A good friend of mine is just starting what looks like will be a hard and long battle with cancer. Seeing the breakthroughs give me hope- but I also know they may not be ready in time.
It really does feel like in 20 years, we'll have cancer knocked out. But that's just too far away...
There are more than 100 types of cancer. Quite a lot of those types are very well treatable now, and others are far more difficult to treat. New discoveries like these move some more types from the "difficult" to "treatable" list, but I suspect that the last few on the "difficult" list will take a very long time to fully crack.
Many of the recent breakthroughs seem to apply quite widely. Cancer may be 100 types, but they carry similarities, namely that human cells stop following the "multicellular organism rules" and go wild, while also tricking the rest of the body into letting them.
If I may, from experience with our uncle T4 cancer, my biggest issues were:
1) medical view on cancer treatment: everything is standardized now, for good reason, they only give you battle tested things, but it also means that you only very average treatment since nothing exotic is accepted. [1]
2) moral support, depending on the team treating you, they may or may not spend a lot of time talking to the patient about what's cancer and how to deal with it. My uncle was given a death sentence and a choice to either stay at the hospital or go home, both case with pain killers and a mild chemo to smooth out growth. Few monthes later, his system was frail due to chemo, got an infection at home, not treated rapidly, killed him. I'm fairly convinced that with a different view on his disease he wouldn't have died this way. It also meant that he didn't want to try more since doctors only talked about these two choices. He didn't want to try dedicated centers (some were having very positive immunotherapy based results that could have motivated him and the whole family a lot more) [1]
[1] Vince DeVita (ex-head of NCI) wrote a book about how cancer was treated in the early days. There were no standardized treatment since they were inventing them. It also meant they had a different approach to care, he was just trying to buy time until something better would come. He claims that it made people live for a year or two instead of a few months. In the case of advanced cancer I still believe it's the best way to go, but hospital don't want to hear that so you get the average treatment.
I don't know how your friend would feel about this, but maybe that can give him a different option and more chances.
Most medical expense comes in the last months or even month of a person's life. It's an interesting moral dilemma on how to optimize expenditure vs the value of more time. I feel like one can invest a lot into very little return. My own anecdata from friends who are gone from cancer is a lot of expensive and even promising treatment to ultimately end in disappointments.
I believe your in the united states, in which case is so different from my country (france) that my comment above is not very useful. Here, most costs are covered by public health insurance. So that's one less burden to carry.
This is actually far cooler than the headline suggests.
There's already a fair bit of work into engineering a virus to kill cancer. This research is about getting that virus to also induce an immune response to kill other cells that have been recruited to support the cancer in the body.
Does this have anything to do with genetic modification? If so, this is really cool! But even if it's not, I hope they be successful with this because this will definitely save a lot of lives. I just hope the modified virus won't turn things around and make the person's condition worst.
The virus described here was first engineered by directed evolution, and then genetically modified with additional functions. The virus doesn't attempt to modify the genome of the human patient.
The clever trick is that these viruses are programmed to target cancer by engineering them to not be able to survive in non-cancer cells. In the case of ColoAd1, the virus will be destroyed by the p53 found in normal cells, but missing from cancer cells.
Engineered viruses might also be evolved or engineered specifically with a kill switch mechanism or be selected to be highly sensitive to a particular antiviral medication.
This is a fantastic development in the fight against cancer and an encouraging result, of course the question becomes how do we insure, kill switches and all, that we’ve not designed a better “cancer.”
The current literature is bleak on the subject of controlling nature.
I agree with this. If they succeed in this, like I said, it could potentially save a lot of lives, especially those who have a family history with cancer. But I also agree with what you said, I hope that this modified virus won't kill "good cancer cells" or turn them into something way worse than existing types of cancers.
how many hazardous variants do they produce before they find one that has some form of use? (viruses)
I think personally people should stop inventing new guns and bombs, and try to prevent instead of fight. but i suppose i don't have a medical degree :'D
I think both are equally important in this type of scenario. It's also like climate change. We should absolutely prevent climate change, but we shouldn't stop relief and support for those affected by it.
The reality is, it's a hard problem to fix, so any option is better than no option.
My HS AP Bio teacher (2008) told me one of his college professors did this to cure his wife's cancer back in the mid-2000s. While very effective, this method depends on a customized approach unique to each patient, which is why this isn't standard practice ten years later.
18 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 52.7 ms ] threadIt really does feel like in 20 years, we'll have cancer knocked out. But that's just too far away...
1) medical view on cancer treatment: everything is standardized now, for good reason, they only give you battle tested things, but it also means that you only very average treatment since nothing exotic is accepted. [1]
2) moral support, depending on the team treating you, they may or may not spend a lot of time talking to the patient about what's cancer and how to deal with it. My uncle was given a death sentence and a choice to either stay at the hospital or go home, both case with pain killers and a mild chemo to smooth out growth. Few monthes later, his system was frail due to chemo, got an infection at home, not treated rapidly, killed him. I'm fairly convinced that with a different view on his disease he wouldn't have died this way. It also meant that he didn't want to try more since doctors only talked about these two choices. He didn't want to try dedicated centers (some were having very positive immunotherapy based results that could have motivated him and the whole family a lot more) [1]
[1] Vince DeVita (ex-head of NCI) wrote a book about how cancer was treated in the early days. There were no standardized treatment since they were inventing them. It also meant they had a different approach to care, he was just trying to buy time until something better would come. He claims that it made people live for a year or two instead of a few months. In the case of advanced cancer I still believe it's the best way to go, but hospital don't want to hear that so you get the average treatment.
I don't know how your friend would feel about this, but maybe that can give him a different option and more chances.
Best wishes
1. There are a lot of viruses.
2. There are a lot of different forms of cancer.
I nowhere near understanding the complexity of this (it's not my field), but this headline just feels way to simple.
There's already a fair bit of work into engineering a virus to kill cancer. This research is about getting that virus to also induce an immune response to kill other cells that have been recruited to support the cancer in the body.
The clever trick is that these viruses are programmed to target cancer by engineering them to not be able to survive in non-cancer cells. In the case of ColoAd1, the virus will be destroyed by the p53 found in normal cells, but missing from cancer cells.
Engineered viruses might also be evolved or engineered specifically with a kill switch mechanism or be selected to be highly sensitive to a particular antiviral medication.
The current literature is bleak on the subject of controlling nature.
I think personally people should stop inventing new guns and bombs, and try to prevent instead of fight. but i suppose i don't have a medical degree :'D
The reality is, it's a hard problem to fix, so any option is better than no option.