by Jerry2 on 11/4/24, 12:42 AM with 178 comments
by biotechbio on 11/4/24, 4:01 AM
Historically, cancer was treated with therapies that are toxic to all cells, relying on the fact that cancer cells divide quickly and are unable to handle stress as well as normal cells (chemotherapy, radiation).
The last couple of decades we've seen many targeted cancer therapies. These drugs generally inhibit the activity of a specific protein that lets the cancer cells grow (e.g. EGFR inhibitors) or prevents the immune system from killing the cancer cells (e.g. PDL1 inhibitors).
This mechanism is way more interesting. The gene BCL6 is usually turned on in immune cells when they are mutating to recognize foreign invaders. This process involves lots of DNA damage and stress, but BCL6 stops the cells from dying and is therefore important for normal immune function. Unfortunately, this makes BCL6 a gene that is often co-opted in cancer cells to help them survive.
The method cleverly exploits the oncogenic function of BCL6 not by inhibiting it, but by turning it into a guide, enabling the delivery of activating machinery to the targets of BCL6 and reversing the inhibitory effects on cell death.
The whole field of targeted degraders, molecular glues, and heterobifunctional molecules is a growing area of interest in cancer research.
by steveBK123 on 11/4/24, 12:22 PM
Just went to a funeral this weekend for a 40 year old who died of breast cancer 4 weeks after diagnosis at her first annual mammogram.
A lot of skeptical people under 30 here haven't lived through regularly various cancer diagnoses in their friends & family group that your late 30s/early 40s starts to bring.
I don't have the data on it, but anecdotally I notice that women's cancers seem to strike 5-10 years earlier than mens even if they can be caught early & treated well.. Though apparently men have overall worse cancer survival rates.
by lr0 on 11/4/24, 2:58 AM
by unit149 on 11/4/24, 9:15 AM
by dottjt on 11/4/24, 7:47 AM
My partner was diagnosed with stage 4 sarcoma about a month ago and life as I know it has been flipped upside down.
by phtrivier on 11/5/24, 1:20 PM
All those things have they place in the long run to discovery, but I wish there was a penalty for posting "scientists have done x and it cured cancer" (in a computer model of a spherical mouse of negative mass, that may or may not have been cancer-free.)
by zackkatz on 11/4/24, 12:50 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/health/cancer-self-destru...
by mountainriver on 11/4/24, 2:19 AM
by szundi on 11/4/24, 7:16 AM
by mannyv on 11/4/24, 4:04 PM
by bulbosaur123 on 11/4/24, 9:37 AM
by equasar on 11/4/24, 7:01 AM
by lawrenceyan on 11/4/24, 4:06 PM
Sequence patient's tumor mutanome distribution, create personalized therapy encoding the top N neoantigens
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Anti-PDL1 checkpoint inhibitor
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mRNA encoded albumin-IL2
by aetherspawn on 11/4/24, 5:27 AM
If it is indeed credible … this sounds like the “CRISPR moment” of cancer treatment, sure. And I’m really happy for that.
But I will be honest and write what I’m thinking: if this is real then frankly I’m disappointed it took this long. Do we really have our best people working on cancer? I have known so many who died waiting.
It seems like there has been roughly the same investment this decade (around $200B) in climate tech compared with cancer research, and yet electric cars and batteries are now a “solved problem” that’s just waiting to scale. The progress with Cancer is noticeably less. Is the money being well spent? Or are we donating $100B-s for researchers and labs to sit on a gravy train making sub tier progress.
Here’s a wild theory. Perhaps as a society we built the wrong prerequisites to get into cancer research and we filtered out all the Mozart’s and Leonardo’s…
by skibidisigma on 11/4/24, 7:10 AM
by midtake on 11/4/24, 4:27 AM