[mejiaoneto]

Sorry to hear about your girlfriend. I have heard those feelings as well. They are not uncommon. The probability of success changes as you move further in the development. Below there is a link for a booklet that talks about the general pharma odds in page 53.

In our particular case, we took a known chemotherapeutic agent called doxorubicin. It has been used for the last 40 years in about a dozen types of tumors (include certain types of breast cancer).

The problem is that 3 out of every 4 patients end up major side effects to their immune system (e.g. neutropenia), but even worse, you can only take about 6 doses in your whole life, otherwise your risk for cardiac damage increases very rapidly. It is known colloquially as red death and red devil, because of its red color.

Using that drug as the starting block for our approach improves our probability of success and helps us know what to expect in terms of side effects.