[headmelted]

actually promotes recurrence in some cases

With a therapeutic like the one described in the post I'd be really interested to know the cold, honest numbers on recurrence - not to be negative, just to understand where this falls with regards to other treatments.

Obviously it can take years for recurrence rates to shake out and become evident, but I feel like in the last few years we've been hearing a lot about promising therapies (CAR-T, Harvard CD-47 trials, this) that ultimately fall off the common radar.

It could be that these therapies are the real deal and are quietly saving lives now (I know CAR-T has shown real promise in liquid tumors), but it's worrying when news around this research falls silent as it makes it seem like they aren't providing lasting cures.

[cannonedhamster]

Some chemotherapy drugs list cancer as a possible side effect, which I thought was funny when they told me. Recurrence is different as it's generally hiding cancer "stem cells" that cause this. There's actually a drug in the works that attempts to activate these and make them more susceptible to standard chemo that I think is cool, but it's a few years before that reaches human trials.

As for lasting results, most aren't cures, it's about improving the overall survivability, meaning time until the next treatment option opens up. A lot of these options give you a few months at most which is a big improvement and gives you a chance until the next thing comes out. The reason for this is that we're commonly talking about late stage cancers (3/4). Early stage cancers that haven't spread are cut out before they spread which is the best possible option as it's the highest likelihood of a cure.

[izuchukwu]

Skepticism is very warranted here. And as I mention in your sibling comment, “promotes cancer recurrence” was a poor choice of term. “Permits,” due to the time between doses, would have been more accurate.

There are a lot of fly-by-night stories like this for a variety of reasons, be it ongoing research, funding seeking, or otherwise. I do believe the Benzimidazole class of medication mentioned is worth taking a deeper look at however—it seems to be a common thread over many of these.

Sometimes the reason something hasn’t seen use is more than the question of whether it’s clinically viable or not.