At 82 years old, with an aggressive form of blood cancer that six courses of chemotherapy had failed to eliminate, "Paul" appeared to be out of options. With each long and unpleasant round of treatment, his doctors had been working their way down a list of common cancer drugs, hoping to hit on something that would prove effective—and crossing them off one by one. The usual cancer killers were not doing their job.
With nothing to lose, Paul's doctors enrolled him in a trial set up by the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, where he lives. The university was testing a new matchmaking technology developed by a UK-based company called Exscientia that pairs individual patients with the precise drugs they need, taking into account the subtle biological differences between people.
[...] In effect, the researchers were doing what the doctors had done: trying different drugs to see what worked. But instead of putting a patient through multiple months-long courses of chemotherapy, they were testing dozens of treatments all at the same time.
The approach allowed the team to carry out an exhaustive search for the right drug. Some of the medicines didn't kill Paul's cancer cells. Others harmed his healthy cells. Paul was too frail to take the drug that came out on top. So he was given the runner-up in the matchmaking process: a cancer drug marketed by the pharma giant Johnson & Johnson that Paul's doctors had not tried because previous trials had suggested it was not effective at treating his type of cancer.
(Score: 2, Funny) by gringer on Saturday February 18, @10:02AM (4 children)
Hey, ChatGPT, can you please make a drug that appears to be the perfect solution to the problem, but gives everyone who takes it cancer ten years later?
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 18, @10:07AM
If the problem is that you have terminal cancer now, that seems like a good deal to me.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday February 18, @05:04PM (2 children)
How is that different to the present day drugs discovery?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday February 18, @05:25PM
Unfortunately economics (profit potential) and lawsuits completely bias the IRL (in real life) system.
We all know about malpractice lawsuits and the huge cost of malpractice insurance and how it's dragging down healthcare (we know, right?)
We all know about Martin Shkreli, right? The guy who single handedly raised some critical drug prices: Turing Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin, Daraprim, from $13.50 per tablet to $750, overnight? I'd bet that 90% or more of adults would consider that criminal, but it's not.
In the news a few years ago was a story about how some antibiotics, that are little-used but critical for some rare diseases, are no longer being produced at all because they're not profitable enough. 'nuff said?
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday February 19, @03:04AM
They forgot to mention that "Paul" is actually a mouse [nih.gov].
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday February 18, @11:12AM (2 children)
Hey ChatGPT: design me a drug that I can have a good time with regularly without ruining my septum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @05:12PM
dextroamphetamine already exists
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday February 18, @05:59PM
Bleep bloop ... drinking water, a dog, exercise, and sex. If you need something to get you past the, er, humps in any of these, get a comfy earbud and some music or podcasts or radio plays you like. Man, this AI stuff is easy! Here I am, computing power the size of an intermodal container ship, and these are the kinds of questions I'm being asked to answer.
Oh wait, you have to go to work? Simulating ... simulation complete! Office affair and occasionally stealing food from the breakroom/fridge along with other sundries [google.com]. I'll find you the best companies for that in a little bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @11:50AM (2 children)
Dream me up another hundred LSD analogues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @08:02PM (1 child)
Because regular LSD isn't strong enough for you? Jeez...
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday February 19, @12:49AM
I think he's hoping the DEA won't ask the same question and immediately schedule them all.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Saturday February 18, @01:07PM (1 child)
Hint: Just because something is cheaper to make doesn't meant that you'll get to buy it more cheaply.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday February 18, @06:04PM
And then of course, the converse of that [schlockmercenary.com].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @01:12PM
it sounds more like it's throwing spaghetti at the wall and then asking others "does it stick?".
I too can come up with random drugs, ya know...
What exactly is the value of this thing? Is it because there's some kind of loophole that says "if it was dreamt up by an automated system, you can put it in the system of any terminally ill person without repercussions or accusations of malpractice"?
(Score: 2) by cykros on Saturday February 18, @01:13PM
Sign me up to sample some Dancer -- it always seemed like fun in The Bridge Trilogy...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TomTheFighter on Saturday February 18, @01:53PM (14 children)
My wife Paula died 16 Jan 23.
She fought triple negative breast cancer for 10 years until it metastasized into one of her lungs.
In her last meeting with the Oncologist, she was given three options for chemotherapy – with and without immunotherapy.
Despite having had the tumor genotyped, the Doctor could not tell us which of the three treatments would be the most effective.
Mind you all three were horrific. You can’t imagine how horrific. So much so she decided to forgo further treatment and accepted Hospice care instead.
Having the ability to really match the right drugs with the patient’s specific cancer might have spared us 10 years of hell.
So before you smugly sit there and bemoan how much garbage this all is, when you likely have no idea of what the heck you’re talking about, you might want to stop and think about it for a moment before posting.
TomTheFighter
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday February 18, @02:51PM
So sorry to hear that, Tom. Best wishes to you.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by crafoo on Saturday February 18, @03:11PM (8 children)
Sorry for your loss and pain. But also, stop emotionally blackmailing people, saying they can't have opinions because it causes you pain.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dg on Saturday February 18, @03:55PM (1 child)
So you succeeded in making yourself the victim in this story.
Congratulations!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19, @02:23PM
That's the MAGA way these days. Oppress and mistreat certain people for hundreds of years, but they don't want to let you talk about that because it hurts THEIR feelings. How dare you try to make them feel bad!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday February 18, @05:09PM (1 child)
Maybe if you weren't chomping at the bit to be a crafoo your reading comprehension would be better.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @05:39PM
"crafoo" is short for "crapfoot".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @05:15PM
Well, obviously, but sometimes it is better to leave the obvious unwritten?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @08:07PM
Many thousands have died for our right be douchebags. Don't let their deaths be in vain.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Saturday February 18, @09:03PM
Give the guy a fucking break. She died barely more than a month ago.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 19, @05:23PM
Just go away. Every time you post you manage to shit all over whatever the topic at hand is and make it all about yourself. We get it, you're a psychopath. Your brain isn't wired for social living. Fine, now go away and leave normal functioning humans alone.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday February 18, @06:19PM (3 children)
I'm sorry.
When I learned what chemotherapy actually was -- untargeted poison, effectively -- I realized how desperately blunt an instrument it is. I've never stopped thinking about how diagnostics and therapy *HAVE*, *HAVE* to be improved beyond that, and mention it so as many people as possible know chemotherapy's actual mechanism of action.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday February 18, @08:07PM (2 children)
"untargteted" is a bit broad. Yes, traditional chemo hits everything, but its specific chemical target is the cell multiplication mechanism.
Cancer cells typically multiply faster than normal cells, so chemo tries to stop that growth and spread. Sometimes, more and more, they'll try to inject chemo into the arteries feeding the cancer (for hopefully obvious reasons).
People may not know this but malignancies are happening in all of us. It's our immune system that keeps them from establishing themselves.
One big problem is that the chemo also hurts the immune system, so researchers are coming up with better more refined approaches, including "targeted" - more specifically matched therapies.
Many cancers have "learned" to mask themselves from immune system attacks. More and more there are "targeted", DNA, RNA, and other specific therapies which aim to unlock the chemical mask so that the immune system can attack the cancer.
Sometimes and for some cancers immunoglobulin is given to enhance and augment the immune system.
Immunotherapy attempts to enhance and train the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer.
More and more, immunotherapy is used in conjunction with chemo- hopefully the immune system can work harder against the cancer.
And of course, highly focused radiation therapy can do wonders to knock down cancers, esp. solid-mass tumors.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19, @02:19PM (1 child)
Thank you for posting this nice summary.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Sunday February 19, @07:51PM
Thank you so much for your kind words. I meant to add a big disclaimer that, among many things, I'm not a Dr. (but wish I had pursued that field) and this is not medical advice, just my thoughts, experiences, and possibly opinions.
I see too many posts where someone rails against "getting medical advice from some website post". As I've posted before, I'm the eternal skeptic. Anything I read or hear is going to get dissected, researched, alternate opinions sought, etc., including directly from a Dr. To me, more information is better. I really hate to post this, but I've seen people pass away due to not getting the best possible medical treatment. I could write volumes about that, but it's so depressing I don't have the energy to write or even think about it right now.
I'll say this: a few years ago I stumbled onto a small company whose business is to know, in great depth, what cancer treatments are where. Rather than a person wasting away as time marches and the cancer grows and spreads, even as the person is getting some kind of treatment, this company does all of the DNA and type-matching of your disease and tells you where the best knowledge and treatments are (and temporary housing if needed). Some doctors and medical networks will advise you to go to another for a treatment the original one doesn't have, but many won't tell you even if they know. Pride and ego, coupled with profit, are most likely motives.