[HN Gopher] Cancer's origin story features predictable plot line...
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Cancer's origin story features predictable plot line, researchers
find
Author : gmays
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-07-11 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (med.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (med.stanford.edu)
| chmaynard wrote:
| Understanding the origin story is huge. This research could be
| the way forward towards a more scientific approach to cancer
| prevention.
| nerdbert wrote:
| This sounds really important. If we can screen for cancer earlier
| we will save a huge number of lives (and prevent a lot of pain
| and misery).
| graypegg wrote:
| My mother was diagnosed with endometrial cancer at the start of
| 2020. If you haven't known someone diagnosed with cancer
| recently, it might not be obvious how advanced cancer treatment
| and care is now. You see so many stories about new cancer
| treatments or prevention strategies all the time, and it's so
| easy to discount it as just more spam, but we're getting
| extremely good at making people better, even in comparison to as
| recently as a decade ago. Not perfect, but the trajectory is very
| steep.
|
| (Disclaimer, I'm not an expert, I was just pretty amazed by how
| the whole process was customized and targeted for her specific
| case.)
|
| I'm sure this isn't a catch-all, and it's bad to put hope in "one
| thing to solve it all", but this sure is exciting.
| drpgq wrote:
| As a Canadian I wonder how available this new stuff is here.
| graypegg wrote:
| She lives in Oshawa Ontario, went to lakeridge health cancer
| centre.
|
| As for if this cancer screening process from the root post is
| available, I'm not sure.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Cancer outcomes in Canada are approximately the same as in
| the US. Give or take. Some are better in Canada, some better
| in the US.
|
| > Conclusions: Among younger Canadian cancer patients in the
| lowest SES group, greater access to health care may have
| resulted in higher cancer survival, while higher screening
| prevalence and access to health insurance (Medicare) among
| older Americans during the period of this study may have
| resulted in higher survival for some screen-detected cancers.
| Higher survival in the highest SES group for stomach and
| liver may relate to treatment differences. [1]
|
| This study breaks it down by type, and socioeconomic status
| too, if you're curious.
|
| This is just one more recent study, but there's a lot of
| evidence to support this.
|
| [edit] Note that 5-year survival rate comparisons tend to
| benefit the US because the US does more aggressive testing.
| Studies show that this testing often doesn't actually reduce
| mortality, but it does start the 5-year survival clock
| earlier. So odds are this data overstates the outcomes in the
| US, particularly in the older demographic as the conclusion
| calls out. But that's a conversation for another time.
|
| [1] https://www.naaccr.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/NCRA-
| Sprin...
| johntiger1 wrote:
| How is your mother doing now? My mom unfortunately passed away
| from stage C liver cancer, so still a lot of advancement to be
| made
| graypegg wrote:
| I'm deeply sorry. Cancer is a horrible disease.
|
| She's doing better, only about a year off treatment
| currently. It was originally found at stage 3 but it seems
| that surgery + 2 radiation rounds + 2 chemo rounds has worked
| alright.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| Some cancer treatments have advanced a lot. Some are still
| using the same old drugs. Mother with StageIIIc ovarian in 2019
| resection, HIPEC, then chemo. Recurrence in 2020 and every
| 6-9mo after that with some areas appearing, others shrinking.
| Platinum resistant in 2022 (many many many different times
| combined with taxol, doxil, etc). Taxol alone not working now
| as she had a spread event. Doxil + Avastin is now being tried
| (again but without platinum). Probably out of options sooner or
| later even though she can physically handle more chemo. Avastin
| is pretty much the only advance for this cancer and it's not
| very good. She's been on it on and off several times with the
| other chemo drugs. Of course all this depends on the mutations
| and such. Hers aren't ones anything new if it exists works for.
| This is a major research hospital with distinguished
| specialists.
| khuey wrote:
| Yeah "cancer" is a variety of diseases and treatments for
| some of those diseases have advanced very far and others
| haven't changed much.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Is it a variety of diseases, or do the different colonies
| of organ-specific cells just behave differently once they
| are unleashed?
| stvltvs wrote:
| Different diseases. Not every colon cancer, for example,
| behaves the same. And if colon cancer spreads to the
| lungs, it's still colon cancer, not lung cancer.
| adebiase44 wrote:
| Do you know if she has been treated with the new antibody
| drug conjugate (ADC) technology? Here is an example:
| https://www.elahere.com/ I am not a physician but I work in
| the space.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| Doesn't have that folate receptor mutation on her cancer.
| That's what I was mentioning in the last part as I had read
| about that drug last year.
| bsder wrote:
| > You see so many stories about new cancer treatments or
| prevention strategies all the time, and it's so easy to
| discount it as just more spam, but we're getting extremely good
| at making people better, even in comparison to as recently as a
| decade ago.
|
| _IF_ we catch the cancer early, we are much better at
| treatments.
|
| What we are getting good at is treatment with early detection
| because we can just cut it out with surgery. What we are only
| marginally better at is treatment with late detection.
|
| For cancers that we don't have early detection, the success
| rates are far, far lower and the treatments are far more
| limited.
|
| For example, a significant fraction of women get diagnose with
| _lobular_ breast cancer--it doesn 't form lumps. So by the time
| you detect it, you are almost always already Stage 3 or worse.
|
| Radiation, in particular, is much better thanks to computing.
| The only advance in surgery I have seen since the 1970s is that
| they use a radioctive marker to trace where the lymph nodes are
| --it helps with lympedema but not the cancer. Chemotherapy is
| only marginally better than 20 years ago--they're a little
| better at managing side effects but chemo is still horrible.
|
| Medicine does well on things that can be fixed by physical
| means--cutting things out or sewing things together. Medicine
| still doesn't do all that well from a chemical standpoint.
| gnulinux wrote:
| My uncle (<60, healthy) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
| Although they used extremely expensive wonder drugs,
| personalized drugs targeting his cancer cells etc, they were
| completely ineffective and he died less than 11 months after
| the diagnosis. He was extremely healthy and athletic at the
| beginning of 2022, and looked basically like a skeleton by the
| end of it. Cancer is a terrible disease and although we made
| incredible, awe-inspiring amount of process, we still have some
| way to go. Of course, I understand that pancreatic cancer is a
| particularly nasty cancer, one of the worst.
| tsuujin wrote:
| I lost my dad to prostate cancer last year with much the same
| timeline. Healthy as could be, out surfing and building decks
| and shit one day, dead a year later.
|
| Cancer sucks.
| maxioatic wrote:
| Really sorry for your loss. My dad died of cancer about 20
| years ago when I was pretty young. It has gotten easier
| over the years, but still, sometimes it feels like grief
| punches me in the sternum. Wishing you the best.
| denhaus wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. I had an uncle die from lung cancer
| (smoker, but otherwise healthy) about a decade ago. I know
| how horrifying the process is. Hope you have been able to
| process your grief.
| slacknatcher12 wrote:
| Yep. Even with "old drugs" the new programs using those give
| significantly better chances than with the old programs. Year
| of data collecting sure have given results.
|
| I had testicular cancer in 2006 in Chile. I was a teenager so I
| went with the public system (AUGE back then). My parents
| friends were giving the condolences for my soon to occur death.
| The doctors had a laugh as in the last 10 years (by then) my
| chances of dying of it became basically nil.
|
| Last year we hired a new guy at $JOB that 1 week after being
| hired was diagnosed with testicular cancer too. He really
| thought he was gonna die. He was at stage 4 (which is a highly
| zone specific metric). Last time I saw him he is still coding
| and more bald. It was more difficult to sort payments than the
| treatment as he is in the US.
| deepakg wrote:
| A little tangential, but I'd highly recommend Siddhartha
| Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_All_Maladies
|
| It really helped me appreciate how we went from treating people
| with anything that'd kill their cells to highly specific drugs
| that target genetic pathways.
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