Call me cynical, but I’m sure Big Pharma is already preparing to slap on a copyright. Then they’ll bribe lawmakers to enable a monopoly, outlaw competition – oh wait they’ve already done that. Then they’ll destroy medicare so the poor can’t get trea – oh wait they’ve already done that – http://americablog.com/2013/04/medicare-cancer-patients-sequester.html
So guess to what percentage of the population this life saving treatment will actually be available?
All the therapies that target the peculiarities of cell signaling in tumors have the potential to destroy tumors without killing healthy tissue.
Judging by the linked press release, they’re using a molecular cancer signal to get a protein that recognizes that signal to carry their boron compound to cancer cells. The boron, however, acts pretty much like an explosive. It’ll cause way less damage than our current methods, but to state that it’ll cause no damage to healthy cells is, how should I put it, going beyond the evidence a bit at this point.
Other methods that use cancer cell signalling to latch compounds onto tumor cells, and only tumor cells, have more potential to kill only those cells. Those compounds interfere specifically with cell processes peculiar to cancer.
The problem is that the latter would be considered new drugs and would take the whole decade-long testing rigamarole. The neat thing about the boron project is that would fall under radiation therapy, which is already approved, so it could become an actual usable therapy much sooner.
Call me cynical, but I’m sure Big Pharma is already preparing to slap on a copyright. Then they’ll bribe lawmakers to enable a monopoly, outlaw competition – oh wait they’ve already done that. Then they’ll destroy medicare so the poor can’t get trea – oh wait they’ve already done that – http://americablog.com/2013/04/medicare-cancer-patients-sequester.html
So guess to what percentage of the population this life saving treatment will actually be available?
All the therapies that target the peculiarities of cell signaling in tumors have the potential to destroy tumors without killing healthy tissue.
Judging by the linked press release, they’re using a molecular cancer signal to get a protein that recognizes that signal to carry their boron compound to cancer cells. The boron, however, acts pretty much like an explosive. It’ll cause way less damage than our current methods, but to state that it’ll cause no damage to healthy cells is, how should I put it, going beyond the evidence a bit at this point.
Other methods that use cancer cell signalling to latch compounds onto tumor cells, and only tumor cells, have more potential to kill only those cells. Those compounds interfere specifically with cell processes peculiar to cancer.
The problem is that the latter would be considered new drugs and would take the whole decade-long testing rigamarole. The neat thing about the boron project is that would fall under radiation therapy, which is already approved, so it could become an actual usable therapy much sooner.