cp418, I would like to thank you for being so active on this thread. You post the vast majority of trending cancer research, and it's quality reporting. Thank you. Now if we can only get the FDA to approve immunotherapy for general use, and general health care professionals to demand that insurance pay for immunotherapy for everyone. Am I wrong? Immunotherapy is still seen as "experimental", so to speak? It seems like it's incredibly effective in tx cancers, and really successful.

I know from the work I do that medicine is rapidly moving in that direction. That is the thrust of Cancer MoonShot 2020. The larger problem is enrolling enough patients into clinical trials so that we get results that make sense. Currently, only about 3% of all adult cancer patients sign up for one. At least 6x this would be eligible. This means that clinical trials typically take 2x longer than they should for results. Not good.

75% of new oncology medications in development are targeted therapies.

The biggest problem I see is the gap between how medicine is currently practiced and where the science is taking us.

We will also need to rethink how we define cancer. Currently, we identify cancer by its location in the body, yet it is possible to have similar cancers originating in different places in the body. I liken this to the disease we referred to as "the pox" less than 3 centuries ago. But of course, we now treat Smallpox, Chicken Pox, Syphilis, Eczema, Hives, Poison Ivy, etc. very differently as we know they are very different diseases.

Lots of work going on to accelerate this research and make novel, less toxic, and more effective therapies available.

One thing we fight as a society is lack of knowledge about what a clinical trial really is, and then there is the problem of access, as most are not universally available. For example, one benefit of participation is that you may gain access to new therapies, not yet available everywhere. You would NOT get a "sugar pill", as most novel therapies are tested against standard of care. In the one, I participated in, two different protocols were tested against each other. Both had been shown to have better outcomes than current standard of care. I was randomized to the group with higher survival, but either one was a win.

Yes, the FDA can be a roadblock, but they act on evidence that a new treatment is effective, and often fast track those where early results are shown to be extremely promising. Because they want to make sure that a new treatment is 1) safe (as in unlikely to kill you) and 2) effective in treating a particular disease.

With all this work going on, I am anticipating that we will be treating most cancers very differently a decade or so from now. And I think this is wonderful news. - Claire

Interesting articles cp418 and claireinAZ!

They used Adriamycin chemotherapy or radiation in the Science Daily study to "simultaneously induce cancer cell death and tumor dormancy". Whoa! So, the treatments will either cure you or make your cancer more resistant? I find that really concerning. (Should I file that in "Things my doctor never told me," under "because she didn't know" or "because she didn't want to scare me"?)

But immunotherapy to the rescue? Do we have to wait for an expensive new blockbuster treatment? How about we use low-cost, currently available drugs and supplements that enhance immunosurveillance NOW? Here is an article that mentions aspirin, curcumin, COX-2 inhibitors, aromatase inhibitors and bisphosphonates as enhancers of our bodies' immune system activity against malignancy. (I would focus on the lower toxicity agents and add melatonin and beta-glucans to that group.) Maybe we should try using them in addition to chemo and radiation.

The invisible arm of immunity in common cancer chemoprevention agents.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23918793

(Marzbani, 2013)