Also sounds very hard to do a proper controlled trial on. Every treatment produces a different protein, so there’s no consistent factor to test except for the delivery mechanism.
Comment on Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The vaccine works by instructing the body to make up to 34 “neoantigens.” These are proteins found only on the cancer cells, and Moderna personalizes the vaccine for each recipient so that it carries instructions for the neoantigens on their cancer cells.
That’s pretty dope
wewbull@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Natanael@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
There’s still ways but not trivial. You have to do multifactor analysis, but it’s gonna have a ton of noise unless you have a large sample of different people with recurring “neoantigens”. It’s similar to how drug side effects are tracked for people who take multiple medicines, you compare against populations which share different combinations of the same factors.
wewbull@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Multifactor analysis still requires an underlying commonality. People taking multiple drugs are all still taking the drug being trialed. You’re removing the confounding factors. If every treatment is a unique cancer protein there is no common factor. The treatment is the confounding factor.
To put it another way. A safety trial has to prove that any protein administered is safe.
oakey66@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Personalized medicine is a way to rob you blind. Drugs cost unreal money. So does the hospital administration.
beckerist@lemmy.world 10 months ago
[deleted]oakey66@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I worked for one the first hospitals that was doing genomic testing for oncology patients in the U.S. I am not advocating against genomic testing or precision medicine, but Amerisource Bergen, (at the time) McKesson, and the sales people at the manufacturer were licking their chops at the thought of precision medicine. It was extremely lucrative for some improvements on QoL. I sincerely hope that it’s not cost prohibitive to patients and results in breakthroughs in treatment. But I did watch as a lung cancer drug was administered to patients at the cost of 250k per treatment. I don’t remember how many treatments there were but the cost was insane. The US system of healthcare is absolutely broken and I believe there’s a study that particularly evaluated cancer as a major cause of families depleting whatever savings they had within a couple years of being diagnosed. This is an indictment of the whole system. Not the efficacy of the drugs.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
But isn’t personalized treatment kind of key to treating cancer?
sudoshakes@reddthat.com 10 months ago
Most modern cancer drug treatment is sequenced to at least the specific proteins of the type of cancer it is.
Have breast cancer? Cool. We figure out which of the many variations so that we can give you medications for that exact type of breast cancer.
This sort of specific targeting has been increasing and increasing for the last 20 years. MRNA is the next step of that and is highly likely to be a means or become or for treatments in many other areas.
WidowsFavoriteSon@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You mispelled “expensive.”
parpol@programming.dev 10 months ago
Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world 10 months ago
But… But everyone having a right to medical care whether they’re rich or poor? Unthinkable! Think of the shareholders!
qarbone@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Ew, I can feel myself getting healthier just parsing the word “u******l a***r”. You need to censor more of that.
Municipal0379@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That sounds like SoCiAliSm!!!
Landslide7648@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
I doubt that this vaccine will be covered by European health insurance providers if it costs a lot.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I wonder if, even at this early stage of the therapy’s development, this would actually be more affordable than the alternative.
Melanoma patients are highly likely to have the cancer come back and or metastasize. Repeat treatments and hospitalizations are not cheap.
overzeetop@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Which odd why the Moderna vaccine will be priced at just 95% of the cost of the repeat treatments and hospitalization plus the value of the time saved and pain and suffering avoidance by the patient. I mean, what price would you put on avoiding seeing your parent or child subjected to round after round of chemotherapy?
xenspidey@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Depends on how much time was spent on R&D. You have to recover those costs. I know everyone wants everything for free but it takes a fuck ton of man hours and tons of investments to get to this point. You can’t just give it away unfortunately.
FaceDeer@kbin.social 10 months ago
So if this happens exactly as you describe, the net result will be a cancer treatment that is way more reliable and causes way less suffering than the existing treatments, and is slightly cheaper to boot?
That sounds awesome!
In reality they'll likely reduce the price more than that, because the balance between the supply/demand curve will likely give them even more profit if they drop it down farther. More people will be able to afford it so it'll create a bigger market. And then in a few years competitors will start coming out with their own mRNA cancer treatments and competition will start pushing it down even more.
Welt@lazysoci.al 10 months ago
You pay tax. Tax is for roads, schools, and hospitals. Why don’t you get healed when you’re sick? Because you’re a sucker, bro.