[HN Gopher] Antibody Drug Conjugates: A frontier in cancer treat...
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Antibody Drug Conjugates: A frontier in cancer treatment
Author : peerless-app
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-10-31 17:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sagelyhealth.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sagelyhealth.com)
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Every little step in fields like this is so encouraging. We keep
| getting better, but the cancers don't.
|
| Ever more effective cocktails of drugs that target the cancers
| while minimising harm to everywhere else, the closer we get to
| attacking cancer cells from so many different directions they
| simply can't adapt in time and we wipe it out immediately (a
| cure). One can only hope.
|
| I whether we might see even more investment into research like
| this as it gets closer to deliver curative, rather than just
| suppressive outcomes, as well
| mjewkes wrote:
| CAR-T may have a ~50% cure rate for blood cancers:
| https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/141/19/2307/494672...
| alexissantos wrote:
| My uncle underwent CAR-T therapy and the turn around was
| amazing. He's got a brand new lease on life. We would have
| lost him without it.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What disease did it address?
| xk_id wrote:
| > whether we might see even more investment into research
|
| The field would benefit greatly from even a fraction of the
| investment in the AI and crypto bubbles
| melling wrote:
| Pfizer acquired Seagen for $43 billion. Seagen has some very
| promising ADC's in the queue.
|
| https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
| tptacek wrote:
| It's weird to think of a _hopeful_ story of a $43Bn
| acquisition.
| loeg wrote:
| My dad (retired) spent the back half of his career working on
| ADCs at Seagen. He's glad ADCs panned out as useful cancer
| treatments.
| namuol wrote:
| > The Food and Drug Administration approves new cancer treatments
| when they are shown in clinical trials to be more effective than
| the current approved cancer treatment for a given cancer type.
| The approval comes when the treatment extends lifespan without
| overly increasing the risks of serious side effects.
|
| This standard just doesn't make sense to me. Every case is
| different, so why "throw out" a treatment option for only being
| within the margin of error of efficacy on a general population?
| It must be incredibly frustrating for patients to know about
| these treatments...
| cyberax wrote:
| It's fine to ask for an approval for a part of the population
| (e.g. people with cancer exhibiting particular markers).
| howlingowl wrote:
| Never let a customer off the hook too early
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| The issue with ADCs is you're putting a really giant homing
| system on a tiny warhead. How many molecules of X does it take to
| kill a cell? There is one really good warhead candidate, but
| un?fortunately it's illegal to research
| tcbawo wrote:
| What candidate are you referring to?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Nope. Don't want to be on surveillance lists, even with an
| anon account. Was researched in the 80s, before we knew
| enough about the antibody side to make a good go of it. then
| dropped for obvious reasons (it didn't work which makes sense
| in retrospect given the crude conjugation strategy plus the
| restrictedness of the warhead side). That's all I'll say.
|
| Probably enough info for you to figure it out if you're
| smart. Don't wind up in jail.
| DigitalPaladin wrote:
| Are you referring to monoclonal antibodies? For which a
| Nobel Prize was awarded in 2018, and research has continued
| since the 80s?
| loeg wrote:
| No, that's the "homing system" side of this analogy. GP
| is talking about some sort of poison (chemo), but I don't
| know which one or what the paranoia is about.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Yeah there's stuff that will get you on lists especially
| since 9/11. But some of them have been restricted since
| before that, though de facto unenforceable. Today there
| is the ability to ingest huge volumes of data. I just
| don't want to deal with the pain in the ass even if I'm
| found innocent.
| dekhn wrote:
| Your paranoia is not justified. merely mentioned potential
| treatments (even ethically questionable ones) does not get
| you on any "watchlists".
|
| Just say what it is you're referring to, or don't mention
| it at all.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I will do this for you. List 20 compounds surveiled by
| the US government for potential association with
| terrorist groups in a comment under your account below
| this comment and I will answer yes/no if it is in the
| group as a whole.
| dekhn wrote:
| Merely mentioning illegal/regulated drugs does not get
| you on a watch list. Answering yes/no to a list does not
| protect you. I will not continue to engage.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere that doctors are experimenting with
| (or wanting to) some of these more modern treatments first. Right
| now they're all "exhaust your other options, and then try the new
| stuff as a weapon of last resort". The more modern treatments
| could be more effective if we try them first instead of waiting,
| but we just don't have the data.
|
| Anyone have a source on this half-recollected fact of mine? I
| can't find one.
| DigitalPaladin wrote:
| Anecdotally, I can support this.
|
| A loved one is moving through this pathway now. Its has you
| said: try all the established drugs first, even if they aren't
| directly indicated for the cancer diagnosis of the patient,
| then move on to the more modern and specific treatments once
| the established medicines have failed.
|
| One problem with that approach is, once the patient has reached
| the point of several failed treatments, the cancer has possibly
| become advanced and the patient is worn down by the earlier
| interventions. In my observation, this confluence makes the
| newer medicines simultaneously harder for the patient to
| tolerate but also appear less effective than might've been the
| case at earlier stages of the disease.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| My wife, now deceased from MBC, took two ADCs that had the same
| payload (chemo) but two different antibody signatures. The first
| one did great for about 3 months. The second one failed, major
| progression. But the conclusion was still unknown, what
| information did that give us? Was it the cancer rejecting the
| antibody or mutating to overcome the chemo effects?
|
| Tools we need (large scale):
|
| - how can we identify when the cancer mutates, what part of the
| ADC is it rejecting? This information is valuable.
|
| - how do we assign different payloads? Can this be scaled? Do new
| payload/antibody delivery systems need to go through the FDA each
| time? How do we streamline this to add a wider net to catch
| cancer mutations?
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