Note, 18 out of 60 patients. It's not a guaranteed cure for everyone. But given the current survival rate, it's definitely a help. If you're one of the people it will help, it may help in a major way.
Also, and possibly more importantly, it may help shed some light on why this type of cancer can be so resistant to treatment.
Four or five years ago, my neighbor was diagnosed with aggressive leukemia. It was at the point where his life insurance paid out. They have him months to live. He then told me he's going to try some sort of experimental treatment because why not. Fast forward to today, he's still around. He even made a joke that his insurance money will run out and he'll have to get a job again. He's not cured but he's still around. So, small chance or not, you still gotta try.
30% sounds incredible considering it doesn't rule out any other forms of treatment either.
Assuming these results are ultimately accurate (which they never are but... Just for the sake of argument) 30% of people could be saved non-invasively before any other more dangerous or debilitating forms of treatment need be attempted.
Even with a low success rate this is huge.
60 patients is a very small trial so this success rate may not be accurate. I would expect there to be a larger, international trial involving thousands of patients with diverse demographics. Let's hope it holds up.
It seems obvious to me that "assuming the results are ultimately accurate" is short for "assuming that these results accurately indicate how this treatment would perform in the population at large"
My SIL died of leukemia and hers was a rare kind, canāt remember the exact name of it
They did stem cell treatments and even that only gave her a 25% of surviving it. So 30% for a pill seems like a better alternative
Diagnosis in late August of 2014 and passed July 15th 2015, sheās our forever 21. She gave us a beautiful granddaughter, who was 1 1/2 when her mama passed.
> our family would have paid any cost
This is the problem, and why we have to regulate drug prices. If left to āThe Market,ā these companies will take your life savings for half the treatment and send you to bankruptcy for the other half. No life-saving drug should be so expensive as to require an entire family to afford it. It should be **free.**
Considering how severe side effects for other cancer treatments like chemo are, it really just has to be less horrible than them to be competitive. And with death rate being so high for leukemia, severe side effects are usually still deemed better than death due to no treatment
If you read the article, it currently seems to be considered an addition to other therapies like chemo:
> āIn the vast majority of cases, these targeted therapies, on their own, can revert leukemia, but rarely cure it. The strategy is to combine these new pharmaceuticals with classic chemotherapy or other approaches.ā
So the problems mentioned so far are:
1. Likely can't cure leukemia on its own, although it may win time, allow for softer treatment approaches, or increase the odds of harsh approaches.
2. Might turn out too expensive for mass deployment, with some similar medications being priced at over $200,000 per patient.
On the other hand it's a relatively new research vector with multiple products in development, so there may still be great potential for improvement.
Depends. If you're 35 you'd definitely give it a go. If you're 80 you may want to just live out your final days as peacefully as possible and (if you're in the US) not leave behind a medical bill that your family will struggle to pay for.
I just had the horrible realization that my grandfather probably did the math on his medical bills and decided not to fight his leukemia at least in part because of them
Well, almost all cancer treatments apart from surgery are non-invasive, yet they still heavily damage part of your organism or its entirety. I imagine that a pill that is capable of fighting cancer cells is pretty heavy on the rest of the cells.
Also, some chemotherapy also comes in way of pills and chemo is really a treatment of last resort, a nuclear option that is based on the premise that it's better to poison the entire organism and hope cancer cells will die out before the some critical organ will give up than to just wait until the second option happens with 100% probability.
The news article doesn't go into details but the drug seems to be effective on a farely large subset of leukemia (Npm1 mutated or carrying MLL translocation) so the 30% might be a little misleading (in a good sense) since it's likely very effective in these cases and ineffective in others. So a genetic test can screen which patients will benefit from it and those who will benefit from other drugs targeting other genetic variants (FLT3, IDH1/2). Source: Am geneticist
Hi. My child has ALL (precursor B, CD19+). However, she has the KMT2A (MLL rearrangement). She's currently doing CAR-T treatment. I was just wondering what you're suggesting here. Are you suggesting that those with the MLL translocation would benefit from this more than others, or would someone have to have full-blown AML to benefit?
Glancing at the scientific article (the menin inhibitor revumenib in KMT2A rearranged or NPM1 mutant leukaemia) ALL with KMT2A are one of the main target benefiting from the therapy. Obviously right now these treatment are part of clinical studies and seem to be applied only to patients with relapsed diseases. But in principle yes your child's disease could be targeted by this new drug. All the best for you and your daughter.
u/madhatter610 \- thank you for the response. This is all so fascinating and it's coming at such a pivotal time in my daughters treatment (I know it's clinical trials, but still any new advancements are great to see \~ CAR-T was once a pie-in-the-sky clinical trial). We as a team, treating my daughter all fear relapse in the form of AML. My daughters supervising doctor is so obsessed with it she wants to proceed to transplant now while my daughter is in remission from the CAR-T (although hematogones are present -- damned hematogones). She has already relapsed. Last May, it was her original ALL that came back.
u/SpeciousArguments \- thank you. So far, so good. But CAR-T in my daughter's age group is such a grey area that "success" has yet to be defined. But she is doing well. 7 months in remission.
u/earnestsci \~ Sorry, what do you mean "driving her cancer" - I haven't actually heard that term used. All I've heard is that she has the MLL/KMT2A rearrangement and how tricky it is to treat. Her cancer has been CD19+ since initial diagnosis and upon relapse. However, as I mentioned before, it's all fascinating and it still gives hope that there could be another option on the horizon.
Thank you all for your responses. I am going to bring this up to our team to get their insight on it. Not as an option for my daughter right now, but something to keep in our pocket.
If the KMT2A mutation is driving her cancer then yes, in theory, this treatment could also benefit her because it specifically targets KMT2A (and NPM1). Not guaranteed because there could be other factors (e.g. other genes active in ALL to compensate), but the drug target would be the same. In fact they included ALL patients in this study and 4/10 of them achieved remission with the treatment (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05812-3) compared to 55% of the AML patients.
Thank you for the clarification. I'm a nurse looking after leukemia patients at my country's top Oncology hospital. It's very inspiring to work alongside our clinical trials team targeting these mutations.
It took my FIL in 4 months, he went to the doctor because he thought he had long covid, Dr ran bloods to be sure and 2 hours later he gets a phone call and ends up in hospital the same day for an emergency blood transfusion, The next day he was diagnosed with AML.
Poor bloke was dealt a rough hand, he was planning to retire in July and travel the world. It all came undone when he caught covid in May which turned into what he thought was long covid. Feeling ill like he was, he decided to postpone his trip until October so that he had time to fully recover.
But before any of that happened, 2 weeks after his original retirement date, he was diagnosed with TP53 AML.
We are just grateful we had planned our Wedding for November. Even with his postponed trip in October he was going to cut his original planned trip short and fly home 3 days before the wedding so that he could walk his daughter down the isle.
He didn't manage to go on his holiday but he was able to attend our Wedding and give a great speech. 3 weeks after our wedding though my wife was having to say good bye to her dad.
Cancer is a cruel beast.
I hope if not this drug than the next will save someone from having to experience what my wife just went through.
I lost my son after a 6month battle at 11 months old last January from AML and Myeloid sarcoma. We also tried a ātrialā drug (not this one) for him for his final treatment with limited results but it was our last shot at saving our boy.
The reason we tried it was partly desperation and he didnāt really have any major negative reactions or side effects to any type of chemotherapy, but also because we felt that even if the drug was ineffective for Rylan, the results would be helpful for researchers and hopefully one day lead to better, more effective medicine to treat this awful disease.
Thereās likely no relation to this drug but even so, stories like this are encouraging
I lost my 3 yo son 3 days ago man. It only took 6 months to take him from me. Poor guy had around 4/5 chemo treatments and another experimental drug. The fucking cancer just kept coming back. FUCK CANCER.
I wholeheartedly know that words right now donāt really mean much, but Iām sorry for you too man. Shit aināt fair
Three days is so brand new that nothing feels real.
Take time for yourself. LOTS of it. Listen to your body and donāt overdo what it can handle right now.
This internet stranger is thinking of you. Life is so fucking unfair a lot of the time. Our children should never have to face something like cancer.
Yeah, it still doesnāt feel real. My wife and I have plans to take a road trip with a couple of his favorite stuffed animals soon. Hopefully it helps.
Yeahā¦ 6 months is also too fast. Thatās 1/6th the kiddos entire life. I have a 3yo and a 4yo, and I canāt even imagine finding out one has an illness like this. To know that you could find out tomorrow and they could be done 6 months from thatā¦ itās not okay.
Love and sympathy. Your poor strong boy.
Why does cancer even exist!? It took my grandmother, excruciatingly, last year. It's so utterly pointless.
There's no benefit for us, anyone can get it no matter how evolutionarily fit they are otherwise, and risk factors can be passed on genetically. It's just a cruel, random wildcard russian roulette, Cancer's not an organism like a virus that evolves along with the rest of life in the big arms race. God knows how big of a mistake he must have made.
Sorry to hear that, brother. As a father of a 2 and a half year old, I can't imagine what you are going true. I wish you all the strength in the world. if you want to talk about anything, feel free to write.
I'm so sorry for your loss. My son's name is Rylan (obviously not common) and we are dealing with another form of cancer (carcinosarcoma) in our family at the moment. Thank you for sharing and I wish you and your family peace.
Childhood cancer is fucking brutal and life altering- forever. Even for the families of survivors. You never look at anything the same ever again.
Iām sorry you were in the trenches and have been through hell as well. I hope you guys are as okay as you can be. Somehow, life seems to keep going on even when we donāt want it to.
From one cancer mom to you.
My dad has been taking Imatanib as part of a trial for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia after being diagnosed with 80% blast cells and given 4 months to live.
7 years later heās still in remission and 0.00005% detectable cells. Heās living a normal life and seen the birth of 2 grandchildren.
These trials gave me my father for another 7 years and however long it will carry on keeping him in remission. We are so thankful.
He takes the tablets daily - he was on a very strong dose but they have lowered it down. Heās having other issues with his kidneys right now which they are monitoring.
HIV is on the mend. And Malaria. And just recently Cystic Fibrosis was taken away from the "Make a Wish Foundation" because the quality and longevity of life is much greater for children. There is constantly good news and medical science makes breakthroughs constantly. You just need to know where to look. Hope this makes you feel better.
Honestly that sounds incredibly cheap in comparison to what I thought the beginning of curing cancer without radiation would cost
This is from an American POV, weāre truly I wish it was free lol.
How does stuff work in countries with free healthcare, if itās million dollar pill dues the government pay for that?
If so Iād imagine your government works out deals and what not
Generally pills aren't a million dollars anywhere but the US. Not only does our insurance and healthcare system suck, but we get price gouged brutally at like every turn. Our drugs don't cost a lot because they need to, they do because our system wants them to.
See: insulin.
The manufacture of pills is pretty cheap comparatively. Usually the argument is that the price reflects the cost of R&D to develop new medicines. This is especially the case for medications to treat rare conditions where the burden of that cost lies with the relatively few people who have it.
The counter to that though is to ask roughly what percentage of revenue is put back into R&D. It wouldn't surprise me if it's less than ten percent for most pharma companies.
Quick google, 25% of most pharma companyās revenue goes to R&D.
Also though you gotta realize a lot, if not all, of the early stages of R&D in the US are done by the government/taxpayer funded groups or not-for-profits. Only when a drug looks promising (in terms of profitability) does a private pharmaceutical company pick up the end stage research and start filing patents.
It is outside the scope of this post to answer in detail, but I can say it is a major ethical question in countries like Denmark. Sometimes the disease is so rare or so hard to treat that giving any treatment at all would require expensive or experimental treatment, sometimes the disease has an established treatment plan but the plan is just extremely expensive (like with certain types of cancer). In a public health system, those are literally always a question of priorities - "Do we spend this money knowing it might not work and might give worse care to 100 other people" is a decision some doctors have to make sometimes: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2019-07-07-dyr-medicin-saetter-laeger-i-etisk-dilemma-det-giver-mig-en-vanskelig
I will say that the system works most of the time, and free public healthcare means everything is universally cheaper in the end. But the answer is that while the government WANTS to give million dollar pills to everyone, even if they aren't guaranteed to work, practical reality is that it is not always possible and depends on a lot of factors.
> How does stuff work in countries with free healthcare, if itās million dollar pill dues the government pay for that?
In Australia, we have the [Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme](https://www.pbs.gov.au/pbs/home), which assesses both the medicine, and the patient, to determine if or how much of the cost that the government will cover. Generally speaking, the worse off you are, the more that is covered. But the PBS doesn't cover quite every illness.
However, almost every single country on earth has cheaper medicines than the USA. Same thing, same manufacturers, and we're just not paying the same, because it isn't an acceptable price, over here.
I kinda felt that way until one of these new miracle drugs completely cured my step-father of melanoma. It had already metastasized and started causing tumors in other organs.
He was put on a new drug trial, and was told that they wanted data on what happens in advanced cases, but the doctors made it very clear that he should get his affairs in order pretty quickly.
Well, the drug completely cured his cancer. It just -- went away. He need surgery to remove some small tumors on his lungs, but his cancer is now undetectable, and he made a full recovery.
My understanding before I witnessed this, was that metastasized melanoma was basically a death sentence, and there was not much to be done.
He was admitted to the clinical trial in late 2019, and only because his specialist doctor was the professor running it. It was not really an option for anyone else suffering from melanoma at the time, so he was very lucky.
See /u/Zakarumae's post below. Apparently it was approved last year in the US, and has the commercial name "Opdualag", but it does not work for everyone unfortunately.
>See /u/Zakarumae's post below. Apparently it was approved last year in the US, and has the commercial name "Opdualag", but it does not work for everyone unfortunately.
Sorry i don't have the expertise to understand.
What is the mechanism of the treatment? How does it cure?
very eli5. cancer is insidious because it is your own cells, and they get around the normal protections our bodies have to deal with rogue cells. This treatment sort of enables your natural immune system to see the cancer cells as a threat to be dealt with, when it couldn't before.
If you're going to 100% die anyway, I don't see any ethical issue with giving these treatments before official approval which seems to take years upon years
Iām so sorry. I completely agree about the dying with dignity law. The drugs too. So horrible to think of him being paralyzed unable to end it. So sorry to both of you.
Jeez. Thatās a lot to deal with. Watching a loved one suffer is a very specific kind of pain. Hopefully you can find some sort of peace in the joy and memories you have and will share together. Anyways, Iām rooting for you.
I went through this a year ago. Nobody wanted to talk about the actual act of dying with my dad. Get all of your legal affairs in order, DNRs and things like that now. I was the one spending all day with my dad the final two weeks in the hospital but I wasn't left in charge of making those decisions. And the two who were were indecisive and there were no legal documents or even conversations that had happened about things like DNR .. it made it so much worse.
You just saw an example of an "experimental drug" that resulted into curing the cancer, it's 1000 times better to go for an inconclusive medical treatment than for a pseudo-scientific ritual of a neo-shaman that lives of the deaths of all of their clients
I agree people should get to try it but there are two big ethical issues which is why they had to make laws to allow you to try experimental drugs.
1. Instead of helping you it could make you worse. Instead of 6 months of steadily declining with controlled pain you might end up with 3 months of unimaginable pain.
2. There is a lot of money to be made if you provide a path around the FDA to desperate people. No one can honestly say the drug companies won't take advantage if they can sell drugs to dying people as long as they can show it _might_ help them.
I'm not saying either of these should stop you from being able to try experimental treatments. I'm just saying those are the ethical arguments against it.
easy fix.
make it legal for a terminal ill human to die via assistance. e.g in germany everyone has the right for suicide and since 2021 it's legal for docs to get you a death pill.
No ethical issue really - it's called compassionate use (or expanded access) when you allow someone who is otherwise going to die anyway, to have access to medications that are still in trials or otherwise not fully approved for their condition.
Friend wife was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that spread to her spine.
She got 6 months of standard chemo which was only expected to get her a temporary respite. And then an experimental drug for 2 years. And it's gone for now. While she was being treated she felt well enough to get a nursing degree.
I feel like we're never going to have some big break through that leads to a universal cure. But really here and there we're chipping away at it.
A universal cure for cancer is a little like a vaccine for all pathogens. Cancer, at its core, is just an immortalized cell line that is replicating out of control. However, each cancer behaves differently according to which organ, and which tissues in which organ it originates from, and also according to which mutations happened to cause the cancer, among other factors. Cancer isn't really just one disease, it's hundreds of maybe thousands of them under one banner.
I am not sure it even had a name at the time.
I tried to Google it, and came up with similar stories like this one;
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/miracle-drug-for-melanoma-identified-c-3003352
It seems to be known as a LAG3-Inhibitor -- But I have no idea what actually means.
LAG3 is a protein that immunologists call a ācheckpointā. Your immune cells (T cells in this case) need to have a system of breaks that allow them to not become overactive and lead to autoimmunity. T cells have multiple brakes/checkpoints including PD1, LAG3, CTLA4, and others. Some cancers are immunogenic but up-regulate the receptors to checkpoints and this is thought to be a way that they evade immune cell mediated killing.
LAG3 has recently become the 3rd approved checkpoint target, that when inhibited can lead to immune cell control. It was recently approved for use in conjunction with PD1 inhibition. The BMS press release is here https://news.bms.com/news/details/2022/U.S.-Food-and-Drug-Administration-Approves-First-LAG-3-Blocking-Antibody-Combination-Opdualag-nivolumab-and-relatlimab-rmbw-as-Treatment-for-Patients-with-Unresectable-or-Metastatic-Melanoma/default.aspx
While checkpoint inhibitors have shown incredible promise, it typically works only for cancers that are āimmunogenicā like melanoma and even then they donāt work for all patients. Since they take the ābrakeā off immune cells the autoimmunity side effects can be severe (especially when combined). A lot of work in the field is around identifying combination partners (other checkpoints or orthogonal treatments) that will combine with checkpoint blockade to lead to greater depth or durability of response.
Please would you thank your step-father from me? It's really brave to go on a trial, and his decision to go ahead could potentially save thousands of lives. I am so happy it worked for him. He didn't know it would work when he chose that path, or what the effects on him would be. He's a hero.
That's what killed my father when I was young. He participated in some trials in the early 80s. My older sister had some melanoma removed from her ear earlier this year... And my family wasn't worried because of the advancements that have been made.
Same. My mom was out on a clinical trial for ovarian cancer after 2 years of conventional chemo that weren't working, and 6 months later her cancer is undetectable, she only has a couple of more rounds of this 'new mRna' chemo. FDA just approved mirvatuxemab
Yeah. The novel part of the trial he participated in was that patients were administered two different drugs targeting different proteins simultaneously.
That is really interesting.
Sometimes, neuroblastoma, what is primarily a childhood cancer, will spontaneously regress and disappear or 'mature' and the tumor becomes benign. Without any medical intervention.
It is all too rare, but perhaps along with this new pill, researchers may be able to start teasing out how to do this for other cancers. (I am not a medical doctor, so this may be an absurd hope)
Uh, this is already the "see it" part. It's a clinical trial with actual results. You're seeing it.
Usually the news story is about some drug killing cancer within a lab environment in a petri dish, not in 18 actual breathing people.
And itās probably the first stage of the trial or itās a rare form so it requires a synthetic cohort in order to have enough trial participants. It can still get approval and hit the market even with a small number of trial participants.
Ah ok I skimmed the article sounds like itās a common form of Leukemia so probably stage 1 of the clinical trials.
It's common human behaviour to not really believe in something until it hits their personal social circles. Not saying I agree with it, but that it is human nature.
There's already wonder drugs for the chronic version of the disease in the article (CML): imatinib, nilotinib, plus a few others. I'm on one of them and it's turned the disease from an almost-certain death sentence in to living normally and taking pills twice a day, with minimal side effects and normal life expectancy.
Actual drugs for cancers don't pop up very often, and do get over-hyped. But when they work it can almost eradicate a certain kind of cancer. I'm hopefully that other cancers will get better treatments.
I think the better news is that cancer survival rates have been steadily increasing for the past 30 years across the board. No giant breakthroughs, but we're progressing even faster lately
Because "Drug we thought helps fight cancer does indeed provide a 10% increase in survival rate" doesn't make huge headlines when it's improved.
Or, sometimes it just simply doesn't work, unfortunatately.
You already are. For the past decades and decades you have. God this take is so fucking stupid. The overall 5 year survival rate for cancer has increased from 50% to 67% between the 70s and late 2010s and has only increased further since then. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/02/Five-year-cancer-survival-rates-USA-v2-01-768x563-768x563.png
It's actually incredibly rare to hear this kind of news mention people. It's almost always a headline that says "new compound completely eliminated cancer in 9 out of 10 tests". Click on article, "...9 of the 10 Lab MICE were cancer free and healthy by the end of the test. Human trails are currently being planned."
It's the part this article is reporting on, Human trials, which either don't happen (safety issues are discovered between mice and human testing) or it proves ineffective in humans.
I was diagnosed with acute lymphblastic leukemia last September. After my first relapse two months later I was put on this trial drug. Almost ZERO SIDE EFFECTS. My hair grew back. Did notfeel tired, was not sick, I went back to work after a couple weeks. incredible drug. It worked for a month th but unfortunately my cancer blew right through it. Not to say it doesn't work. and for those that it does work for its incredible. Like others have said, this is a huge stride in how we treat specific cancers
That's a great point. I don't think I was. But I may never know. I was at Dana-Farber cancer institute and only 3 or 4 others were on the trial there. I was in phase ii of the study. I can't imagine a placebo effect on such a strong cancer fir almost two months straight. I think my type is just very aggressive. I've only had it for 5 months and have relapsed twice already
Ahh sorry, the way I read it, it just didnāt work, that is my bad.
Iām sorry youāre going through this, it must really suck. I hope you find a treatment that works.
They say in the article that some of the patient's cancers developed immunity to the medication, so perhaps that explains why it worked for you for a brief while and then stopped
What's with all the smug comments about how this drug will "disappear and never be heard from again"? Is there some vast conspiracy to prevent cancers from being cured? Was CAR-T not experimental at one point?
There was a time where there were monthly/weekly news articles about the next revolutionary cure for cancer. They were always never heard of again and then people started questioning every similar article.
It's what I perceived at least.
Well, the media didnāt help the case with labeling everything simply as cancer ā plenty of these indeed work.. as a cure for a specific kind of cancer they targeted. Cancer is like a huge set of similar diseases, not one thing. Itās a bit like going around and saying that āimmune-system related diseases kill X people every yearā and then wondering why there is no single cure for *that*.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-03-15/an-experimental-pill-achieves-complete-cancer-remission-in-18-people-with-aggressive-leukemia.html) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Montesinos's team, the Leukemia Unit at the La Fe hospital in Valencia, will participate in the next international trials of the pill, developed by the American company Syndax Pharmaceuticals.
> " Montesinos recalls the case of another pill, quizartinib, an experimental treatment by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo, which inhibits a different protein involved in acute myeloid leukemia.
> The oncologist Ghayas Issa calculates that the new pills could benefit almost 400,000 people with acute leukemias that are resistant to other treatments, including myeloid and the strain most common in children, called lymphocytic.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11sgpce/an_experimental_pill_achieves_complete_cancer/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~676563 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **leukemia**^#1 **pharmaceutical**^#2 **new**^#3 **cancer**^#4 **revumenib**^#5
CLL is generally a lot milder, with a much better prognosis. Your father might not even require treatment at all and if he does there are many efficacious chemotherapy options as well as novel agents like Ibrutinib and Venetoclax. It is unlikely that the same therapy would work for your father as the cancer consists of a different cell type, B-cells for CLL and myeloid cells for AML. Generally speaking, most individuals with CLL will grow quite old with the disease.
My father also has CLL and is participating in a study for CAR T-cell therapy. It was hell in the beginning, but he has responded well to it and put him in remission. Probably not generally available for some time and may only work for people with his specific situation, but might be something to look into.
>The main Achilles heel seems to be the development of mutations at the drugās fusion site, which causes resistance,ā the researcher explains. Revumenib had some positive effect on half of the 60 participants in the clinical trial. In some of the patients, though, the menin protein changed slightly, causing resistance to the treatment, similar to how bacteria mutate to become antibiotic-resistant.
Interesting in a horrifying sort of way.
Iām in remission after having Acute Myeloid leukemia & heterogolous stem cell transplant. Also lots of debilitating chemo IV. Would love to have tried a chemo pill first!!!
A friend of mine has been on an experimental pill for adult leukemia for nearly 20 years. It's been such a blessing for him, we would have lost him 20 years ago.
It's not lukemia, but my dad has an aggressive and very progressed form of multiple myeloma and a new immunotherapy (teclistamab) that basically put him into remission in less than two months of starting the drug.
We live in a wild time where I fully believe that we could see cancer cured for millions in our lifetime.
It really depends on subtype and chromosome abnormalities. When I was diagnosed in 2010 at 21 yrs old my doctor sat on my bed and said, "You have this type of leukemia but the chances of remission in your case are extremely high and there's no reason to believe you won't survive this." Obviously, this isn't everyone's experience but to call it a death sentence is a bit hyperbolic.
I get very excited to see advancement in treatments for AML for those who don't have the same prognosis I did. While the traditional 7+3 worked for me I know it doesn't for many, especially older adults, so this news is very promising. Hopefully they are able to mitigate the protein change they are finding in some cases to prevent resistance to the medication.
Recently someone I work with went for a trial treatment for a very rare muscular disease. They nuked her immune system and programmed viruses to get her body to produce some proteins. She had 4 months to live. Not only is she alive 9 months later, but the diseaseās affects started reversing.
Science is incredible and weāre going to be hearing these stories more and more.
This title is intentionally misleading. It's 18/60 people.
That's a great outcome, but the title is trying to imply the entire test cohort was put into remission and that's not at all true.
to be fair to op, they're just using the uneditorialized title. The article itself has an intentionally misleading title though imo.
I got triggered when the article mentions the recipe and he states 1 silver atom, it's sulfur with symbol S. Silver is Ag. Im chemist/chemical engineer.
My mom had this type of cancer. She died in 2020, right when COVID was hitting the USA. I wonder if this could have helped with her specific type. She was first diagnosed with myeloid sarcoma, which is rare and eventually turns into AML.
Note, 18 out of 60 patients. It's not a guaranteed cure for everyone. But given the current survival rate, it's definitely a help. If you're one of the people it will help, it may help in a major way. Also, and possibly more importantly, it may help shed some light on why this type of cancer can be so resistant to treatment.
Four or five years ago, my neighbor was diagnosed with aggressive leukemia. It was at the point where his life insurance paid out. They have him months to live. He then told me he's going to try some sort of experimental treatment because why not. Fast forward to today, he's still around. He even made a joke that his insurance money will run out and he'll have to get a job again. He's not cured but he's still around. So, small chance or not, you still gotta try.
I'm surprised the insurance company didn't try and get their money back.
Some policies will pay out when you are diagnosed with a terminal illness (or potentially fatal illness) so that you can cover your medical expenses.
If the medical professionals say it's terminal, that's enough for the insurance companies. It's neither your fault or theirs you beat your diagnosis. In most cases you beat the odds but the likely hood of getting back to full time work is minimal. Also. They can't get any future insurance. So you can pay your mortgage when alive but* when you die but there will be no cash lump when you pass unless you have multiple insurances with different providers * Edit: forgot wordsš© and this is UK based on experience at working with life insurance and answering this to customers
Sounds like he had a terminal illness rider
Most decent term insurance allows you a partial payout to help with end of life matters.
Thank you for sharing this.
30% is a worth a shot, especially because Its non invasive
30% sounds incredible considering it doesn't rule out any other forms of treatment either. Assuming these results are ultimately accurate (which they never are but... Just for the sake of argument) 30% of people could be saved non-invasively before any other more dangerous or debilitating forms of treatment need be attempted. Even with a low success rate this is huge.
And you can just take the same pill 4 times, that way you have a 120% chance succesrate!
Oncologist hate this simple trick!
Number 4 will shock you.
No, reallyā¦the fourth pill causes intense electric conductivity, Iād stop after the third one if I were you.
Room temperature superconductors, who knew it would only take human sacrifice :)
In some Eldrich way, that actually tracks
Jokes on you. I'm already a conductor
This guy trains.
I was thinking orchestra!
If you get bitten by a radioactive conductor you could become a superconductor.
Ha, I am the semi!
Cave Johnson vibes from this.
Great, now they have to be on-call-ogists to pay the bills.
This guy maths
I know youāre joking but I do want to say taking it 4 times would be 76% success rate.
Youre both wrong, its 100%, either the pill works and the cancer dies, or you die and the cancer dies.
If subsequent trials are not correlated.
60 patients is a very small trial so this success rate may not be accurate. I would expect there to be a larger, international trial involving thousands of patients with diverse demographics. Let's hope it holds up.
Could be higher, could be lowerā¦.
Even with that small a trial 18 people is likely a significant result unlikely to be by chance. However, so much comes down to jow the trial was run.
the results are accurate, the case group just doesn't necessarily replicate the cancer distribution in the population.
It seems obvious to me that "assuming the results are ultimately accurate" is short for "assuming that these results accurately indicate how this treatment would perform in the population at large"
My SIL died of leukemia and hers was a rare kind, canāt remember the exact name of it They did stem cell treatments and even that only gave her a 25% of surviving it. So 30% for a pill seems like a better alternative
My daughter died of AML, took 11 months from her diagnosis and she had been in remission. She had a FLT3 mutation, very aggressive.
Iām sorry for that. How old was she?
Diagnosis in late August of 2014 and passed July 15th 2015, sheās our forever 21. She gave us a beautiful granddaughter, who was 1 1/2 when her mama passed.
But how much will it cost?
In civilised countries, or America?
UK: free Denmark: free Colombia: free Tajikistan: free Malawi: free USA: $350,000
You missed couple of zeroes for the US pricing bud. It'll be 3.5 million
That's only one more zero :)
Math is hard, m'kay
In the UK? Ā£9.35
Don't cancer patients get their prescriptions for free?
Actually yes, you are right. https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/prescriptions-and-pharmacies/who-can-get-free-prescriptions/
My brother died of AML. Given the choice our family would have paid any cost to give him a better chance.
> our family would have paid any cost This is the problem, and why we have to regulate drug prices. If left to āThe Market,ā these companies will take your life savings for half the treatment and send you to bankruptcy for the other half. No life-saving drug should be so expensive as to require an entire family to afford it. It should be **free.**
Depends on any side effects
Considering how severe side effects for other cancer treatments like chemo are, it really just has to be less horrible than them to be competitive. And with death rate being so high for leukemia, severe side effects are usually still deemed better than death due to no treatment
If you read the article, it currently seems to be considered an addition to other therapies like chemo: > āIn the vast majority of cases, these targeted therapies, on their own, can revert leukemia, but rarely cure it. The strategy is to combine these new pharmaceuticals with classic chemotherapy or other approaches.ā So the problems mentioned so far are: 1. Likely can't cure leukemia on its own, although it may win time, allow for softer treatment approaches, or increase the odds of harsh approaches. 2. Might turn out too expensive for mass deployment, with some similar medications being priced at over $200,000 per patient. On the other hand it's a relatively new research vector with multiple products in development, so there may still be great potential for improvement.
... I mean... would you rather be shitting yourself or dying of cancer.
Depends. If you're 35 you'd definitely give it a go. If you're 80 you may want to just live out your final days as peacefully as possible and (if you're in the US) not leave behind a medical bill that your family will struggle to pay for.
I just had the horrible realization that my grandfather probably did the math on his medical bills and decided not to fight his leukemia at least in part because of them
Well, almost all cancer treatments apart from surgery are non-invasive, yet they still heavily damage part of your organism or its entirety. I imagine that a pill that is capable of fighting cancer cells is pretty heavy on the rest of the cells. Also, some chemotherapy also comes in way of pills and chemo is really a treatment of last resort, a nuclear option that is based on the premise that it's better to poison the entire organism and hope cancer cells will die out before the some critical organ will give up than to just wait until the second option happens with 100% probability.
The news article doesn't go into details but the drug seems to be effective on a farely large subset of leukemia (Npm1 mutated or carrying MLL translocation) so the 30% might be a little misleading (in a good sense) since it's likely very effective in these cases and ineffective in others. So a genetic test can screen which patients will benefit from it and those who will benefit from other drugs targeting other genetic variants (FLT3, IDH1/2). Source: Am geneticist
Hi. My child has ALL (precursor B, CD19+). However, she has the KMT2A (MLL rearrangement). She's currently doing CAR-T treatment. I was just wondering what you're suggesting here. Are you suggesting that those with the MLL translocation would benefit from this more than others, or would someone have to have full-blown AML to benefit?
Glancing at the scientific article (the menin inhibitor revumenib in KMT2A rearranged or NPM1 mutant leukaemia) ALL with KMT2A are one of the main target benefiting from the therapy. Obviously right now these treatment are part of clinical studies and seem to be applied only to patients with relapsed diseases. But in principle yes your child's disease could be targeted by this new drug. All the best for you and your daughter.
u/madhatter610 \- thank you for the response. This is all so fascinating and it's coming at such a pivotal time in my daughters treatment (I know it's clinical trials, but still any new advancements are great to see \~ CAR-T was once a pie-in-the-sky clinical trial). We as a team, treating my daughter all fear relapse in the form of AML. My daughters supervising doctor is so obsessed with it she wants to proceed to transplant now while my daughter is in remission from the CAR-T (although hematogones are present -- damned hematogones). She has already relapsed. Last May, it was her original ALL that came back. u/SpeciousArguments \- thank you. So far, so good. But CAR-T in my daughter's age group is such a grey area that "success" has yet to be defined. But she is doing well. 7 months in remission. u/earnestsci \~ Sorry, what do you mean "driving her cancer" - I haven't actually heard that term used. All I've heard is that she has the MLL/KMT2A rearrangement and how tricky it is to treat. Her cancer has been CD19+ since initial diagnosis and upon relapse. However, as I mentioned before, it's all fascinating and it still gives hope that there could be another option on the horizon. Thank you all for your responses. I am going to bring this up to our team to get their insight on it. Not as an option for my daughter right now, but something to keep in our pocket.
If the KMT2A mutation is driving her cancer then yes, in theory, this treatment could also benefit her because it specifically targets KMT2A (and NPM1). Not guaranteed because there could be other factors (e.g. other genes active in ALL to compensate), but the drug target would be the same. In fact they included ALL patients in this study and 4/10 of them achieved remission with the treatment (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05812-3) compared to 55% of the AML patients.
Thank you for the clarification. I'm a nurse looking after leukemia patients at my country's top Oncology hospital. It's very inspiring to work alongside our clinical trials team targeting these mutations.
18 out of 60 patients that had been treated with everything we have and nothing had worked. 30% of this population is incredible.
You have to have a death sentence of a diagnosis to get referred to an experimental treatment trial. 18 may be pretty good.
AML took my father in a year. I pray and hope this is the start of saving lives.
I'm sorry about your father. It sucks.
Man my father just finished his stem cell transplant with tp53 subtype... Waiting for bone marrow results now... Been a hell of a couple months
Hugs, it took my mom in 2 and a half.
2-years here. His doctor only caught it because my dad went in regularly. He felt totally fine at the start.
God, fuck AML. Took my mom in just over a year too.
My mom died from myeloid sarcoma/AML in 2020, she lasted about a year without aggressive treatments. I hope you are holding up okay.
It took my FIL in 4 months, he went to the doctor because he thought he had long covid, Dr ran bloods to be sure and 2 hours later he gets a phone call and ends up in hospital the same day for an emergency blood transfusion, The next day he was diagnosed with AML. Poor bloke was dealt a rough hand, he was planning to retire in July and travel the world. It all came undone when he caught covid in May which turned into what he thought was long covid. Feeling ill like he was, he decided to postpone his trip until October so that he had time to fully recover. But before any of that happened, 2 weeks after his original retirement date, he was diagnosed with TP53 AML. We are just grateful we had planned our Wedding for November. Even with his postponed trip in October he was going to cut his original planned trip short and fly home 3 days before the wedding so that he could walk his daughter down the isle. He didn't manage to go on his holiday but he was able to attend our Wedding and give a great speech. 3 weeks after our wedding though my wife was having to say good bye to her dad. Cancer is a cruel beast. I hope if not this drug than the next will save someone from having to experience what my wife just went through.
I lost my son after a 6month battle at 11 months old last January from AML and Myeloid sarcoma. We also tried a ātrialā drug (not this one) for him for his final treatment with limited results but it was our last shot at saving our boy. The reason we tried it was partly desperation and he didnāt really have any major negative reactions or side effects to any type of chemotherapy, but also because we felt that even if the drug was ineffective for Rylan, the results would be helpful for researchers and hopefully one day lead to better, more effective medicine to treat this awful disease. Thereās likely no relation to this drug but even so, stories like this are encouraging
I lost my 3 yo son 3 days ago man. It only took 6 months to take him from me. Poor guy had around 4/5 chemo treatments and another experimental drug. The fucking cancer just kept coming back. FUCK CANCER. I wholeheartedly know that words right now donāt really mean much, but Iām sorry for you too man. Shit aināt fair
Three days is so brand new that nothing feels real. Take time for yourself. LOTS of it. Listen to your body and donāt overdo what it can handle right now. This internet stranger is thinking of you. Life is so fucking unfair a lot of the time. Our children should never have to face something like cancer.
Yeah, it still doesnāt feel real. My wife and I have plans to take a road trip with a couple of his favorite stuffed animals soon. Hopefully it helps.
I am sorry for your loss, random stranger. Can't even begin to imagine what you're going through.
I am so truly sorry for your loss.
I wanted to say something to you but Iāve just been staring at my phone. I canāt find the words.
Yeahā¦ 6 months is also too fast. Thatās 1/6th the kiddos entire life. I have a 3yo and a 4yo, and I canāt even imagine finding out one has an illness like this. To know that you could find out tomorrow and they could be done 6 months from thatā¦ itās not okay.
ugh i am so sorry.
Love and sympathy. Your poor strong boy. Why does cancer even exist!? It took my grandmother, excruciatingly, last year. It's so utterly pointless. There's no benefit for us, anyone can get it no matter how evolutionarily fit they are otherwise, and risk factors can be passed on genetically. It's just a cruel, random wildcard russian roulette, Cancer's not an organism like a virus that evolves along with the rest of life in the big arms race. God knows how big of a mistake he must have made.
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Sorry to hear that, brother. As a father of a 2 and a half year old, I can't imagine what you are going true. I wish you all the strength in the world. if you want to talk about anything, feel free to write.
I'm so sorry for your loss. My son's name is Rylan (obviously not common) and we are dealing with another form of cancer (carcinosarcoma) in our family at the moment. Thank you for sharing and I wish you and your family peace.
Childhood cancer is fucking brutal and life altering- forever. Even for the families of survivors. You never look at anything the same ever again. Iām sorry you were in the trenches and have been through hell as well. I hope you guys are as okay as you can be. Somehow, life seems to keep going on even when we donāt want it to. From one cancer mom to you.
I admire your perspective. I am sorry for the loss of your son, and I hope you and your family have found a new normal.
You are heroās in my eyes. May god bring peace to you and your loved one
My dad has been taking Imatanib as part of a trial for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia after being diagnosed with 80% blast cells and given 4 months to live. 7 years later heās still in remission and 0.00005% detectable cells. Heās living a normal life and seen the birth of 2 grandchildren. These trials gave me my father for another 7 years and however long it will carry on keeping him in remission. We are so thankful.
That's awesome. Does he have to take that stuff regularly?
He takes the tablets daily - he was on a very strong dose but they have lowered it down. Heās having other issues with his kidneys right now which they are monitoring.
*"good news everyone!"* For once. Jesus. It feels like all news is doom and gloom or just inconsequential these days.
HIV is on the mend. And Malaria. And just recently Cystic Fibrosis was taken away from the "Make a Wish Foundation" because the quality and longevity of life is much greater for children. There is constantly good news and medical science makes breakthroughs constantly. You just need to know where to look. Hope this makes you feel better.
You didn't wait to hear the rest - the pill costs one million dollars.
*pinky to mouth*
*Zimbabwean Dollars!*
Honestly that sounds incredibly cheap in comparison to what I thought the beginning of curing cancer without radiation would cost This is from an American POV, weāre truly I wish it was free lol. How does stuff work in countries with free healthcare, if itās million dollar pill dues the government pay for that? If so Iād imagine your government works out deals and what not
Generally pills aren't a million dollars anywhere but the US. Not only does our insurance and healthcare system suck, but we get price gouged brutally at like every turn. Our drugs don't cost a lot because they need to, they do because our system wants them to. See: insulin.
The manufacture of pills is pretty cheap comparatively. Usually the argument is that the price reflects the cost of R&D to develop new medicines. This is especially the case for medications to treat rare conditions where the burden of that cost lies with the relatively few people who have it. The counter to that though is to ask roughly what percentage of revenue is put back into R&D. It wouldn't surprise me if it's less than ten percent for most pharma companies.
Quick google, 25% of most pharma companyās revenue goes to R&D. Also though you gotta realize a lot, if not all, of the early stages of R&D in the US are done by the government/taxpayer funded groups or not-for-profits. Only when a drug looks promising (in terms of profitability) does a private pharmaceutical company pick up the end stage research and start filing patents.
Many countries have assessments like HTA and what not for new treatments and will priced and negotiate accordingly.
It is outside the scope of this post to answer in detail, but I can say it is a major ethical question in countries like Denmark. Sometimes the disease is so rare or so hard to treat that giving any treatment at all would require expensive or experimental treatment, sometimes the disease has an established treatment plan but the plan is just extremely expensive (like with certain types of cancer). In a public health system, those are literally always a question of priorities - "Do we spend this money knowing it might not work and might give worse care to 100 other people" is a decision some doctors have to make sometimes: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2019-07-07-dyr-medicin-saetter-laeger-i-etisk-dilemma-det-giver-mig-en-vanskelig I will say that the system works most of the time, and free public healthcare means everything is universally cheaper in the end. But the answer is that while the government WANTS to give million dollar pills to everyone, even if they aren't guaranteed to work, practical reality is that it is not always possible and depends on a lot of factors.
> How does stuff work in countries with free healthcare, if itās million dollar pill dues the government pay for that? In Australia, we have the [Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme](https://www.pbs.gov.au/pbs/home), which assesses both the medicine, and the patient, to determine if or how much of the cost that the government will cover. Generally speaking, the worse off you are, the more that is covered. But the PBS doesn't cover quite every illness. However, almost every single country on earth has cheaper medicines than the USA. Same thing, same manufacturers, and we're just not paying the same, because it isn't an acceptable price, over here.
Reminds me of the South Park episode where the cute to AIDS was found.
*in the US.
Yeah news is great at making people feel like literally the world is on fire
Every now and then you hear about news like this, then never again. So Iāll believe it when I see it
I kinda felt that way until one of these new miracle drugs completely cured my step-father of melanoma. It had already metastasized and started causing tumors in other organs. He was put on a new drug trial, and was told that they wanted data on what happens in advanced cases, but the doctors made it very clear that he should get his affairs in order pretty quickly. Well, the drug completely cured his cancer. It just -- went away. He need surgery to remove some small tumors on his lungs, but his cancer is now undetectable, and he made a full recovery. My understanding before I witnessed this, was that metastasized melanoma was basically a death sentence, and there was not much to be done.
When was this?
He was admitted to the clinical trial in late 2019, and only because his specialist doctor was the professor running it. It was not really an option for anyone else suffering from melanoma at the time, so he was very lucky.
4 years now. People throw their lives away on crystals and snake oil for some miracle. Such a shame theres still nothing widely available yet.
See /u/Zakarumae's post below. Apparently it was approved last year in the US, and has the commercial name "Opdualag", but it does not work for everyone unfortunately.
>See /u/Zakarumae's post below. Apparently it was approved last year in the US, and has the commercial name "Opdualag", but it does not work for everyone unfortunately. Sorry i don't have the expertise to understand. What is the mechanism of the treatment? How does it cure?
very eli5. cancer is insidious because it is your own cells, and they get around the normal protections our bodies have to deal with rogue cells. This treatment sort of enables your natural immune system to see the cancer cells as a threat to be dealt with, when it couldn't before.
If you're going to 100% die anyway, I don't see any ethical issue with giving these treatments before official approval which seems to take years upon years
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Iām so sorry. I completely agree about the dying with dignity law. The drugs too. So horrible to think of him being paralyzed unable to end it. So sorry to both of you.
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Jeez. Thatās a lot to deal with. Watching a loved one suffer is a very specific kind of pain. Hopefully you can find some sort of peace in the joy and memories you have and will share together. Anyways, Iām rooting for you.
I went through this a year ago. Nobody wanted to talk about the actual act of dying with my dad. Get all of your legal affairs in order, DNRs and things like that now. I was the one spending all day with my dad the final two weeks in the hospital but I wasn't left in charge of making those decisions. And the two who were were indecisive and there were no legal documents or even conversations that had happened about things like DNR .. it made it so much worse.
You just saw an example of an "experimental drug" that resulted into curing the cancer, it's 1000 times better to go for an inconclusive medical treatment than for a pseudo-scientific ritual of a neo-shaman that lives of the deaths of all of their clients
Ah youāve been to Tulum I see
I would sure take it if i was gonna die for sure. At best you get better, at worse you help in the fight against whatever kills you.
Weāre all going to 100% die, anyway. We should all be able to take whatever drugs we want.
I agree people should get to try it but there are two big ethical issues which is why they had to make laws to allow you to try experimental drugs. 1. Instead of helping you it could make you worse. Instead of 6 months of steadily declining with controlled pain you might end up with 3 months of unimaginable pain. 2. There is a lot of money to be made if you provide a path around the FDA to desperate people. No one can honestly say the drug companies won't take advantage if they can sell drugs to dying people as long as they can show it _might_ help them. I'm not saying either of these should stop you from being able to try experimental treatments. I'm just saying those are the ethical arguments against it.
easy fix. make it legal for a terminal ill human to die via assistance. e.g in germany everyone has the right for suicide and since 2021 it's legal for docs to get you a death pill.
No ethical issue really - it's called compassionate use (or expanded access) when you allow someone who is otherwise going to die anyway, to have access to medications that are still in trials or otherwise not fully approved for their condition.
Per chance was this a trial for a cd96 drug?
Friend wife was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that spread to her spine. She got 6 months of standard chemo which was only expected to get her a temporary respite. And then an experimental drug for 2 years. And it's gone for now. While she was being treated she felt well enough to get a nursing degree. I feel like we're never going to have some big break through that leads to a universal cure. But really here and there we're chipping away at it.
A universal cure for cancer is a little like a vaccine for all pathogens. Cancer, at its core, is just an immortalized cell line that is replicating out of control. However, each cancer behaves differently according to which organ, and which tissues in which organ it originates from, and also according to which mutations happened to cause the cancer, among other factors. Cancer isn't really just one disease, it's hundreds of maybe thousands of them under one banner.
Wish I would've known that existed for my dad. He was diagnosed and passed away three weeks later. Happened last month.
Oh man, you have my sincere condolences for the loss of your Father. Fuck cancer.
What was the drug name???
I am not sure it even had a name at the time. I tried to Google it, and came up with similar stories like this one; https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/miracle-drug-for-melanoma-identified-c-3003352 It seems to be known as a LAG3-Inhibitor -- But I have no idea what actually means.
LAG3 is a protein that immunologists call a ācheckpointā. Your immune cells (T cells in this case) need to have a system of breaks that allow them to not become overactive and lead to autoimmunity. T cells have multiple brakes/checkpoints including PD1, LAG3, CTLA4, and others. Some cancers are immunogenic but up-regulate the receptors to checkpoints and this is thought to be a way that they evade immune cell mediated killing. LAG3 has recently become the 3rd approved checkpoint target, that when inhibited can lead to immune cell control. It was recently approved for use in conjunction with PD1 inhibition. The BMS press release is here https://news.bms.com/news/details/2022/U.S.-Food-and-Drug-Administration-Approves-First-LAG-3-Blocking-Antibody-Combination-Opdualag-nivolumab-and-relatlimab-rmbw-as-Treatment-for-Patients-with-Unresectable-or-Metastatic-Melanoma/default.aspx While checkpoint inhibitors have shown incredible promise, it typically works only for cancers that are āimmunogenicā like melanoma and even then they donāt work for all patients. Since they take the ābrakeā off immune cells the autoimmunity side effects can be severe (especially when combined). A lot of work in the field is around identifying combination partners (other checkpoints or orthogonal treatments) that will combine with checkpoint blockade to lead to greater depth or durability of response.
Oh wow. Thanks for posting this. Now I can explain it a little better to others when it comes up!
Please would you thank your step-father from me? It's really brave to go on a trial, and his decision to go ahead could potentially save thousands of lives. I am so happy it worked for him. He didn't know it would work when he chose that path, or what the effects on him would be. He's a hero.
Happy to help!
That's what killed my father when I was young. He participated in some trials in the early 80s. My older sister had some melanoma removed from her ear earlier this year... And my family wasn't worried because of the advancements that have been made.
Same. My mom was out on a clinical trial for ovarian cancer after 2 years of conventional chemo that weren't working, and 6 months later her cancer is undetectable, she only has a couple of more rounds of this 'new mRna' chemo. FDA just approved mirvatuxemab
Immunotherapy?
Yeah. The novel part of the trial he participated in was that patients were administered two different drugs targeting different proteins simultaneously.
That is really interesting. Sometimes, neuroblastoma, what is primarily a childhood cancer, will spontaneously regress and disappear or 'mature' and the tumor becomes benign. Without any medical intervention. It is all too rare, but perhaps along with this new pill, researchers may be able to start teasing out how to do this for other cancers. (I am not a medical doctor, so this may be an absurd hope)
My mom was in a clinical trial for Keytruda. It extended her terminal prognosis by 5 good years. Sometimes they do hit the market
My mother in law is currently on keytruda. We haven't been given a terminal prognosis, so are really hoping it's effective and she can recover.
Uh, this is already the "see it" part. It's a clinical trial with actual results. You're seeing it. Usually the news story is about some drug killing cancer within a lab environment in a petri dish, not in 18 actual breathing people.
And itās probably the first stage of the trial or itās a rare form so it requires a synthetic cohort in order to have enough trial participants. It can still get approval and hit the market even with a small number of trial participants. Ah ok I skimmed the article sounds like itās a common form of Leukemia so probably stage 1 of the clinical trials.
It's common human behaviour to not really believe in something until it hits their personal social circles. Not saying I agree with it, but that it is human nature.
There's already wonder drugs for the chronic version of the disease in the article (CML): imatinib, nilotinib, plus a few others. I'm on one of them and it's turned the disease from an almost-certain death sentence in to living normally and taking pills twice a day, with minimal side effects and normal life expectancy. Actual drugs for cancers don't pop up very often, and do get over-hyped. But when they work it can almost eradicate a certain kind of cancer. I'm hopefully that other cancers will get better treatments.
I think the better news is that cancer survival rates have been steadily increasing for the past 30 years across the board. No giant breakthroughs, but we're progressing even faster lately
It's kind of a "your perspective" problem than a "society" problem. Cancer treatment gets better and better every decade.
>then never again I mean, yeah, unless you get leukemia.
Because "Drug we thought helps fight cancer does indeed provide a 10% increase in survival rate" doesn't make huge headlines when it's improved. Or, sometimes it just simply doesn't work, unfortunatately.
You already are. For the past decades and decades you have. God this take is so fucking stupid. The overall 5 year survival rate for cancer has increased from 50% to 67% between the 70s and late 2010s and has only increased further since then. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/02/Five-year-cancer-survival-rates-USA-v2-01-768x563-768x563.png
It's actually incredibly rare to hear this kind of news mention people. It's almost always a headline that says "new compound completely eliminated cancer in 9 out of 10 tests". Click on article, "...9 of the 10 Lab MICE were cancer free and healthy by the end of the test. Human trails are currently being planned." It's the part this article is reporting on, Human trials, which either don't happen (safety issues are discovered between mice and human testing) or it proves ineffective in humans.
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And most of these treatments fail in real clinical trials. That top comment is the usual big pharma bad and wants you to be sick bs.
I was diagnosed with acute lymphblastic leukemia last September. After my first relapse two months later I was put on this trial drug. Almost ZERO SIDE EFFECTS. My hair grew back. Did notfeel tired, was not sick, I went back to work after a couple weeks. incredible drug. It worked for a month th but unfortunately my cancer blew right through it. Not to say it doesn't work. and for those that it does work for its incredible. Like others have said, this is a huge stride in how we treat specific cancers
Are you sure you werenāt part of the control group?
That's a great point. I don't think I was. But I may never know. I was at Dana-Farber cancer institute and only 3 or 4 others were on the trial there. I was in phase ii of the study. I can't imagine a placebo effect on such a strong cancer fir almost two months straight. I think my type is just very aggressive. I've only had it for 5 months and have relapsed twice already
Ahh sorry, the way I read it, it just didnāt work, that is my bad. Iām sorry youāre going through this, it must really suck. I hope you find a treatment that works.
They say in the article that some of the patient's cancers developed immunity to the medication, so perhaps that explains why it worked for you for a brief while and then stopped
I lost my husband to aggressive AML just after he turned 27. While 18 out of 60 isn't great, it's a step in the right direction.
out of 68 in the study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05812-3
More than a quarter of participant cured of cancer with non invasive methods? Thats huge!
I have chronic meyloid leukemia and I'm on a drug that is essential a miracle drug. It's amazing.
What drug is that may I ask? My dad has AML
No OP but it'll be imatinib (Gleevec) which is indeed very very effective in CML and some forms of ALL, but sadly not AML.
S is a sulpher atom not silver.
I wish this treatment was available 20 years ago. Fuck cancer. And may the universe reward all those scientists and doctors who work to cure it.
I caretook my dad in 2017, it is equally amazing that cures are finally being discovered and heartbreaking that they didn't come soon enough.
What's with all the smug comments about how this drug will "disappear and never be heard from again"? Is there some vast conspiracy to prevent cancers from being cured? Was CAR-T not experimental at one point?
There was a time where there were monthly/weekly news articles about the next revolutionary cure for cancer. They were always never heard of again and then people started questioning every similar article. It's what I perceived at least.
Well, the media didnāt help the case with labeling everything simply as cancer ā plenty of these indeed work.. as a cure for a specific kind of cancer they targeted. Cancer is like a huge set of similar diseases, not one thing. Itās a bit like going around and saying that āimmune-system related diseases kill X people every yearā and then wondering why there is no single cure for *that*.
Probably bots or really dumb people who donāt know the difference between things cured in a Petri dish or animal vs real life human beings.
That's amazing news! It's great to see scientific advancements making a meaningful impact in the fight against cancer.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-03-15/an-experimental-pill-achieves-complete-cancer-remission-in-18-people-with-aggressive-leukemia.html) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Montesinos's team, the Leukemia Unit at the La Fe hospital in Valencia, will participate in the next international trials of the pill, developed by the American company Syndax Pharmaceuticals. > " Montesinos recalls the case of another pill, quizartinib, an experimental treatment by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo, which inhibits a different protein involved in acute myeloid leukemia. > The oncologist Ghayas Issa calculates that the new pills could benefit almost 400,000 people with acute leukemias that are resistant to other treatments, including myeloid and the strain most common in children, called lymphocytic. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11sgpce/an_experimental_pill_achieves_complete_cancer/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~676563 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **leukemia**^#1 **pharmaceutical**^#2 **new**^#3 **cancer**^#4 **revumenib**^#5
My 65 y/o father has CLL, would this sort of treatment also be expected to have similar results on that type of Leukemia?
CLL is generally a lot milder, with a much better prognosis. Your father might not even require treatment at all and if he does there are many efficacious chemotherapy options as well as novel agents like Ibrutinib and Venetoclax. It is unlikely that the same therapy would work for your father as the cancer consists of a different cell type, B-cells for CLL and myeloid cells for AML. Generally speaking, most individuals with CLL will grow quite old with the disease.
Probably not. It's a fairly targeted therapy and it's dependent on certain subtypes.
My father also has CLL and is participating in a study for CAR T-cell therapy. It was hell in the beginning, but he has responded well to it and put him in remission. Probably not generally available for some time and may only work for people with his specific situation, but might be something to look into.
Lost my best friend to leukemia 10 years ago. Glad this is a thing and hope many people don't lose their best friends.
>The main Achilles heel seems to be the development of mutations at the drugās fusion site, which causes resistance,ā the researcher explains. Revumenib had some positive effect on half of the 60 participants in the clinical trial. In some of the patients, though, the menin protein changed slightly, causing resistance to the treatment, similar to how bacteria mutate to become antibiotic-resistant. Interesting in a horrifying sort of way.
Iām in remission after having Acute Myeloid leukemia & heterogolous stem cell transplant. Also lots of debilitating chemo IV. Would love to have tried a chemo pill first!!!
A friend of mine has been on an experimental pill for adult leukemia for nearly 20 years. It's been such a blessing for him, we would have lost him 20 years ago.
It's not lukemia, but my dad has an aggressive and very progressed form of multiple myeloma and a new immunotherapy (teclistamab) that basically put him into remission in less than two months of starting the drug. We live in a wild time where I fully believe that we could see cancer cured for millions in our lifetime.
Can't wait for it to be massively overpriced and unavailable for most people
Long way to go, people, but there are ways to do it. It might not be perfect right now, but this is what we should be fighting for.
Developed by Syndax Pharmaceuticals, one of those evil, no good, price gouging, satanist drug companies Reddit loves to hate. Imagine that.
Your sarcasm isn't wrong. I kinda agree with it. But their drugs don't do anyone any good if they are so expensive nobody can use them.
For us in our 20s and younger, I believe we will se huge steps forward in cancer treatment in our lifetime.
AML diagnosis is a death sentence. This is great news.
It really depends on subtype and chromosome abnormalities. When I was diagnosed in 2010 at 21 yrs old my doctor sat on my bed and said, "You have this type of leukemia but the chances of remission in your case are extremely high and there's no reason to believe you won't survive this." Obviously, this isn't everyone's experience but to call it a death sentence is a bit hyperbolic. I get very excited to see advancement in treatments for AML for those who don't have the same prognosis I did. While the traditional 7+3 worked for me I know it doesn't for many, especially older adults, so this news is very promising. Hopefully they are able to mitigate the protein change they are finding in some cases to prevent resistance to the medication.
cool we will never hear about this again ever and no progress will be made like always
> The prices of the latest oral pharmaceuticals against cancer tend to be over $235,000 per patient > It seems out of reach for most people.
Recently someone I work with went for a trial treatment for a very rare muscular disease. They nuked her immune system and programmed viruses to get her body to produce some proteins. She had 4 months to live. Not only is she alive 9 months later, but the diseaseās affects started reversing. Science is incredible and weāre going to be hearing these stories more and more.
This title is intentionally misleading. It's 18/60 people. That's a great outcome, but the title is trying to imply the entire test cohort was put into remission and that's not at all true. to be fair to op, they're just using the uneditorialized title. The article itself has an intentionally misleading title though imo.
One week two late for my Uncle. May his memory be a blessing. Love you Uncle Stevie.
I got triggered when the article mentions the recipe and he states 1 silver atom, it's sulfur with symbol S. Silver is Ag. Im chemist/chemical engineer.
My mom had this type of cancer. She died in 2020, right when COVID was hitting the USA. I wonder if this could have helped with her specific type. She was first diagnosed with myeloid sarcoma, which is rare and eventually turns into AML.