[HN Gopher] Biotech firm uses tiny worms in test for pancreatic ...
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       Biotech firm uses tiny worms in test for pancreatic cancer
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2022-11-30 15:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.asiaone.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.asiaone.com)
        
       | Animatronio wrote:
       | Tests are all fine and dandy but what about a decent treatment?
       | I've seen this in my family and it's one of the most horrible
       | ways to go.
        
         | exhilaration wrote:
         | Testing experts can work on tests while treatment experts work
         | on treatment. I would imagine that the two specialties are
         | significantly different.
        
         | dvngnt_ wrote:
         | i think there's enough people to solve multiple problems
         | simultaneously
        
           | thaumasiotes wrote:
           | Well, in concept yes, we have multiple people and they're
           | able to work on multiple problems.
           | 
           | We don't have "enough people" to solve pancreatic cancer,
           | though, or it would be a solved problem. So if there are two
           | problems, and one of them is pancreatic cancer, we do not
           | actually have enough people to solve multiple problems.
           | 
           | (In fact, we devote a lot more people to attempts to solve
           | cancer than makes sense.)
        
         | jhbadger wrote:
         | They are related. If you can detect it early enough you can
         | deal with it. The problem is that most people don't even know
         | they have pancreatic cancer until it has metastasized to other
         | sites, at which point it's basically a lost cause.
        
           | Animatronio wrote:
           | Unfortunately the "deal with it" part is very problematic.
           | Radio- and chemotherapy are not very effective, and
           | pancreatectomy is awful for the pacient. What I mean is even
           | if one knows they have cancer there's not much to do.
        
             | AustinDev wrote:
             | I don't know. My wealthy friend somehow got his dad free
             | and clear of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He got him in for
             | am extremely expensive cutting-edge treatment that was in
             | the 7-figure range out of pocket. Maybe he just got lucky,
             | but it seems you can buy your way out of a lot of cancer's
             | now adays.
        
               | Animatronio wrote:
               | Lucky him! Money well spent I'd say. Must have been some
               | edge-case though, because usually stage 4 is metastatic,
               | the liver is severely damaged, the lungs and so on.
        
       | AkshatJ27 wrote:
       | > In the latest version, the company tweaked the genetic code of
       | the nematodes so that they would swim away from pancreatic cancer
       | samples. Hirotsu Bio started with pancreatic cancer due to its
       | difficulty in diagnosis and speed of progression.
       | 
       | I'm kinda amazed that we are able to change the genetic code of
       | the organisms to make them do something
        
         | gryf wrote:
         | Yeah this is definitely one of the coolest developments I've
         | read about.
         | 
         | My daughter is studying biotech at university. While I was on
         | the cutting edge for proliferation of computing, she's there on
         | biotech. What an exciting future of discoveries and invention
         | she has ahead of her. We're all now stuck on reinventing shitty
         | web frameworks in nodejs for the 11th time.
        
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