Interesting yet buried medical news

[widgeon13]

I found this article in Google news, hadn't heard anything or seen anything elsewhere. We're too busy *****ing about cliffs and guns.

Can you imagine the impact of finding a cure for cancer?

Stem Cell Research: Cells Grown By Japanese Researchers Kills Cancer

[Porsche-O-Phile]

That's very cool but at risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist or a cynic I suspect if this is legit and it really represents a likely path to a cure, it will be shut down and crushed (at least in this country) by the pharmaceutical industry. Cancer treatments represent billions upon billions of dollars - there's huge money in treatment. Not so much in cures. I suspect what would happen is that big pharma here would lobby like crazy and have it tied up in clinical trials forever or they'd funnel money to anti-stem cell groups who would raise Cain about how stem cells kill babies or whatever; while we prattled about, they would continue to rake in their billions and the Japanese (or whoever else) would refine and implement this technology and it would just be one more area where the U.S. would fall behind. Sorry to sound like a downer, but I could totally see this as the likely scenario.

The medical advance is awesome though - it's really glad to see these kinds of breakthroughs being made.

[Hawktel]

I don't have a tinfoil hat, so I think it would actually be used extensively, and would leave all the other stuff on the table to be fixed. Aids, MLS, Cystic Fibrouses, right back to the common cold, for a few examples.

Hardly where the medical industry would be able to just sit back and lay everyone off.

[jyl]

There is a lot of research going on in the area of cancer immunotherapy. Probably 30+ therapies being tested in human trials. Some funded by big pharma, others by small companies and academics, which is typical of medical research.

The pharma industry is very interested in developing cancer cures. As you can imagine, they'll charge a lot for an effective cancer cure.

Think about the economics. A person develops, say, pancreatic cancer. Today he gets several months' treatment with various chemotherapy drugs, which are mostly generic, and he is dead in a year or less. The drugs cost maybe $20K and he is gone as a customer. Suppose a company had a drug that would cure him. They'd charge $400K for it, he'd live and remain a customer for other diseases.

Admittedly a cheap universal cure for cancer would be bad for the pharma industry, but that's pretty far fetched. To date, none of the cancer immunotherapies have been more than an incremental advance over existing therapies.

[M.D. Holloway]

no matter how creative one gets with the cost accounting they will still have to keep it reasonable or upstarts will creep in regardless of patents...

[jyl]

Drugs for ultra-rare "orphan" diseases now routinely cost $250K to $400K/year and most have to be taken for life. In these cases, for each disease there are only a few thousand patients worldwide, so the total cost is manageable. And a much lower price would mean the drugs don't get developed, since the economics wouldn't work out.

There are quite a number of cancer therapies that cost from $50K to $100K per course. Most of these prolong life expectancy by only several months, at best. These prices didn't arouse too much controversy, until one was priced at $100K and that was controversial.

Americans pay the highest prices for this sort of expensive branded drug. In Europe, the national health systems pay half to two-thirds of US prices. In countries like India, the government can and sometime does choose to void patents and have drugs made by local generic companies.

Of course, once the patent protection expires, the generic drugmakers move in and prices can drop 80% in the US and elsewhere.

During the patent protection period, the drug company has to recover its costs of developing not just the drug in question, which can be $50MM+, but also the hundreds of other drugs that failed somewhere in the development process.

[aap1966]

I work with an oncologist whose 16 yo daughter has terminal cancer.
Believe me, if he had the "cure" for cancer, he wouldn't be suppressing it just for the $$.
Nor would the guys he works with, nor would the oncologists at the Kids' Hospital.
Sheesh, conspiracy fantasies may be entertaining, but use your brains.

[targa911S]

They cured polio and haven't made a dime from it since. Big pharm won't make that mistake twice. There is more money in "maintenance" than cure. No I do not have a tin foil hat. Come to think of it polio is the last thing they "cured". Now don't you find that curious?

[flatbutt]

I've given up hope of ever having my spinal cord repaired by stem cells. Then again I'm an old man. A cure for cancer ? Maybe not so near but more effective treatments are. Whether for more profit or scientific limits I don't know.

[pavulon]

Originally Posted by targa911S

They cured polio and haven't made a dime from it since. Big pharm won't make that mistake twice. There is more money in "maintenance" than cure. No I do not have a tin foil hat. Come to think of it polio is the last thing they "cured". Now don't you find that curious?

No cure for polio. Vaccines go a long way toward preventing it and it is/was nearly "eradicated" until crazies started convincing people that vaccines are evil. Other diseases with effective vaccines are making come-backs now as well.

[tweezers74]

jyl, is spot on. Funny thing about cancer is that it hits all socioeconomic groups. I have had patients pay up the wazoo from their own pockets for "experimental" treatment once their prognosis is not very good and their choices in the existing medical arena are exhausted. So I greatly doubt a "cure" will stay secret for long. Secondly, that article is so true. In the lab it is easy to control variables. In the human body, results differ from person to person. Pharmokinetics is different in every person. We would have to wait for more research. Third, most people hear the word "cancer" and think all cancers act the same. People even group "chemo" together. Chemotherapy vastly differs as well as different kind of cancers. The nature of cancer is so complex that to say there is one cure for cancer would be crazy to say. Even bone marrow transplants which is basically taking the basic cell building power in the body doesn't "cure" all cancers. This research is promising but still way in the early stages. Cancer is so difficult to cure because unlike bacteria and viruses, it is OUR cells acting haywire. Difficult to target therapy at just cancer cells without demolishing our regular cells while we are at it. That is why they are working at ways to "label" the cancer cells with some kind of marker so drugs can just target cancer cells.

Complicated disease calls for a complicated cure. When I first started oncology nursing, we had a handful of chemotherapy and antiemetics, now there is so many. We are getting there but slowly.

[jyl]

There is a company that is working on an interesting HIV treatment that could be a permanent cure. Today's HIV treatments can suppress the virus for years, but does not eliminate it.

The process involves extracting immune system T-cells from the patient, modifying the DNA in those cells to delete a certain gene (CCR5), then re-infusing the modified T-cells into the patient. T-cells lacking the CCR5 gene are immune to attack by HIV and thus can destroy the virus without being themselves destroyed. The idea is to replicate the mechanism and result in the "Berlin patient", who is so far the only person to be cured of HIV.

HIV/AIDS cure becomes a priority for scientists - Los Angeles Times

It sounds cool but there are so many hurdles. Will the modified T-cells function in the patient after re-infusion? Will they stay alive, or even multiply? Can the technology modify enough T-cells, and what is enough? Are there unexpected side effects? They've been working on this for several years, progress is methodical but slow and the concept could be torpedoed at any moment. Best case, a therapy will be on the market in several years. Perfectly possible it will be an improvement over existing treatment but not a silver bullet. Also perfectly possible it never comes to market.

That is in HIV and not cancer, but is an example of how difficult this stuff is.

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by targa911S

They cured polio and haven't made a dime from it since. Big pharm won't make that mistake twice. There is more money in "maintenance" than cure. No I do not have a tin foil hat. Come to think of it polio is the last thing they "cured". Now don't you find that curious?

Not to mention the millions made in the "______ for the cure" campaigns

[Tobra]

Money is in treating not curing.