SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Two clinical trials for cancer were recently halted for the best possible reason; the drugs worked so well that it would be unethical to continue. One trial was for melanoma and the other was for lung cancer, but the drug-target was the same: Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1).
PD-1 is a protein that inhibits responses from T cells. Cancer often takes advantage of the PD-1 pathway to prevent a productive immune response that would otherwise kill the cancer. The drugs in both the clinical trials are antibodies that bind to PD-1, thus preventing cancer-mediated inhibition of the immune response. As this is a general mechanism that cancer uses to evade the immune system, it will likely be effective at treating other forms of cancer besides melanoma and lung cancer. Also, since the drugs are targeting T cells and not the cancer directly, resistance will not develop as easily.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2015/04/17/stopped_for_efficacy_again.php
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2015/03/24/the_best_way_to_halt_a_clinical_trial.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_cell_death_1
We looked around briefly and also found:
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm412802.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-merck-melanoma-idUSKBN0MK1FO20150324
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:45PM
What happens if the short term benefits are just that, short term benefits? What if in the long run an experimental treatment causes much worse cancers to develop? It does no good to clear up one's skin cancer if the treatment will cause far deadlier cancer of the gonads. Halting testing because of short term observations, without properly studying the long term effects, could be disastrous.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @11:54PM
The drug trials were halted, not further study into this drug and its potential long term side effects. You can't really have a long term trial with cancer patients because most of the control group won't survive the trial. They will continue to study those who were taking the drug during the trial that just ended. This is a big breakthrough if it's as effective as their trial indicates, which means this is a multi-billion dollar cash cow. They'll be elbow deep into this research for decades.