(mostly a joke, but I'd be in favor of adding context to the HN headline if possible)
I've been playing to much pokemon with my kids, read this as "Dugtrio"
Same, I'll never look at them the same again.
me too
I keep reading about these advancements in pancreatic cancer like early detection or possible treatments, but nothing ever seems to make it to daylight. Is there a reason why there's such disparity between this?
1. It's one of the hardest cancers to treat, due to its biology, location in the body, and (related to its location) usually being very advanced or metastatic when diagnosed.
2. Mice =/= humans, as noted.
However we're heading into a new era of treatments for some cancers including pancreatic. New agents targeting RAS/KRAS pathways will likely deliver the first meaningful treatment advances in decades.
Daraxonrasib (which was used in the linked study) is leading the charge, but there are multiple other drugs (including agents that are a little more targeted, and therefore likely slightly better tolerated, like pan-KRAS or KRAS G12D inhibitors) in development too.
Because research on real humans and real diseases is exceptionally difficult. Clinical research is notoriously expensive, results are likely to differ from non-human (preclinical) models, and trials take forever to get started, gather enough data, and get a drug actually reviewed and approved. So even when everyone is excited by the preclinical data, there are so many barriers (both scientific and non-scientific) that getting to an approved drug is pretty unlikely.
We really should be able to grow human bodies without a brain for testing purposes. It’s gruesome but realistically victimless at the end of the day.
IN MICE. (To be fair, also IN SOME OTHER BETTER MICE).
https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598...
(mostly a joke, but I'd be in favor of adding context to the HN headline if possible)
I've been playing to much pokemon with my kids, read this as "Dugtrio"
Same, I'll never look at them the same again.
me too
I keep reading about these advancements in pancreatic cancer like early detection or possible treatments, but nothing ever seems to make it to daylight. Is there a reason why there's such disparity between this?
1. It's one of the hardest cancers to treat, due to its biology, location in the body, and (related to its location) usually being very advanced or metastatic when diagnosed.
2. Mice =/= humans, as noted.
However we're heading into a new era of treatments for some cancers including pancreatic. New agents targeting RAS/KRAS pathways will likely deliver the first meaningful treatment advances in decades.
Daraxonrasib (which was used in the linked study) is leading the charge, but there are multiple other drugs (including agents that are a little more targeted, and therefore likely slightly better tolerated, like pan-KRAS or KRAS G12D inhibitors) in development too.
Because research on real humans and real diseases is exceptionally difficult. Clinical research is notoriously expensive, results are likely to differ from non-human (preclinical) models, and trials take forever to get started, gather enough data, and get a drug actually reviewed and approved. So even when everyone is excited by the preclinical data, there are so many barriers (both scientific and non-scientific) that getting to an approved drug is pretty unlikely.
We really should be able to grow human bodies without a brain for testing purposes. It’s gruesome but realistically victimless at the end of the day.