- cross-posted to:
- science@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- science@lemmy.world
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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?
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.
Sounds like better targeting. Have you read the article?
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?
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.
Why are we wasting money on getting cancer cells high? Like, shouldn’t we be killing them?
Big Ken M energy.
When the cells are high they dont see the treatment coming and are easily overwhelmed.
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.
That’s certainly great news! So… How many millions of dollars is a dose going to cost?
My chemo cost AUD$28,000 a month for two years (but as an Australian citizen I didn’t pay that much). So either more than that or as much as the drug companies can gouge, or both.
I suppose “the alternative to buying my product is death” is a rather effective business strategy.
I’m so lucky to have had cancer in Australia and not the USA.
Exactly. Otherwise you’d surely be dead or alive and homeless. Whew!!
At least one banana and some duct tape should cover it…
“It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”
Checks the current price of bananas
Welp. I guess I still can’t afford it.
