Comment by gus_massa

Comment by gus_massa 3 days ago

> The results demonstrated the therapy not only reduced tumour size but also entirely stopped tumour growth with no evidence of tumour resistance for more than 200 days after treatment.

More details in https://www.pnas.org/doi/suppl/10.1073/pnas.2523039122/suppl... See page 25

In mice, N=12.

1 survived 200 days without cancer and was euthanized for 'ocular ulcers'.

5 survived 50-150 days, without cancer but were euthanized for other health problems

6 survived 50-150 days, and still had a smaller tumor and were euthanized for other health problems

My take away: Interesting, but the press article is overselling the result by a lot.

Edit: Fixed link.

D-Coder 3 days ago

So: half (1+5) of them made it at least 50 days without cancer, and the other half made it at least 50 days with a smaller tumor? This sounds excellent to me. I agree that the sentence you quoted is overselling, though.

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inglor_cz 3 days ago

Mice are very short-lived compared to us. In humans, the usual standard of judgment when it comes to cancer is "5 year survival". No mouse has ever lived for 5 years yet, that would be like 180 years for us.

Prolonging a mouse's life by a few months is non-trivial and hints (only hints) at potential efficiency of such treatment in other species as well.

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apparent 3 days ago

Apparently 50 mice days is equivalent to about 5 human years, so even if these other causes of death here directly caused by the treatment (not alleged), surviving this much longer (5-20 years) would be pretty incredible for humans.

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gus_massa 3 days ago

Where did you get that "50 mice days is equivalent to about 5 human years"?
Mice are short lived, so the time for some events like sexual maturation are shorter.
On the other hand, the problem with cancer is that it adapts, it "learn" how to avoid the effect of the drugs, or how to make the signals to get more blood vessels, or ... I think most of these only depend on how many times the cancer cells reproduce to get a lucky adaptation, so for these effects 200 days is only 200 days.
Also survival rate depends on how early it's detected. In a recent post about colon cancer, the mice got the treatment like 2 weeks after the cancer cells were injected. My guess is that this study also has a short time before the treatment.
Early detection improves survival rate a lot: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/pancreatic-can...
> Localised: More than 25 out of 100 people (more than 25%) survive their cancer for 3 years or more after diagnosis.
> Regional: Around 15 out of 100 people (around 15%) survive their cancer for 3 years or more after diagnosis.
> Distant: Only 1 out of 100 people (1%) survive their cancer for 3 years or more after diagnosis.*
Also (combining all detection stages):
> Generally for adults with pancreatic cancer in the UK:
> around 5 out of every 100 (around 5%) survive their cancer for 10 years or more

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