

Antibody finds, wipes out prostate cancer in mice - tdedecko
http://www.physorg.com/news181245375.html

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tomiles
"If I had a nickel for every time someone claimed to cure cancer in mice, I'd
be a rich man."

First thing that comes to mind when reading titles like this. Mice is a model
for human biomedical research, but far from a perfect one, especially in the
cancer field. There are substantial differences that make it hard to
extrapolate these results in mice to humans.

As a medical biotechnology grad student I read these claims often and it's a
shame that most of the time it's impossible to find a reference to the
original article. Hard to know than if it's an exaggeration generating false
hope or a genuinely promising cure with consequences for treatments in humans.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I think that the 20th and the 21st centuries will go down in history as the
best time to be a mouse on this planet.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
This is both funny and sadly true -- if we tolerated as much failure in people
as we did in mice who knows where medicine would be today.

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Shamiq
Any bio-nerds want to express opinions about this? Sounded super intriguing to
me.

~~~
affiliator
Recomment(?) from a reddit thread on the same story from someone who claims to
work in cancer research:

 _The chances that this antibody will work in humans is EXTREMELY small.

The model that would have to be used here is injecting human prostate cancer
cells into nude mice (this is a strain that is totally lacking in its own
immune system so foreign cancer cells can actually survive and not be killed
within minutes), allowing the tumor to grow, and then injecting the antibody
or even ust the antibody fragment int the tail vein. You then palpate the
tumor over the next few weeks. You'd also want to sample the tumor and maybe
do some TUNEL to check for actual rates of apoptosis.

Chances are very slim that an antibody that fights this specific strain of lab
grown cancer (lab grown cancers have generally been grown for so long that
they are heavily mutated to say the least) will be effective in humans. Humans
have many, many, many different strains of prostate cancer and unless these
researchers have accidentally stumbled upon the holy grail of surface markers
that somehow indicate internal genetic expression...I am skeptical.

Additionally, you've linked to an article that is so vacuous that it doesn't
even feel the need to cite the actual results which it is based upon. VPNed
through my department account and I can't even find the article._

[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/ajcaq/an_antibody_h...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/ajcaq/an_antibody_has_been_discovered_f77_that_finds/)

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yeah, this is from a cancer researcher. As a former cancer researcher, I
recognize the symptoms. ;)

All of this is basically true, though I hesitate to be so harsh without
actually reading the article...

