Tested in animal models of acute myeloid leukemia, the new nanomedicine was dramatically more effective while also less toxic.
  • falseWhite@lemmy.world
    15·
    11 hours ago

    cancer drug has been restructured to make its cancer cell killing abilities up to 20,000 times more effective while also reducing its toxicity

    Let’s say the drug was 1% effective at killing cancer cells. I.e you take the drug and it kills 1% of your cancer cells. Does 20,000 times increase in effectiveness mean its 20,000% effective at killing cancer? I.e. we have a cure that can completely kill cancer???

    I doubt it.

    The 20,000 sounds like A LOT, but what the hell does it actually mean for cancer treatment?

    • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      10 hours ago

      To stay in your example: if something has a success rate of killing 1% of all cancer cells (which would not be very effective) , it fails at 99% of all cells.

      A factor 20,000 imrovement would mean 0,99^20000 = 5.056988325166235*^-88 failure rate, which would effectively mean complete success in destroying cancer cells.

      Alas I’m sure there’s a different math behind that increase in effectiveness.

      • falseWhite@lemmy.world
        7·
        10 hours ago

        Yes, I’m not a doctor though. So what does “better targeting” mean for cancer patients in real world?

        I’m just trying to quantify that 20,000 improvement to make sense to me, a regular person, because it’s just a random number to me.

        It certainly doesn’t mean we have cured cancer. Does it?

        “In animal models, we demonstrated that we can stop tumors in their tracks,”

        They make it sound like they have cured cancer in that sentence. But they haven’t.

        So how much more effective is the drug?

        Does it save 20x more patients compared to regular drugs?

        Because it certainly doesn’t save 20,000% more patients.

        Is it just a clicbait title? and that 20,000 improvement will only save 0.01% more cancer patients and cost 1000 times more?

        • nomad@infosec.pub
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Sounds like the 20k number is in vitro. (In a glass dish with cell cultures). In mice its 59 times more effective as without the targeting improvement. The targeting improvement seems to be specially developed for blood cancer (leukemia). Not a doctor, taking out of my ass.

  • doc@fedia.io
    43·
    19 hours ago

    5FU is a very common chemo for a variety of cancer types. Increasing it’s effacacy while reducing side effects would be a major win.

  • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
    23·
    20 hours ago

    That’s certainly great news! So… How many millions of dollars is a dose going to cost?