[HN Gopher] Woman who had pioneering cancer treatment 18 years a...
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Woman who had pioneering cancer treatment 18 years ago still in
remission
Author : ranit
Score : 179 points
Date : 2025-02-17 19:44 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Recruiting immune cells for cancer intervention is the future,
| but it will still take a while to get there.
|
| >> Over seven years that followed the therapy, 12 patients died
| due to relapsed neuroblastoma. Among the seven that survived
| beyond this point, five were cancer-free when given the CAR
| T-cell therapy but had previously been treated for neuroblastoma
| using other approaches and were at high risk of relapse. All five
| were disease-free at their last follow-up, between 10 and 15
| years after the CAR T-cell therapy, although the team note they
| may already have been cured when the therapy was administered.
| jandrese wrote:
| The problem is that cancer is your own cells, so immunotherapy
| solutions are always going to be balanced on a knife point. If
| you make the tiniest mistake it is Lupus.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Wouldn't that likely have a better prognosis than most
| cancers?
| meowfly wrote:
| A family member of mine is going through keynote 522, which
| is a clinical trial that combines 3 chemos and an
| immunotherapy prior to surgery.
|
| The five year survival rate for stage 3 triple negative
| breast cancer is normally about ~60% but the clinical
| trials show with immunotherapy it exceeds 80%. So the
| survival rates you see online aren't capturing the progress
| we are making with these drugs. Hashimotos seems worth the
| risk.
|
| An interesting aside is that the patients in the clinical
| trials who had adverse reactions to immunotherapy and came
| off the medication had higher survival rates than patients
| who stayed on it. The hypothesis is that stimulating an
| immune system overreaction also means it was also highly
| effective against the cancer.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Interesting theory, but not in my experience. My wife
| died of MBC and she had lots of reactions. Anecdotally,
| the pembro + chemo may have given her an extra year, she
| did well on it.
| jandrese wrote:
| Lupus is not generally associated with "good prognosis".
| mbil wrote:
| I wonder if they could do two phases. Like first engineer T
| cells that mark the target cell but don't kill it. And then,
| if the marked cells are sufficiently scoped to cancer cells,
| use the same targeting mechanism for cancer-destroying T
| cells.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Marking them is the challenge. Cells have expressions that
| we can engineer chemicals to bind with, but sometimes the
| cancer cells have no expression (Triple negative breast
| cancer for one). It just mutates and divides faster. This
| is why chemo works well, it is uptaken by cells that divide
| faster, like cancer, and hair, mouth cells, etc.
|
| But chemo is general, it doesn't specialize. So thus, the
| new chemo called ADCs (anti-body drug conjugates), are
| really nice. They target AREAS and release generally.
| melling wrote:
| A doctor in Australia has been cancer free for almost 2 years
| after treating his brain cancer with Car-T therapy
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-69006713
| apwell23 wrote:
| Every therapy works for someone spectacularly. This has been
| the case forever. It doesn't really prove anything/ main
| challenge is figuring out why it worked for this particular
| person when it fails for most. Cancer treatment has always been
| primitive throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Still the
| case today.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| You are partially correct. But here a broader picture - you
| may have to get in touch with the person(s) who is claiming
| the cure to draw a conclusion. Sometimes they may have done
| multiple trials within their own circle, or if it's a
| physician on his patients. They generally will have
| documented their patients. They generally will not have the
| means to do large scale trials. (I heard that it cost about
| 10 million, and about 10 years to get an FDA approval). When
| a unknown/non credentialed practitioners or a physician claim
| something it is generally ignored - as far as I'm concerned
| the cancer treatment cartel industry is real (As with almost
| every other industry), if by the rare chance it does get some
| publicity (as it happened with the Linus Pauling, Nicholas
| Gonzales), the cartel indulges in accusations of quackery and
| character assassination.
|
| Now I'm not saying that the small time practitioners are
| always correct, in fact they are mostly wrong. But they
| deserve some investigation.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| If the therapy had not worked would that be evidence that the
| therapy is not effective? If so the fact that it did work
| must be at least some evidence that the therapy is effective.
| Simple Bayes factor, you can't have one without the other.
|
| Additionally, if there is enough similar cancers we can know
| the rate of spontaneous remission within a particular band of
| time. This would be much lower than spontaneous remission at
| any time so that a spontaneous remission at the specific time
| of treatment could be a rather unlikely event and start to
| look like decent evidence.
|
| Not disagreeing that cancer treatment isn't a shit show but I
| would suggest that such evidence cannot be easily dismissed
| due to the lack of the gold standard large scale double blind
| study.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Problem with CAR-T is still too expensive to use...
|
| people should be investing a lot more in early stage drug
| discovery biotechs! A lot more!!! (I'm doing an early stage drug
| discovery biotech)
| Teever wrote:
| Why is that a better course of action than investing resources
| in making the existing and effective treatment more affordable?
|
| From what I've heard the bottleneck for CAR-T is the lack of
| technicians who can do the work and automation it make more
| effective use of the technicians and their time.
|
| It seems like there is a clear path to decreasing the cost of
| this.
| DennisP wrote:
| Why not both? It's not like those are the only two things in
| the world. Maybe they're both way more useful than a thousand
| other ways we spend our money.
| fredophile wrote:
| There are companies pursuing CAR-T for veterinary treatments
| that are driving the costs down. One example I'm aware of is
| LEAH Labs (https://leahlabs.com) that is working on using CAR-T
| to make affordable cancer treatments in dogs.
|
| Full Disclosure: I am an investor in LEAH Labs.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| The problem is Erooms law. Yes we need to invest more, but we
| also need to figure out why we're getting worse at doing it
| year over year. My hypothesis, many others, is that the models
| are flawed. We need better, more fluid models.
| mattkrause wrote:
| If you like stuff like this (i.e., beating cancer), badger your
| reps to get the NIH back up and running!
|
| This particular work came out of at least 3 NIH grants and
| indirectly relies on a whole lot more.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Could be problematic; cancer research relies on a diverse
| sample set.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Ha! I'm afraid to admit how much thought I've put into
| avoiding words that overlap with the "naughty list", like
| (statistical) bias and (electrical) polarization.
|
| A dead comment says this is all a myth but from somebody in
| the trenches...it's not. No access to the Federal Register
| means no meetings to evaluate grants, which means no more
| grants going out at all.
| caycep wrote:
| future of oncological meds might come from PRC
| institutions, maybe EU; US pipeline will likely dry up
| vkou wrote:
| My reps can't do anything and the ones that can will laugh at
| anyone who calls them with such a request.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I agree that Democratic reps don't have a ton of power right
| now, though some have voted to approve some poor Trump
| cabinet picks.
|
| I think it's still important to call both them, and your
| Republican reps. They keep track of how many people call on
| issues, and what side they take. I think a lot of reps are
| worried about retaliation from the POTUS, and the only thing
| that gives them ammunition is constituents on their side.
| vkou wrote:
| > I think a lot of reps are worried about retaliation from
| the POTUS,
|
| As they should be, everyone from the GOP who has ever
| crossed the golden boy was destroyed by him. And now he has
| the richest man in the world to finance a campaign to
| destroy them.
|
| The constituents matter far less to them than those two
| things. They made a Faustian bargain, and they care about
| keeping their jobs, which means doing what he tells them,
| not what you tell them.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| They had the chance to boot him the last impeachment
| trial, and they decided they wanted to keep being his
| lackeys.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Can someone explain "remission" to me?
|
| Perhaps I am missing something because to me, going 18 years
| without cancer after having cancer and going through treatment
| is...expected? Does canceer treatment not actually get rid of the
| cancer or something like that?
| teddyh wrote:
| Relevant xkcd: <https://xkcd.com/931/>
| DennisP wrote:
| I know that's generally true, but apparently sometimes the
| odds of recurrence are so low they stop worrying about it. I
| have a relative who was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma a
| decade ago. She got three doses of immunotherapy and her
| tumors immediately shrank by 2/3, and eventually disappeared
| entirely. For a while they kept scanning her twice a year,
| but several years ago they told her it was gone and stopped
| the scans.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| That's great to hear but, your risk of cancer before
| diagnosis and after you're cured is, at best, the same.
| DennisP wrote:
| Yes of course, even if all her cancer cells have been
| destroyed, she could still get an entirely new cancer,
| just like anyone else. She hasn't attained some kind of
| immunity.
| apwell23 wrote:
| you really have no way to know if cancer has been "gotten rid
| of". Presumably thing that went wrong in your body and gave you
| cancer is still wrong. remission = we can't see anything in
| this scan. you cannot assume scan can 'see' all cancer, there
| is no such scan.
|
| Its no different than taking a pill for high cholesterol you
| are not cured of the disease .
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Yeah, "remission" comes from the Latin "remit," which liter
| means "to return or restore."
|
| When illness originates outside the body, it's usually
| possible to completely kill/eradicate it, at which point
| you're "cured." But some things either linger forever
| (certain viruses, like how chicken pox can come back as
| shingles) or originate inside your own body (cancer, lupus,
| rheumatoid arthritis). In the latter case, treatment makes it
| possible to return to a baseline normal, but there's no
| guarantee it's all the way gone or won't ever return, so we
| say it's in remission rather than cured. Cancer lurks;
| autoimmune diseases go dormant but don't die.
|
| (One autoimmune exception: if you have ulcerative colitis,
| completely removing your colon cures most people, since the
| problem lies in that specific organ. But that goes to show
| how drastic a true cure is!)
|
| There are also some conditions, notably MS, that are
| described as "relapsing/remitting" because they alternate
| between periods of relapse and remission. So you'll feel fine
| for a while, then the symptoms come back, then they go away
| again, etc.
| lancercane wrote:
| I've been exposing myself to similar, vaccine induced T cell
| production to fight cancer, research recently due to a family
| member recently going through it with pancreatic cancer.
|
| https://www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrna-vaccines-fight-pancreati...
|
| My family member was ineligible for the trial due to requiring
| chemo before surgery due to ca19-9 markers being above the limit
| for surgery eligibility.
|
| Here are some of my observations as someone forced to the
| outside:
|
| I read the 2017 and phase i papers.
|
| They are both very mathy and talk more about the life spans of
| their induced T cells than their patients.
|
| Looks like phase i was 19 patients (16 given the vaccine), 2
| recurred, one died, they seem to want to blame the patients'
| immune system.
|
| The study is: surgery, vaccine, then 12 cycles of chemo regiment,
| then vaccine booster.
|
| I was frustrated to see a lack of any search results for "diet",
| "nutrition", "sugar", "glutamine", in either paper.
|
| I think the mathy science is cool, and a necessary component, but
| focusing on pharmaceutical solutions and calculating their
| efficacy based on if their intended biological reaction occurred,
| seemingly oblivious of, or defiantly ignoring, lifestyle change
| appears misguided.
|
| Diet and exercise is insufficient on its own, but due to the vast
| differences in individual diets, studies like these should
| include lifestyle requirements as a control.
|
| Especially if they are going to point at a patients immune
| system.
|
| Diet effects on both immune system function and specifically
| targeting cancers is uncontroversial and scientifically
| supported.
|
| Why are these two research efforts so siloed from each other?!
| goda90 wrote:
| I think some people try to distance themselves from the diet
| and exercise parts because of how easy it is to sell quackery
| in that area. "Take this supplement to cure cancer", "Read my
| book about the exact diet to cure your cancer!", etc.
|
| We'll probably start seeing more and more mixing of traditional
| or cutting edge treatments like chemo, radiation, and
| immunotherapy with having the right lifestyle choices to have a
| stronger immune system. There is research being done, even if
| limited.
|
| Another interesting thing I'd like to see more research done on
| is metabolic therapy. Not just having a diet to boost the
| immune system, but targeting the metabolism of cancer cells.
| The Warburg effect[0] means a lot of cancer depends on glucose
| and glutamine for energy. Some researchers have tried using a
| ketogenic diet to reduce glucose, since normal cells can
| survive without it, plus using drugs to temporarily drop
| glutamine levels with the hope that the cancer cells starve
| first.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect_(oncology)
| lancercane wrote:
| I appreciate your reply, but I think calling diet and
| exercise "traditional" and saying the research is "limited"
| plays into the downvoters' prejudice.
|
| I see this sort of sentiment a lot on this forum: it's only
| "science" if it's pharmaceutical, (see: any thread about
| semaglutides) when in reality cancer response to diet
| research is well trodden, and I would argue the better
| science.
|
| Better science because it has stronger controls on variables.
|
| When you read about diet research the patients are all given
| the same pharmaceutical regiment and the variable is the
| diet, whereas on the flip side the diets of the patients are
| completely ignored.
|
| That's bad science. It may be great research, but it's still
| bad science.
|
| It'd be like the diet researchers allowing the patients to
| choose their own doses for the pharmaceutical side of their
| treatment, which would be an absurd confounding variable.
|
| Cancer cell metabolism is thoroughly researched.
|
| The leading cause of death is heart disease, and the leading
| cause of heart disease is build up of fatty deposits, ie
| diet.
|
| I'm unsure why people act surprised that the same factors
| play into the body's ability to respond to cancer.
|
| Read a study on chemo from the 90s and tell me what's more
| "quackery": the pharmaceuticals they tried back then that now
| would result in a malpractice suit if given to a patient
| today, or the diet guidelines that have remained consistent
| over the same time period?
|
| I made it clear in my op that both are necessary, I just want
| the pharmaceutical side to acknowledge that reality too.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Must be way way more complicated than just find the cancer
| protein, make a special cell and inject
| chromatin wrote:
| "Cancer protein"s are rarely restricted to the neoplastic clone
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| People go into cancer remission without any treatment. Single
| point isn't data, not proof of anything.
| melling wrote:
| What percentage of people go into remission without treatment?
| bluGill wrote:
| Something > 0, which is all we need to know about single
| point data sources.
| rozap wrote:
| Yes, clean food diets and meditation are famously very
| effective against cancer. I've heard eliminating seed oils is a
| magic bullet.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Bro didn't you know you can inject Ivermectin directly into your
| balls and it cures your cancer? Duh.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I have zero medical experience so take this question as it is in
| good faith. Assuming the process to do this was known, how
| difficult would it be for a reasonably intelligent person to
| implement this procedure on their own
| throwaway_acgt wrote:
| Basically impossible. There's too much specialized knowledge
| and equipment that go into it.
| cbracketdash wrote:
| > "All five were disease-free at their last follow-up, between 10
| and 15 years after the CAR T-cell therapy, although the team note
| they may already have been cured when the therapy was
| administered."
|
| > "The other two surviving patients had cancer that was actively
| growing or spreading when they received CAR T-cell therapy, but
| subsequently went into complete remission. One of these patients
| stopped participating in follow-up sessions eight years after
| treatment, but the other continued and has remained cancer-free
| more than 18 years."
|
| Based on these statements, the evidence for this treatment is
| anecdotal at best. Only 2/27 patients lived longer than 7 years.
|
| (There are probably more advancements in the last 10-15 years
| that have increased efficacy)
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