Tiny Particles Could Help Fight Brain Cancer

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 25, 2001
Messages
13,500
MIT researchers have developed a new way to fight glioblastoma brain cancer and it utilizes nanoparticles to deliver two different drugs to the tumor. The researchers have used the nanoparticles in mice and found that it crosses the blood-brain barrier with ease and delivers the drugs directly to the tumor. The nanoparticles have resulted in the shrinking of the tumors and prevented them from growing back. This really is a huge step forward for cancer treatment and nanotechnology. Hopefully they can get this quickly approved by the FDA so it can start helping people like Senator McCain.

“This is yet another example where the combination of nanoparticle delivery with drugs involving the DNA-damage response can be used successfully to treat cancer,” says Michael Yaffe, a David H. Koch Professor of Science and member of the Koch Institute, who is also an author of the paper.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I wonder how quickly it goes to human trials considering a person of power has a need for it.
 
I know Trump pushed Right to Try legislation was introduced to fast track these experimental drugs to the terminally ill.

After a year in which President Donald Trump devoted much of his health policy attention to efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Trump used part of his State of the Union address in January to press Congress to focus attention in 2018 on a new health priority – the passage of "right to try" legislation. Now, four months later, legislation is on its way to the president's desk.

Right to try legislation gives terminally ill patients the right to use experimental medications that have not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In 2017, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed HR 878, legislation that would do just that, and the president's address pressured the U.S. House to follow suit.
 
I've lost my dad, brother, 1 friend, and 1 friend's dad to glioblastoma. It's possibly the worst imaginable fate, dying to those damn things. There's absolutely little reason in my mind that if you're put into that situation, that you shouldnt be allowed to be a human trial. It's a hopeless battle, so why the hell not?
 
The Right to Try has been the law starting in many states since 2014. This new President Trump Right to Try legislation pushes the FDA to make it easier for those institutions to get access to the new or unapproved drugs for treatment. This is when patients see the need for insurance that will cover treatment outside of their state. For instance if a patient gets accepted for stem cell treatment for say Multiple Sclerosis in a State other than their own it will make it much easier to get the insurance company to pay for it.
Here is one source of information on the subject here
 
I've lost my dad, brother, 1 friend, and 1 friend's dad to glioblastoma. It's possibly the worst imaginable fate, dying to those damn things. There's absolutely little reason in my mind that if you're put into that situation, that you shouldnt be allowed to be a human trial. It's a hopeless battle, so why the hell not?

Agreed. I feel the same way about Right to Die. If you're terminally ill and considered competent to make that decision. Why should some one tell you that you can't? Its selfish.
 
honestly i do not know what is the point of spreading the news of the research that is nowhere near complete on the media, all it does is give false hope to ppl inflected with the disease, who die years or decades before these kind things become available, if they ever do, because most of the time it ends in bust.
 
honestly i do not know what is the point of spreading the news of the research that is nowhere near complete on the media, all it does is give false hope to ppl inflected with the disease, who die years or decades before these kind things become available, if they ever do, because most of the time it ends in bust.

I dont disagree, but if we were to take that mindset and give less attention to these projects, they'd be brushed away, not funded, snuffed out by competing big pharma, etc. More attention is never a bad thing. Even that dumbass ice bucket challenge resulted in some good for ALS.
 
I know its a stretch and to some, unrelated, but I hope if this moves forward they may be able to adapt it to at least some forms of Alzheimer's. Either way, I believe this is a huge step forward for us all.
 
I dont disagree, but if we were to take that mindset and give less attention to these projects, they'd be brushed away, not funded, snuffed out by competing big pharma, etc. More attention is never a bad thing. Even that dumbass ice bucket challenge resulted in some good for ALS.
Ofc I am not talking about research reviews or fund raising, but just the everyday media outlets bringing these news to the masses, not everyone needs to know unless it reaches clinical trials.
 
Dandelion milk and tumeric with some milk thistle works as well. Thanks to the Rockerfellers for killing off the shaman and stealing the ancient herbal remedies, much has been lost. Of course don't eat olestra, artificial dyes and sweeteners or 9 million other government approved food additives and you will be better off.
 
First off: here's the paper itself; thanks for pointing out! I sent it to my colleagues. (My lab space may sit right next to a nanoparticle size characterization tool)

It's a liposomal based nanoparticle delivery system (like Doxil, which is FDA approved) carrying a combination therapy that's decorated with transferrin to shuttle it across the blood brain barrier. Clever work for sure.

Second point: still needs a lot more animal data before this is ready for human trials. And right to try looks appealing until you get down to the nitty gritty, where it looks more like a way for drug companies to do decidedly unethical trials on desperate patients. Long article, and he's a bit over the top at times, but separates the idea in people's heads from the boots-on-the-ground way right-to-try will legally look. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/th...nown-as-right-to-try-is-poised-to-become-law/


Edit to add: the history of nanoparticle drug delivery vehicles is littered with failures, so at this point it's a guess whether it'll get to/past Phase I.
More data? If you are an inch from death, who cares if its experimental or not. You are going to die either way.
 
Agreed. I feel the same way about Right to Die. If you're terminally ill and considered competent to make that decision. Why should some one tell you that you can't? Its selfish.
The biggest problem is people volunteering and then family suing afterwards. If you do something 'new' your risk for losing a liability case goes through the roof because you can't produce a strong track record of such and such procedure being reasonably safe. Lawyers ruin everything.
 
More data? If you are an inch from death, who cares if its experimental or not. You are going to die either way.

Think financial as well and bankrupting far more people than *just* the person dying, as people completely forget. Is it selfish for someone to try to extend their life at the cost of wrecking the finances of any number of people around them? The legalese of most of these right-to-try bills that have been put forth by various states (which have zero teeth until mandated at the federal level) basically leave the person dying to pay for it themselves, in addition to any consequences of the experimental treatment. Edit: plus indemnify the pharmaceutical company and physicians involved from generally any malpractice.

Likewise, remember that Phase 1 doesn't have to show efficacy, just a maximum acceptable dose. After Phase 1 there's no proof that these experimental treatments actually work on humans versus, say, a working treatment but with an unknown safety profile. Those are roughly determined in Phase 2 and further refined in Phase 3 (which is why new trials are moving to Phase 2/3, where essentially the Phase 2 part is an intermediate checkpoint of a larger trial).

As I said, Right-to-try is not legislation for dying patients, it's a way for pharmaceutical companies to conduct unethical trials bankrolled by desperate patients and their loved ones. From that lens, it seems pretty F***ed up. Actually if you look at the money it's really just Libertarian idealists being let loose on the world as a means of reducing the scope of the FDA (pretty much bankrolled by the Koch brothers). E.g. a pre-Thalomide world, which is one we do not want. Promise.
 
Last edited:
Ofc I am not talking about research reviews or fund raising, but just the everyday media outlets bringing these news to the masses, not everyone needs to know unless it reaches clinical trials.

As someone in this field, media reports on research induce a "bang head against desk" response. I'm 100% sure this is the case with other fields as well. But I don't get your criticism as lensed down to media blurbs about research topics: it's sadly still about 100x better signal-to-noise ratio than the drivel that is spread around otherwise. A quick look at the clickbait-y thread titles here on the "Front Page News" subforum is enough to make one lose hope in humanity.
 
Think financial as well and bankrupting far more people than *just* the person dying, as people completely forget. Is it selfish for someone to try to extend their life at the cost of wrecking the finances of any number of people around them? The legalese of most of these right-to-try bills that have been put forth by various states (which have zero teeth until mandated at the federal level) basically leave the person dying to pay for it themselves, in addition to any consequences of the experimental treatment. Edit: plus indemnify the pharmaceutical company and physicians involved from generally any malpractice.

Likewise, remember that Phase 1 doesn't have to show efficacy, just a maximum acceptable dose. After Phase 1 there's no proof that these experimental treatments actually work on humans versus, say, a working treatment but with an unknown safety profile. Those are roughly determined in Phase 2 and further refined in Phase 3 (which is why new trials are moving to Phase 2/3, where essentially the Phase 2 part is an intermediate checkpoint of a larger trial).

As I said, Right-to-try is not legislation for dying patients, it's a way for pharmaceutical companies to conduct unethical trials bankrolled by desperate patients and their loved ones. From that lens, it seems pretty F***ed up. Actually if you look at the money it's really just Libertarian idealists being let loose on the world as a means of reducing the scope of the FDA (pretty much bankrolled by the Koch brothers). E.g. a pre-Thalomide world, which is one we do not want. Promise.
I bet it would be free since it would be in trials.
 
I bet it would be free since it would be in trials.

This is exactly what I meant by referencing the article I did to reconcile "what you think the law does vs what the law's stipulations actually say." A person who is IN A TRIAL has absolutely no need for right-to-try legislation. Right-to-try is for cases where a drug completed Phase 1, whereupon terminally ill patients are "allowed" to buy in to experimental therapies which they do not fit the enrollment criteria. In many states that comes with it the consequence of waiving their rights to support care, e.g. hospice.

There are already established pathways for off-label usage or for ongoing trials where said patient doesn't fit the enrollment criteria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_access
 
  • Like
Reactions: erexx
like this
Back
Top