
Behind the Scenes of a Radical New Cancer Therapy - LinuxBender
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/behind-the-scenes-of-a-radical-new-cancer-cure/
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heymijo
Thought this might be another hype article, but instead I found an informative
article from the perspective of a physician on the front lines treating
patients with CAR-T therapy.

~~~
jessriedel
I also found it pretty illuminating to hear from a practicing physician how
CAR-T is actually deployed, and what it's like to deal with all the
complications of a brand new treatment like that. (I found the human-interest
component to be useless and distracting, as usual, but these vignettes are so
ubiquitous it's hard to fault the author for following the script.)

~~~
vo2maxer
For physicians, it is understanding the biology together with the patient’s
unique humanity which makes it much more rewarding or heartbreaking depending
on outcome. As William Osler said: “The good physician treats the disease; the
great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

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heisenbit
I was impressed how many gene therapy approaches were combined.

To target the cancer:

\- T cell cancer targeting via virus

\- T cell activation via virus

\- T cell outside body multiplication

To deal with symptoms:

\- Interleukin-6 surpression (I suspect grown in Chinese Hamster Ovary cells
which are the gene tech workhorses)

~~~
AllegedAlec
> \- T cell outside body multiplication

This is scary though. They tried this before with children with SCID and
accidentally gave them cancer [0].

0: [https://scidstuff.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/gene-therapy-
canc...](https://scidstuff.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/gene-therapy-cancer-case/)

------
joshmn
I've followed this and related studies closely and I'm glad people are finally
receiving this breakthrough cancer care.

But let this comment serve as a reminder that medical professionals aren't
necessarily "good" because they're in practice. They fail patients all the
time. They're not up-to-date on the latest and greatest care; they've simply
memorized the cliff notes assigned to them by their overseers.

~~~
AllegedAlec
> But let this comment serve as a reminder that medical professionals aren't
> necessarily "good" because they're in practice. They fail patients all the
> time. They're not up-to-date on the latest and greatest care; they've simply
> memorized the cliff notes assigned to them by their overseers.

You're a fucking moron. The reason for them not using these therapies is
because they are unproven, and could very easily do much more harm than good.

~~~
joshmn
Ask my mom how poorly her doctors informed her of all available treatment
options at three hospitals. When I contacted Mayo Clinic asking for other
options (when she was declared out of them) they had a long, long list.

Ask my mom why she was given Lorazepam, Oxy, and Seroquel in an effort to
manage her nicotine fits, even against FDA warnings (classified as most
severe) which said it's very dangerous to administer all three together. They
did it anyway, to my frail, sick, 60LB mother. The result? She almost went
into respiratory arrest and was in a coma-like state for 48 hours. When I
brought this to their attention they said they didn't know it was an issue.

I could write a book about how frequently the system failed my mother. The
medical system in the US isn't designed for care. Ask any medical professional
what they think and they'll overwhelmingly agree.

Unfortunately, you can't ask my mom because she died two weeks ago after
suffering from PCNSL for 5 years. I spent the last 5 years of my life fighting
her disease alongside her. I spent 69 of her last 75 days with her for at
least 8 hours each day. I would hardly consider myself ill-informed. Instead,
I would call you an ill-informed moron, and my mom would call you an
duplicitous asshole.

~~~
dang
I'm sorry about your mom. That's incredibly difficult.

Please don't react to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself.
I was reading this, appreciating how substantively you were reacting to a
really unfair attack, until I crashed into that last sentence. Your comment
would be much better, not to mention more dignified, without it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

