Possible Cure for Cancer

[AtomSmasher]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10971&feedId=online-news_rss20

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

Absolutely amazing.  It says the next step is to start human trials with cancer patients which will hopefully produce similar results as the lab tests.  Its amazing that this cheap drug might actually cure all cancers or at least help lead scientists in the right direction to find a universal cure, it definately seems too good to be true.

[billf]

Wow!  Cheap and effective.  Hope it turns out to work - that would be awesome.

[FrizzleFried]

Let's hope the government or the drug companies don't stifle the progress in any way... drug companies make a ton of $$$ off cancer...as sick and disgusting as it is...decisions are made based on $$$ more than not.

[Texasmame]

Let's hope the government or the drug companies don't stifle the progress in any way... drug companies make a ton of $$$ off cancer...as sick and disgusting as it is...decisions are made based on $$$ more than not.

That's why I'm sceptical as to there ever being a cure.  Much like the fully electric car that can perform the same as a gas driven model, there's just to much money at stake to allow it.  I pray to dog I'm wrong.   

[jbox]

Wait, wasn't that the plot to Johnny Mnemonic? 

[Hawkypro]

FrizzleFried is right, money talks, not whats best for the good of people.  We all know Doctors, Lawyers, and Oil companies controll the world. Think about it... take the light bulb, 10 years ago, they were rated based on hours of use, now their rated based on years of use before failing. And we all know that the 100 year light bulb exists, but we won't see it. Why cure cancer, Doctors and drug companies would loose BILLIONS.

Except L.E.D.s 

[ChadTower]

And we all know that the 100 year light bulb exists, but we won't see it.

We see them all the time.  It's called an LED.

[Dartful Dodger]

You're just as greedy and selfish as the companies you're complaining about are.

If you want people to be able to afford medial bills, you should take a pay cut right now so that your clients can put more money towards medicine.

If you want a cure for cancer, sell your computer and everything else you own and donate the cash to a nonprofit organization looking for a cure.

It's easy to complain about others not doing enough or not making big enough sacrifices, but what are you doing to help?

[mr.Curmudgeon]

A person would be hard-pressed to make a more irrational post than that. Jeebus.

You're just as greedy and selfish as the companies you're complaining about are.

Who you lecturing this time? The voices in your head?

If you want a cure for cancer, sell your computer and everything else you own and donate the cash to a nonprofit organization looking for a cure.

Then we've have a bunch of cancer-free homeless people to worry about, genius!


mrC

[AtomSmasher]

Heres a quote from the bottom of the article:  "The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines."

[ChadTower]

Heres a quote from the bottom of the article:  "The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines."

If this is an even marginally possible cure for cancer they will have NO TROUBLE getting private funding.  The organization that cures cancer will be able to write their own ticket in terms of global prestige and international awards.  Seriously, it's worth a few tens of millions to go from "Johns Hopkins Medicine" to "Johns Hopkins Medicine - We Cured Cancer".

[Buddabing]

If no one else funds it, I'm sure the Gates foundation would They have all kinds of money and I think this would be right up their alley.

[Dartful Dodger]

A person would be hard-pressed to make a more irrational post than that. Jeebus.

It's easy to say a company you don't work for, should develop something that will cause thousands if not hundreds of thousands of it's employees to lose their job.

[shmokes]

Jesus Christ, haven't you people ever heard of capitalism?  Free market?  Competition?  The conspiracy theories don't work.  Don't you think Microsoft would make more money if they quit sinking billions of dollars into R&D and we just used Windows XP for the rest of our lives?  Wait, what?  You mean, if they don't keep building new operating systems someone else will and Microsoft will become obsolete?

Every drug company has been working on cures for cancer, regardless of what that would mean for their other businesses.  Think about it for a second, when the cure for cancer is unleashed on the world, the cancer treatment market dries up.  Whether Pfizer is the company to invent the cure or not, Pfizer's cancer treatment business collapses.  Surely you can see, that while Pfizer's bottom line may be better off if nobody ever finds a cure for cancer, they can't afford not to be the person who develops the cure, cos when that happens the only company that will be making money will be the one with the cure.  They can't afford for someone else to come up with it.  Merck and all the others work exactly the same.  Maybe they're run by mostly evil people (that's probably not true either), but they are all actively trying to be the one who cures cancer. 

[AtomSmasher]

Every drug company has been working on cures for cancer, regardless of what that would mean for their other businesses.  Think about it for a second, when the cure for cancer is unleashed on the world, the cancer treatment market dries up.  Whether Pfizer is the company to invent the cure or not, Pfizer's cancer treatment business collapses.  Surely you can see, that while Pfizer's bottom line may be better off if nobody ever finds a cure for cancer, they can't afford not to be the person who develops the cure, cos when that happens the only company that will be making money will be the one with the cure.  They can't afford for someone else to come up with it.  Merck and all the others work exactly the same.  Maybe they're run by mostly evil people (that's probably not true either), but they are all actively trying to be the one who cures cancer. 

Except if this drug works, no company has a patent on the drug which means any company can make it and they can already make it cheap.  That means if it works, pharmaceutical companies will be out a lot of money.

[boykster]

Except if this drug works, no company has a patent on the drug which means any company can make it and they can already make it cheap.  That means if it works, pharmaceutical companies will be out a lot of money.

Thats actually a fairly thin argument.  Even if this is as effective as the research shows that it might be (which would be great!), it won't be 100% effective for all types of cancers at all stages.  There will still be a continuing market for many types of chemotherapeutic agents that are revenue generators for pharma companies. 

I have worked in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry for the past 10+ years, and it is blatantly FALSE that the primary ideal of these companies is to bilk sick people out of money. That's a sensationalized profile that has been propagated and inflated by the media.  Sure, the companies are in the business of staying in business, and successful companies are out there to make money, that's obvious.  But to portray research scientists working in for-profit fields of research as heartless money grubbers, that's just plain wrong.

This may be a universal cure / treatment for many types of cancer, but trust me, there isn't a "hidden" formula that the big pharma companies have been hiding from the public for years.  If there was, these companies wouldn't have been spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars researching the pathways that lead to cancer development, how cancer cells differ from healthy cells, etc. 

Its not greedy doctors and pharmaceutical companies that are solely responsible for the high cost of health care, its the rising costs of doing business in this industry.  It costs nearly a billion dollars to bring a drug candidate to the market, and that's generally AFTER the early stage research has been done to discover the drug candidate, and disregarding the 100 other candidates that didn't make it to the pre-clinical stage of drug development.  A BILLION dollars, and that doesn't guarantee approval.  Do you think McDonalds would come out with a new shake flavor if it cost a billion dollars to develop the flavor, with no guarantee that it would sell?

[shmokes]

Additionally, Pandora's Box is open.  The drug companies can't just put their head in the sand and hope it goes away.  They simply have to adjust their business around the realities of the market, as they have always done.  The reality is that many or all of them will make a version of this drug and they'll transfer much of their cancer research dollars to alzheimers or parkinson's or arthritis or herpes or aids, etc. (assuming that the drug lives up to its potential). 

And when the people like the tinfoil hatters in this thread make comments about them being evil they'll say, "You know what?  Go ---fudgesicle--- yourself.  We cured cancer."

[DrewKaree]

Except if this drug works, no company has a patent on the drug which means any company can make it and they can already make it cheap.  That means if it works, pharmaceutical companies will be out a lot of money.

Thats actually a fairly thin argument.  Even if this is as effective as the research shows that it might be (which would be great!), it won't be 100% effective for all types of cancers at all stages.  There will still be a continuing market for many types of chemotherapeutic agents that are revenue generators for pharma companies. 

I have worked in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry for the past 10+ years, and it is blatantly FALSE that the primary ideal of these companies is to bilk sick people out of money. That's a sensationalized profile that has been propagated and inflated by the media.  Sure, the companies are in the business of staying in business, and successful companies are out there to make money, that's obvious.  But to portray research scientists working in for-profit fields of research as heartless money grubbers. 

This may be a universal cure / treatment for many types of cancer, but trust me, there isn't a "hidden" formula that the big pharma companies have been hiding from the public for years.  If there was, these companies wouldn't have been spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars researching the pathways that lead to cancer development, how cancer cells differ from healthy cells, etc. 

Its not greedy doctors and pharmaceutical companies that are solely responsible for the high cost of health care, its the rising costs of doing business in this industry.  It costs nearly a billion dollars to bring a drug candidate to the market, and that's generally AFTER the early stage research has been done to discover the drug candidate, and disregarding the 100 other candidates that didn't make it to the pre-clinical stage of drug development.  A BILLION dollars, and that doesn't guarantee approval.  Do you think McDonalds would come out with a new shake flavor if it cost a billion dollars to develop the flavor, with no guarantee that it would sell?

Who do those billions get passed on to?

Why don't those pharma companies do the kind-hearted thing and eat all those costs so they can save a few lives?

I like when things are explained like what boykster did above, yet people still inject emotion into their arguments about why things should be better for them or complain about the high costs of things.

If I didn't know better, boykster coulda been talking about the oil industry

[AtomSmasher]

I don't think the drug companies can do anything to stop this drug if it does work since the public now knows about it, but they will lose billions of dollars if it does, no question about it.  Of course now they will start trying to perfect the drug and changing it so it works for more types of cancers, which they could then patent the new formula and start making money again, but they will never make the same kind of money off cancer patients as they are now (assuming the drug works).  I'm not saying its a bad thing that money is the driving force of drug companies.  Their pursuit of money drives them to do more medical research and improve on current medications.

"The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind." - Gordon Gekko

[boykster]

Trust me, if "cancer" was "cured", the entire pharmaceutical / biotech industry would heave a collective sigh of relief.  From a profitiability standpoint, obesity, heart-disease, erectile dysfunction, and hair loss are much larger and more lucrative markets, and with the "big C" out of the way so to speak, research dollars would be directed en masse towards those efforts.  Considering most cancer therapies enter the market for treating late-stage patients (ie terminal cancer) due to FDA requirements for clinical trials, the myth that pharma companies want to keep cancer patients alive as "cash cows" is completely ridiculous. 

Here's a real-world example from the inside of the industry.  Up until about a month ago, I managed a research informatics department for a biotech company.  The focus of the site I worked at was Cystic Fibrosis.  At this time, there is no cure for CF, but the drug developed by my company (at the time, as very small biotech company) was the most effective therapy for treating the primary complication of CF -> Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections of mucous that would accumulate in patient's lungs due to complications of CF.  10 years ago, the life expectancy of a person who developed CF was late teens, early 20's...that is now up to 35.  That's not entirely due to the my company's product, but it does play a large part in that.  The work we did solving the genome of this organism is now in the public domain -> www.pseudomonas.com .  ANY company or research organization that wants to use this work is free to, in fact they are encouraged to.

About a year ago, 2 service techs from the compressed gas company that we use at our site were walking down the hall outside my office.  I had a large circular map of the P.aeruginosa genome on the wall outside my office, and i could hear them trying to figure out what it was.  Since it was my group and my company that sequenced the P.aeruginosa genome in the late 90's, I stepped out of my office and explained what it was, and that it was this organism that caused a large number of complications for CF patients and that our company had not only sequenced the genome, but had developed the leading pharmaceutical for CF patients. 

As soon as the words Cystic Fibrosis came out of my mouth, I could see that one of the guys demeanor had changed.  He told me that his 3month old daughter had just been diagnosed with CF a week before.  He was noticeably upset, even though his daughter's physician had assured him that the treatments had advanced and that she should live a long full life despite her disease.  I spent about an hour with him, showing him resources on how biotech and pharma companies were committed to not just treating symptoms, but finding cures for this disease....a relatively small market disease at that.  He left that day much more confident and with a solid understanding of his daughters disease, and what to expect, and with the solid understanding that there are hundreds, if not thousands of people working to make her life better.

I still correspond with him, even though I no longer work for that company.  His daughter is doing great, she's responding to mild therapy and shows no outward symptoms of respiratory distress.

THAT is why I work in this industry. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cystic_fibrosis

http://www.pseudomonas.com/

Who do those billions get passed on to?

Lots of places.  Companies that develop instruments, contract research organizations, salaries like mine, computer hardware / software companies, lawyers, local businesses that supply material goods and services, etc.  Just like any large development effort, the dollars spent are diverse and affect the local economy surrounding the facilities.

Why don't those pharma companies do the kind-hearted thing and eat all those costs so they can save a few lives?

Trust me, they minimize costs as much as they can.  They are in the business of being in business, however, if the company invests billions and goes out of business, how does that benefit the patient?  You may not realize that the majority of those costs are to conduct clinical trials to satisfy the requirements of the FDA for safety and effectiveness.  Sure, eating the costs <might> "save a few lives", but building a sustainable business will save many-fold more.

If I didn't know better, boykster coulda been talking about the oil industry

I agree.

[boykster]

The drug companies can't just put their head in the sand and hope it goes away.  They simply have to adjust their business around the realities of the market, as they have always done.  The reality is that many or all of them will make a version of this drug and they'll transfer much of their cancer research dollars to alzheimers or parkinson's or arthritis or herpes or aids, etc. (assuming that the drug lives up to its potential). 

Bingo......

Pharma companies analyze markets and adjust their businesses all the time.  A blockbuster drug in the cancer arena may take down some small "one hit wonder" type biotech companies, but they will just be a bubble in the whole industry. 

Complain all you want about the industry, but the next time you don't die from an infection, or take anything for relief from the flu, or you or someone you know/love takes insulin to keep their glucose level in check.......

 

[ChadTower]

I work in the Pharma industry because they pay me pretty well, are 10 easy miles from my house, and only require a 45-50 hour work week.

[mr.Curmudgeon]

wah-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[shmokes]

 or you or someone you know/love takes insulin to keep their glucose level in check.......

Speaking of which, a company has patented and had FDA approval of an implantable RFID chip that monitors glucose levels.  So diabetics can check their levels with a simple RFID reader, without even touching their skin, let alone puncturing it.  How cool is that?

[Texasmame]

Heres a quote from the bottom of the article:  "The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines."

If this is an even marginally possible cure for cancer they will have NO TROUBLE getting private funding.  The organization that cures cancer will be able to write their own ticket in terms of global prestige and international awards.  Seriously, it's worth a few tens of millions to go from "Johns Hopkins Medicine" to "Johns Hopkins Medicine - We Cured Cancer".

LOL!  That would be the company name to end all names.  I mean, how do you top that?!?