

Scientists find treatment to kill every kind of cancer tumor - donmb
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/03/27/scientists-find-treatment-to-kill-every-kind-cancer-tumor/?intcmp=trending

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sentenza
What an irresponsible headline. I'm not familiar with the research in question
but I've worked on cancer during my PhD and the headline alone is sufficient
to discredit the article.

Every kind of tumor? Really? Because we don't even know all the kinds of
tumors that are out there. What we do know, however, is that, to this date, no
commonality between _all_ tumors has been identified. The smart money is on
the hypothesis that there is no commonality, since many possible combinations
of cellular malfunction can lead to tumorgenesis.

For instance, I distinctly remember having read a review in Nature a few weeks
back about a study of certain brain tumors that can either be caused by
mutations of some genes, or alternatively can be caused through a purely
epigenetic mechanism. How about that!

So given all this, how likely is it that the antibody they created blocks CD47
in cancer cells and only cancer cells but of course all types cancer cells, as
the article claims?

Why don't journalists think/care about the consequences of tabloidizing
cancer? These articles play on the feelings of very desperate people, just to
get some asshat a few more click-throughs for the monthly metrics.

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malanj
Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1217/](https://xkcd.com/1217/)

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majc2
Hehe :) In fairness though, keep in mind they've gone as far as mice.

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shenanigoat
So...Fox News gets their story from a Reddit post referencing a two year old
article.

I don't know anything about drug trials. I do know that terminal patients
often cannot get experimental therapies. This Fox article has around 250k
Facebook shares....so far. Surely this will create a lot of pressure to fast
track trials, wouldn't it?

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rjknight
This does not appear to be new - there's a story from last year here:
[http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/may/cd47.html](http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/may/cd47.html)

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weirdcat
From [http://stemcell.stanford.edu/CD47/](http://stemcell.stanford.edu/CD47/):

 _TL;DR: Clinical trials expected in the first half of 2014_

(1/14/14) Update on the anti-CD47 cancer therapy clinical trials

Researchers and staff at Stanford are continuing to work hard preparing the
groundwork for the clinical trials of our anti-CD47 antibody as a cancer
therapy. We are anticipating the start of clinical trials sometime in the
first half of this year, though unforeseen delays may yet slow that progress.
As we get closer to the start of the clinical trials, we will be posting
information about eligibility for the trials and how to apply.

There has been a huge amount of interest in these trials from patients and
their families and friends. However, we feel compelled to emphasize that, as
is typical of FDA phase I clinical trials, the first tests of this therapy
will be very small safety trials involving only a very few patients.
Unfortunately, this means only a tiny fraction of those interested will be
admitted to the first phase I clinical trials. Accordingly, we are urging
patients to continue exploring existing treatments and other clinical trials.

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pawelkomarnicki
I hope they will someday eradicate cancers, or at least make it less lethal :)

