Possible New Cancer Therapy

[Nephrology]

Glad you had no financial problems. For our family that went not so easily. I have no illusions. Even if that's true, It's gonna cost a fortune for the middle class. Even the article about the cure is $10

The pricing for most new onc drugs is criminal, in my opinion, given how far they fall short.

[RoyGBiv]

BBC story: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51182451.
Link to the study, which is waaaaaaaaay over my head: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-019-0578-8

These sources make carry way more gravitas than zerohedge.
Hoping this turns out to be successful.

Fuk Cancer.

[beenalongtime]

Didn't see brain cancer or esophageal cancer listed. Stopped counting at 20, LONG time ago, the number of people/friends who died from brain cancer. (one friends kid has it currently)
I hope this is true and if it is, they don't just use a version as a treatment to milk profits from those that have it. (the cynic me)

Fuck cancer.

[Tod-13]

Caveat: I'm not a biologist. I'm a software developer who took 20+ hours of bioinformatics grad classes, mostly in molecular biology, and I have been working at a cancer research institute for around 10 years, so I picked up a bit.

I did read the article.

Background

The biggest problem with cancer is that it is a mutation of normal human biology.
This means drugs like antibiotics and antivirals, which target biological aspects of bacteria and viruses not found in humans, doesn't work.

The next problem with cancer is that cancer isn't a single disease. TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) Project has 34 tumor types--different kinds of cancer based on where it occurs. Then within that there can be more kinds of cancer--breast cancer is more than four different diseases, with different causes and treatments.

Most traditional cancer treatments use the faster metabolism of cancer to slowly poison the cancer. Since the cancer grows faster than most normal cells, it dies faster. (This is why cancer patients with this kind of therapy lose their hair. Hair grows pretty fast, so it is also poisoned faster.)

MC.7.G5

The new T cell receptor, MC.7.G5, seems to detect even minute amounts of a protein, MR1, associated with cancer.
It detects MR1 where staining does not show it on the cell surface, but messenger RNA analysis shows the cell is producing MR1 internally.
They're not sure how MC.7.G5 detects MR1 expressing cells.

Science note: Cells take DNA and make messenger RNA, mRNA, from that, and then read the mRNA to make the protein. Protein makes stuff happen in cells. That's the "Central Dogma" of Biology. (Advanced study: Not all DNA is copied into RNA. And not all RNA becomes protein. And some RNA can also "make stuff happen".)

They used CRISPR-9 screens (way of adding or removing genes from DNA), so they could test stuff like removing a cancer cell's ability to create MR1 and see that the MC.7.G5 receptor ignored that.

Take Away

The neat thing about MC.7.G5 is that it responded to all the cancers they tested, suggesting it can be used to deliver treatment directly to any sort of cancer. The treatment itself may still be different for each kind of cancer, but the main problem has always been getting the "poison" (medicine) to the cancer cells and not to healthy cells.