start later this year. If there are strongly positive findings in cancer patients in early data and safety is not a significant issue, this treatment likely would be fast-tracked into advanced trials.
One thing to remember - there have been other holy grails that turned out less great than hoped (remembering how anti-angiogenesis drugs were going to beat cancer to a pulp by preventing tumors from getting an adequate blood supply).
I’m so jaded, there is another “5 years down the road cure for cancer” every month it seems. So jaded, but hopeful.
Two additional things:
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I never know how or why the mainstream press decides to pick up some random scientific discovery that is not particularly notable. This sort of data is published every day, and while the CD47 story is interesting, it is by no means something that should be touted as a cure for cancer! Scientists get a bad rap for doing this, but it is the press that picks up a story and conflates it, not the original researchers.
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The ability to treat multiple kinds of tumors in a mouse model is in no way indicative of efficacy in humans. The way these preclinical studies are run, the a bolus of tumor cells are injected subcutaneously into the flank of the mouse where it grows in a matter of days to weeks. The treatment is administered and the tumor is measured periodically. The entire study takes between 2-8 weeks total. The fact that one implants tumor cells that originated from a colon cancer, lung cancer or bladder cancer is effectively irrelevant in this context.
This is so true. We had a study for an ailment that has no treatments available; the Paul Harvey radio show took the preliminary study’s results and made it sound like it was a goddamned miracle cure, and told people to call my institution to get it. We were one of only a couple sites doing the next study, but we’d already recruited as many people as we were allowed. For several months we were just bombarded with phone calls - at the beginning it was so had that the messages would fill our voicemail completely after we left for the day. Several years later, we still get calls maybe every other month asking about it. Oh, and it failed to produce acceptable results in that test, the company was bankrupted, someone bought the rights to it and (last I heard) shelved it.
A clear indication of a conspiracy perpetrated by the makers of chemotherapy drugs! [/sarcasm]
Hah, I know, right? But seriously, it wasn’t a cancer drug and it wasn’t even a cure. Until this year there were zero treatments of any kind, and the new one only helps people in severe cases, and only somewhat. The previous one rightly failed. It tanked in testing even though it showed a little promise in initial, limited trials. This is how medical research works.
We need better science journalism. They just take shit and run with it without asking any of the important questions.
It doesn’t help that most of the journalists’ audience is scientifically illiterate. Cite
Agreed. That’s the other half of the problem.
I especially like the blase way the Post article throws off the fact that the antibody also stimulates short-term immune attacks on healthy cells (though “nothing compared to what it did to the cancer”). Surely that couldn’t be a problem anywhere down the line. Miracle cure! Line up to buy it!
Although this would certainly be wonderful news, until I see real proof and hear that the treatment is available at my local hospital, I am going to take stories like this as the medical equivalent of “everyone will be owning flying cars in a year!”