I found out this week that my dad has metastatic cancer, with tumors up and down his spine. It's probably prostate cancer, will find out for sure on Monday.
The National Cancer Institute (cancer.gov) and the American Cancer Society (cancer.org) have _great_ websites. They don't presuppose you know anything about cancer (I didn't), but yet they get you into advanced topics pretty quickly. It will be interesting to see whether effective immunotherapy emerges for prostate cancer. There are lots of trials right now, but it's true--most of them seem like variations on a theme. Pembrolizumab has emerged as effective if PD-1 is expressed (https://www.icr.ac.uk/news-archive/asco-2018-major-trial-is-...). PARP inhibitors (e.g., olaparib) also seem promising for a subset with other mutations (http://www.cancernetwork.com/prostate-cancer/synthetic-letha...). What's striking is the binary nature of immunotherapy. When the genes are expressed, they work; when not, they don't.
The large-scale "platform" testing that Allison is testing seems like a great application of data-driven science.
> What's striking is the binary nature of immunotherapy. When the genes are expressed, they work; when not, they don't.
Antibodies and the hypervariable regions of the T cell apparatus are the van der Waals equivalent of a socket wrench: it either fits or it doesn't. That's what makes them so attractive for drug development. We can design the code, insert it into a bacterium or phage and then make as many socket wrenches as we want using little more than the principles and equipment used for brewimg beer.
The National Cancer Institute (cancer.gov) and the American Cancer Society (cancer.org) have _great_ websites. They don't presuppose you know anything about cancer (I didn't), but yet they get you into advanced topics pretty quickly. It will be interesting to see whether effective immunotherapy emerges for prostate cancer. There are lots of trials right now, but it's true--most of them seem like variations on a theme. Pembrolizumab has emerged as effective if PD-1 is expressed (https://www.icr.ac.uk/news-archive/asco-2018-major-trial-is-...). PARP inhibitors (e.g., olaparib) also seem promising for a subset with other mutations (http://www.cancernetwork.com/prostate-cancer/synthetic-letha...). What's striking is the binary nature of immunotherapy. When the genes are expressed, they work; when not, they don't.
The large-scale "platform" testing that Allison is testing seems like a great application of data-driven science.