[HN Gopher] Curing brain tumors: blocking functions in cells wit...
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Curing brain tumors: blocking functions in cells with a docked
molecule
Author : wglb
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-05-25 21:57 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
| ablyveiled wrote:
| Brain cancer can also be regulated with diet, at least in some
| instances. https://www.braintumourresearch.org/stories/in-
| hope/in-hope-...
| chrisamiller wrote:
| I hate to be that guy, because it seems like there is some
| interesting science behind this press release hype. There are,
| however, many many miles between "effects in a mouse model" and
| "human therapeutic", let alone "cure". I wish them the best of
| luck as they consider safety and efficacy in clinical trials.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Correct. However, research models like mice play a critical
| role in revealing key mechanisms of actions for many diseases.
| One can crudely think of it as a reverse engineering challenge
| - picking apart the key functions and program flow from
| obfuscated object code. Not all of the program logic or
| functions will have 1-1 correlates to humans, but these models
| can provide important clues for new therapeutics that might
| work in people. These types of experiments simply can't
| ethically be done in humans.
|
| And I entirely agree with your other point: university press
| releases are notorious for hyping research. It does the
| biomedical field a disservice, and gives the impression
| clinical trials are but an afterthought. Nothing could be
| further from the truth.
| chrisamiller wrote:
| I do cancer research, including using mouse models, so
| believe me, I know the difficulty :-)
|
| Getting promising drugs into humans is -hard-, and this
| research is interesting, but this press release is still kind
| of shitty.
| Octokiddie wrote:
| This was a mouse study with a molecule whose human effects are
| largely unknown. Interesting research, but likely far away from
| anything that will treat humans.
|
| That said, the bar for human glioblastoma trials is very low.
| There is no cure and the disease is 100% fatal. After the
| standard of care treatment (which hasn't changed in 10 years),
| patients enter a period of regular brain scans, waiting for the
| inevitable recurrence and the next step down in quality of life.
| tingletech wrote:
| When my Dad had glioblastoma, I remember seeing an ad for a
| custom vaccine that could be created for brain tumors. "Save
| the tissue, save your life" or something like that was the
| headline slogan it had, and it was saying to ask your brain
| surgeon to save your tumor so they could make your personalized
| treatment from it. It conjured an image that has stuck with me
| of someone on a gurney screaming that out as their last words
| before going under from anesthesia. Hopefully something I don't
| ever need to remember at a critical moment.
| haldujai wrote:
| > After the standard of care treatment (which hasn't changed in
| 10 years)
|
| A lot has changed in 10 years for the 'standard of care'
| conventional treatments (RT + TMZ) although most active-
| treatment GBM cases will actually be on some experimental
| therapy/clinical trial.
|
| In fact, the WHO classification was only recently updated
| (2021) as what we were calling GBM included different types of
| gliomas with very different prognostic implications.
|
| Unfortunately, as you allude to, despite several advancements
| prognosis has only marginally improved over 10 years. The main
| issue is that these patients almost always present with
| symptoms (like seizures) by which point curative intent
| ablative therapies (radiation or surgery) are no longer
| possible due to intolerable side effects.
|
| > waiting for the inevitable recurrence
|
| It's more progression than recurrence, there is (essentially)
| always residual disease with GBM even after
| radiotherapy/surgery which is one of the main reasons it
| remains so fatal (~6-9 months). Because of the blood-brain
| barrier chemotherapeutic options are also very limited.
| methodical wrote:
| Seeing stuff like this is always a bit bitter-sweet. Ignoring the
| fact that obviously this is a far way from a "cure" in adults, as
| this is an early stage study, I always feel like seeing how far
| and how fast we're progressing on these types of diseases just
| makes me more anxious about being a bit too early. While I think
| FOMO is a bit of a poor way to put it, since there has been
| significant advancement within our time, I can't help but think
| how awful it'd be to get a disease of this caliber in current
| year knowing that given an extra 10-20 years, you'd like have a
| much better prognosis. Maybe I'm just over-thinking it here, but
| even with a less severe and more common cancer, I think the thing
| I'd struggle the most with would be the unfortunate timing.
| Perhaps this is insensitive or moronic, but it's been something
| I've always thought about when I've read about these advancements
| in the field of cancer treatments. Would be curious to hear how
| others feel about it, and whether anybody else has this FOMO
| feeling (for lack of a better description)?
| graypegg wrote:
| I guess that's the difficulty of living on an exponential
| curve. It's always going to be better tomorrow but today is
| much better than yesterday!
| penteract wrote:
| Having had cancer recently, I felt the opposite: happy that the
| prognosis for many cancers is dramatically better than it was a
| few decades ago. On the other hand, it has made me aware that
| for many people with cancer, news about developments in cancer
| treatment feels like a matter of personal life and death, even
| if it's usually not relevant to their specific type of cancer,
| and not likely to be ready in time to result in any change to
| their treatment.
| davisr wrote:
| Mebendazole and fenbendazole, antihelmintics, have also shown
| effective against gioblastoma and other types of cancer.
|
| Mebendazole, and others in its family, are also involved in a
| broken healthcare system in the US, where these medications costs
| between $0.07 and $10.00 per tablet in every other country, but
| there is a monopoly on manufacture that can price these tablets
| at $350 per tablet.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Surely, if glioblastoma (the most aggressive form of brain
| cancer) could be cured with such simple anti-parasite
| medications, we'd be hearing about people curing themselves...
|
| This sounds like covid-19 and ivermectin.
| davisr wrote:
| I had to log in because you're ignorant, and your dismissal
| takes far less effort than proving my side.
|
| From "Emerging Perspectives on the Antiparasitic Mebendazole
| as a Repurposed Drug for the Treatment of Brain Cancers",
| 2023:
|
| > Mebendazole can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and has
| been shown to inhibit the malignant progression of glioma by
| targeting signaling pathways related to cell proliferation,
| apoptosis, or invasion/migration, or by increasing the
| sensitivity of glioma cells to conventional chemotherapy or
| radiotherapy.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36674870/
|
| From "Antiparasitic mebendazole shows survival benefit in 2
| preclinical models of glioblastoma multiforme", 2011:
|
| > Our findings indicate that mebendazole is a possible novel
| anti-brain tumor therapeutic that could be further tested in
| clinical trials.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3158014/
|
| "Surprise Finding Yields a Possible Tumor-Fighting Drug",
| 2014:
|
| > Searching the literature, they found reports that
| fenbendazole had been shown to inhibit cancer growth. Then,
| by trial and error, they determined that the related drug
| mebendazole--which has been used for the last 60 years to
| treat parasites in the human gastrointestinal tract--might
| also hold potential for stalling glioblastoma.
|
| https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/news/promising-treatment-
| dea...
|
| And, you _do_ hear of people using these antihelmintics, in
| conjunction with conventional cancer therapies, for treating
| their disease. There is a large community on Reddit around
| the Joe Tippens protocol, who has never been disproved.
|
| > His next sentence almost floored me. He said, "You know,
| we've known for decades that these anthelmintic class of
| drugs (meaning to destroy parasites in the intestines) could
| have possible efficacy against cancer, and in fact in the
| 80's and 90's there was a drug called Levamisole that was
| used on colon cancer and it is an anthelmintic drug".
|
| > I said, "Doc, if you have known for decades why hasn't more
| work been done on it?" His answer was honest. He said,
| "probably because of money...all of these drugs are far off-
| patent and nobody is going to spend a gazillion dollars to
| repurpose them for cancer...only to have generic competition
| the next day."
|
| https://mycancerstory.rocks/the-blog/
|
| See also: "Repurposing Drugs to Fight Cancer", 2020
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/opinion/repurposing-
| drugs...
| ekianjo wrote:
| Dont underestimate the level of corruption in the existing
| system
| _Microft wrote:
| They said that people would experiment with these drugs on
| themselves to cure their cancer (assuming that these drugs
| were actually as effective as claimed). There seems no
| obvious system involved in this. Which system do you mean?
| davisr wrote:
| The system that won't spend millions of dollars to
| repurpose (and re-certify) generic drugs with the
| FDA...drugs that already have off-label uses for treating
| cancer.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/opinion/repurposing-
| drugs...
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| $6.52 in Belgium:
|
| https://www.pharmachezvous.be/medicaments/vermifuge/vermox-c...
| dp-hackernews wrote:
| You've Been Lied to about CANCER!!! [with Dr Thomas Seyfried,
| PhD]
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN58tZ6dspA
| swader999 wrote:
| So about ten years to significant human trials. Be dubious of any
| headline with "cure" in it.
|
| I remember when reovirus and modified adenovirus were supposed to
| be the ticket for glio. Such a terrible thing, hope this is
| faster to the mark than my jaded forecast.
| haldujai wrote:
| "Cure" with GBM is a very lofty goal but the first phase II
| oncolytic virus trial was actually quite promising!
|
| 2 year survival doesn't sound like a lot but considering the
| study included non-mutated GBM (the worst kind) this prognosis
| is ~3-4x longer than with current treatment options.
|
| GBM (IDH-wt) is, unfortunately, extremely aggressive and not
| uncommon. Arguably the worst type of cancer for an adult.
|
| As a small silver lining the dismal prognosis means
| experimental therapies are possible on compassionate grounds
| and trials are expedited. We've also gotten much better as
| histologically and radiologically evaluating the disease. I'm
| cautiously optimistic it won't be the immediate death sentence
| it currently is within my career, but it does appear we are
| still a few breakthroughs away from that being possible.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01897-x
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