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by lekanwang
3299 days ago
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I think there's false premise here that cancer has a single magic cure and we just need to focus on researching that instead of this expensive "personalized medicine." Cancer is a complex beast, and what we term cancer is really a whole class of diseases with a plethora of underlying causes, some of which we have a basic understanding, and others which we are only starting to understand. Saying we are treating "cancer" as a whole makes as much sense as saying we're treating "fever" or "pain." So what's billed as personalized medicine in cancer at least is really an entirely correct attempt to dig a layer deeper to understand the actual genetic variations that lead the cells to overmultiply, then attempt to address those root causes, numerous as they may be. We're currently still in the early stages of immunooncology, and the instruments are still blunt, but already more precise and informed than the chemo/radiation world. As for the cost side, breakthrough R&D like this is not cheap (hundreds of millions to billions), and manufacturing of humanized antibodies (the drug itself) ain't cheap either. We somehow need mechanisms in place so biotech research continues to take these big risks. It is however a completely valid question to ask how we can better derisk this kind of research to the right degree so that certain gaps in the market (e.g. diseases with no cure) can be researched and filled. Big pharma fills that derisking role for the vast majority of smaller biotechs and research labs, often buying up IP and running the hyper-expensive Phase 3's with a 90% chance of failure. The FDA/EMA have the most power in derisking for big pharma, with their very difficult job of balancing the derisking and encouraging research vs safety. Over time I'm sure the cost will decrease for immunooncology as we improve manufacturing and have get more data on their safety and efficacy profiles in the wild. |
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No, this is a new "talking point" come up with by cancer researchers due to their slow progress. Cancer research is up there with social psychology in terms of reproducibility problems, why not deal with that before claiming "it's so complex":
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a...
http://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-project-sc...
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/rigorous-replication-...
Cancer is one disease, characterized by, amongst other things, aneuploidy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15549096
Detect and target the aneuploidy and you can have a general anti-cancer therapy.