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New approach eradicates breast cancer in mice:
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new approach to treating breast cancer kills 95-100% of cancer cells in mouse models of human estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers and their metastases in bone, brain, liver and lungs. The newly developed drug, called ErSO, quickly shrinks even large tumors to undetectable levels.
[...] "Even when a few breast cancer cells do survive, enabling tumors to regrow over several months, the tumors that regrow remain completely sensitive to retreatment with ErSO," said U. of I. biochemistry professor David Shapiro, who led the research with Illinois chemistry professor Paul Hergenrother. "It is striking that ErSO caused the rapid destruction of most lung, bone and liver metastases and dramatic shrinkage of brain metastases, since tumors that have spread to other sites in the body are responsible for most breast cancer deaths," Shapiro said.
[...] ErSO is nothing like the drugs that are commonly used to treat estrogen-receptor-positive cancers, Shapiro said.
"This is not another version of tamoxifen or fulvestrant, which are therapeutically used to block estrogen signaling in breast cancer," he said. Even though it binds to the same receptor that estrogen binds, it targets a different site on the estrogen receptor and attacks a protective cellular pathway that is already turned on in cancer cells, he said.
[...] "Many of these breast cancers shrink by more than 99% in just three days," Shapiro said. "ErSO is fast-acting and its effects on breast cancers in mice are large and dramatic."
The pharmaceutical company Bayer AG has licensed the new drug and will explore its potential for further study in human clinical trials targeting estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers, the researchers said. The researchers will next explore whether ErSO is effective against other types of cancers that contain estrogen receptor.
Journal Reference:
Matthew W. Boudreau, Darjan Duraki, Lawrence Wang, et al. A small-molecule activator of the unfolded protein response eradicates human breast tumors in mice [$], Science Translational Medicine (DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abf1383)
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 21 2021, @09:12PM (10 children)
99% shrinkage in 3 days... what else is it affecting?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by EJ on Wednesday July 21 2021, @09:50PM
I suppose if you're a male with breast cancer, you have to decide what's most important to you.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @12:30AM (7 children)
It would affect all of the cells with the same type of Estrogen receptor. But the research indicates that it won't negatively affect those cells because the activated pathway is protective for cells at normal levels. The reason why cancer cells get killed is that pathway is already turned on to a level it shouldn't be. So the drug causes an even larger reaction than normal, which turns out to be toxic.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 22 2021, @02:29AM (6 children)
Sounds great, and powerful - like Oz. Also sounds like a blunt instrument likely to bruise lots of non-target tissues.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday July 22 2021, @06:49AM (3 children)
If this new therapy works as described, then it seems to me that it's not likely to cause nearly as much collateral cellular damage as the current approach of enduring weeks or months of radiation and/or chemotherapy, not to mention potential mastectomy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 22 2021, @11:58AM (2 children)
Oh, hey, as compared to chemo ... That's a really low bar, and there is a great chance this is better, definitely worth investigating. What needs to be watched for are unexpected side effects, they could be impressively significant.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:00AM (1 child)
Absolutely. Any cell with the pathway already turned on has the potential to trigger apoptosis or be targeted by the immune system. However, most healthy cells in the vast majority of adults do not have the receptor at all and the vast majority of those that do should not have it activated at any given time and the relatively few that do will not have it at a high level (compared to the normal cell level, not the even higher cancer cell level). Even better, you can time the treatment with the hormonal cycle of males or females to reduce the risk further.
This drug’s effect appears to be very powerful, but thankfully it also appears to be so targeted that it mitigates much of its own risk. There have been others in this class that are very, very cytotoxic but this one appears to not suffer the well-known problems with them while not giving up the potency of the more dangerous ones. At least that is what the limited in vitro and in Vito model testing has shown so far. I’d expect a much larger study (number and cell types) on animal models in nine months or so. But that said, these results look good so far and their doesn’t appear to be many issues with the study itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:08AM
Nothing quite like an autocorrection and not proofreading to make it look like models named Vito are the preferred way of testing new drugs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:49PM (1 child)
Traditional chemotherapy works by poisoning you, keeping you from dying be medical intervention, but using a poison that kills cancer cells slightly faster than it kills your healthy cells.
Hard to imagine this new therapy being worse than traditional chemotherapy.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 25 2021, @08:33PM
Sometimes they have to try several poisons to find one that bothers the cancer cells more than healthy ones.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday July 22 2021, @12:44PM
It's not so much that, it's the "... in mice" part that's important. In mice. Not in humans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @10:20PM (4 children)
"The pharmaceutical company Bayer AG has licensed the new drug"
...and that was the last we ever heard of it.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by fakefuck39 on Thursday July 22 2021, @01:27AM (3 children)
licensing can be ok. frand is a good example. this one unfortunately is not
"this new deal will now give Bayer the exclusive rights to develop the compound"
"U. of I. biochemistry professor David Shapiro"
let's see here. U of I. That's in my state. Subsidized by my state taxes.
investors in the company are
The Pritzker Organization
Lakeshore Capital Thailand
The Pritzkers, of the Hyatt fame, are one of the wealthiest families in the US, worth about $30bil.
Now, what does Systems Oncology actually do to come up with these miraculous cures? They buy lots and lots of compute and storage - that's the reason I know of them. They load up that storage with huge caches of public datasets from all kinds of sources, most of the data obtained using public funds, and use "AI" to come up with possible drugs to treat different things.
Then they come up with a candidate in the computer model, test it out, and if it works, patent it and give exclusive rights to big companies known for ripping people off and most famously sell heroin as cough medicine. Well, no, I'd say this one is more famous for torture and nazi medical experiments on people - selling heroin cough syrup would be it's secondary famous thing.
Now, I wonder if they could hook up with the log(lgbtqxyz16^e*pi)+ group with the happy flag, collect some data, and come up with a cure for being faggots. then they should take that medicine, and then they should work on cancer drugs.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:50AM (1 child)
Um, so investment is BAD. No.... good. Definitely good. Or bad. Got it, face fuck.
(Score: 1, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:37AM
strange, i said zero about investment here, yet your eyes are seeing text about investments. you should probably get that checked out at the doctor's. go to the same one that gave you the pills to keep your autism in check, since it's not the vision, it's the genetically defective brain tissue.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @06:39PM
"Nazi" is an anti-white Jew slur. Fuck you, lying Jew!
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:42AM (1 child)
Shapiro Lab at UIUC [nih.gov]
v/s
"When inventor Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923, he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting’s co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best, sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. They wanted everyone who needed their medication to be able to afford it." [vox.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:53AM
And you'll won't believe what Toronto did with that.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 22 2021, @05:10AM
Who knows more about cancer than Bayer/Monsanto?