I have more good news. My dad has inoperable, untreatable brain cancer. He's part of a clinical trial for a new cancer drug. His initial prognosis was 1 year left. That was 6 years ago. This drug is going to revolutionize cancer treatment. Science is amazing
Thank you. Age is catching up with him so I don't know how much longer I have but I am eternally grateful for this drug because it gave us so many more years than we would have had.
I'm so very excited to see this drug come on the market so other families can have what I did
Edit: the drug is so effective his brain tumor has only grown 1 millimeter in 6 years
My former husband was diagnosed with 4th stage lung cancer, back when the survival rate was only 5% that would live for a year. It did spread to his brain and other places in his body, but kept getting beaten back by new oral medications.
He lived for almost anther 6 years, which was a blessing. The new drugs can work so well for some people.
He was diagnosed with leukemia and the brain cancer at the same time. He went through 3 rounds of chemo and radiation. Chemo completely put the leukemia into remission but neither treatment did a thing for the brain tumor. It's also inoperable due to its position
Unfortunately there's a lot of legality involved in early stage clinical trials because of proprietary information. I did send that person a message with some breadcrumbs to give them a starting point. I truly wish I could share it but I would be putting my dad's treatment and even the whole trial at risk if I said more
It’s kind of interesting because a lot of cancer trials are taking longer now, but it’s specifically because therapies have become more effective and it takes longer before you accrue enough events (usually deaths) to know if the new therapy is more effective.
I know it's kind of maddening but it's to make sure that drugs have good bodies of evidence. We need to be confident we aren't causing huge side effects or long term effects. Especially if it's a first in human drug or new drug class. Hopefully it will be available soon!
Fortunately people with serious conditions that are deemed terminal can potentially get access to drugs currently in trial . One thing Trump did was pass a law back in like 2018 or something allowing this (essentially making it okay for companies to Provide those drugs in some circumstances if it could potentially help. Some companies have compassionate use programs where they triage these requests , cross check with FDA medical safety and use ethics boards in some cases and provide the drugs for free (not always and some companies don’t even respond which was in the news a year after the law when one of the citizens used as an example still hadn’t gotten access). Small steps in the right direction tho.
If I ever win the lotto, I’d like to
create a non-profit that would help patients with those requests along with their physicians but also help facilitate getting the drugs from the companies as quick and efficiently as possible (super hard and obvy $$ is involved) but I’m hopeful we’ll see more progress in this and the overall oncology space
If u look into the history of clinical trials, it’s because of prior “treatments” for cancer that wound up actually not being beneficial at all. The current landscape of using real world evidence and data will help improve things but we’re where we’re at today because of improvements in process to ensure we’re actually doing good vs potentially causing some harm down the line. Lots of variables as well which is why large groups and separate studies are needed
Ivermectin is categorically NOT horse paste. It's an anti-parasite medication on the WHO's list of Essential Medicines, it earned the two primary discoverers the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine and has saved hundreds of millions from River Blindness since its approval in the mid-1980s.
For the vast majority of people Ivermectin would have been of no use as a treatment or a prophylaxis for COVID-19, but it at least wouldn't have done any harm without extreme overdosing, and its cheap. But in the case of any COVID patient with undiagnosed Strongyloides (that's threadworm for most of us), treatment with corticosteroids would be fatal in 90% of cases. 370 million people worldwide (estimated) are infected with threadworm but undiagnosed. Ivermectin prevents that.
Science- real science as opposed to "The Science(tm)" we were encouraged to follow like sheep- is a hell of a lot more nuanced than journalist like to make out, and far too nuanced for the attention span of the typical news-viewer or newspaper-reader. As for the attention span of the typical politician and his advisors, don't make me laugh.
I’m 99% sure I know exactly what trial you’re talking about because it started just months after my grandpa died of a very very aggressive brain cancer. I’m so happy for people who it’s helped but god I wish they made literally just 6 months sooner
Scientists invented CRISPR and is not talked enough.
It's a scientific breakthrough as large as Fire, Engine, or electricity, it's the biggest discovery in the history of medicine
Short info, simplified:
There's a certain Bacteria that has the ability to edit and change DNA
Some smart people used it's process, to invent our own version of changing the DNA
It is so efficient, that it can even change White cell DNA and RNA instructions to target specific diseases
It is SO EFFICIENT that chinese crew removed extra chromosome 21 in-vitro (like, literally curing Down syndrome)
How is this important - we can target EVERYTHING that is killing people
Up until 2019, people with Huntintons had one of the worst diseases ever. Suicide rate after turning 30 is 75%, because you lose your entire body function. The biggest effort in medicine to battle Huntingtons was to alleviate symptoms, even Stem cells would only give you a couple of extra years
CRISPR can erase your Huntigton's disease (has the potential to).
At this point I am amazed that they released it, but then, also scared as to why so few people are talking about it
Use CRISPR (in lab setting), it is not so simple or easy. There’s ALOT of problems, but the main one is this - your DNA is the same in every cell in your body (more or less). So to “cut out” a gene for say a brain disease, you need to do CRISPR on the billions of cells in your brain…how do we deliver such a drug to every cell in an organ? Or in the body? And how can we do that without messing up what’s already there or accidentally cutting what’s important. That’s just one of the many barriers.
Use CRISPR (in lab setting), it is not so simple or easy. There’s ALOT of problems, but the main one is this - your DNA is the same in every cell in your body (more or less). So to “cut out” a gene for say a brain disease, you need to do CRISPR on the billions of cells in your brain…how do we deliver such a drug to every cell in an organ?
Gene therapies are the general idea.
And how can we do that without messing up what’s already there or accidentally cutting what’s important.
Yeah, until 2014 we called a lot of DNA "junk" when in fact, it was a huge amount of necessary data that we didnt know what it's use is for.
The idea is to influence specific gene sequences, large genome spices, that hold the genetic mistake, or instructions, or protein generating systems, and so on. Ones that we know of, what they do and what is their main function
It's in early stages but it is one of the most promising inventions in medicine. It's literally a 50+ years skip if we find a way to perfect the process
My mom had brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme, she was given 3 months but it was 2 years before the tumor started showing signs of growing. She chose to do assisted suicide after that, but I thank the clinical trial she was apart of for the extra year and nine months we had.
My friend recently was part of a team that developed such an effective treatment for a rare type of leukemia that it can basically be called a cure. It used to be a six-month-death-sentence and affected around 10K people per year from infants to the elderly!
Tbh i don't think they've named the drug yet. It's still in first stage of human trial. And i can never remember the name of his type of brain cancer. Its extremely rare.
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u/Lessllama Jan 01 '25
I have more good news. My dad has inoperable, untreatable brain cancer. He's part of a clinical trial for a new cancer drug. His initial prognosis was 1 year left. That was 6 years ago. This drug is going to revolutionize cancer treatment. Science is amazing