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[–] 187 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I'll read the publication in the coming days and report back, but don't get your hopes up. There's a "breakthrough" in cancer research every few months and it leads to nothing. And this study was done in mice which are a bit different to humans (citation needed)

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  • [–] 94 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    They cured hair loss in mice at least twenty times now and we still have bald humans

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  • [–] 97 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    They should probably find a way to turn humans into mice. It's a shame to leave billions of dollars on the table like that.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Might be a good concept for a sci fi story actually, probably a comedic one. Scientists learn how to cure any disease and reverse aging, but only for mice. Conveniently for plot reasons, they also figure out how to turn people into mice and back. You can get any disease cured or become young again...but you have to spend three months as a mouse.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Why do we not simply transplant the hair from the mice, onto the humans?

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think this is overly negative. There have been multiple significant advances in cancer treatment over the past 10 years. It just depends which type you get.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Maybe overly negative by saying they come to "nothing", but if you trace those advances back to their initial press release stage, they generally way ovehype it.

    Here we have what is being heralded as maybe a universal response to any and all cancer. That would be a shockingly amazing deviation from basically all the cancer research to date. It's possible and wonderful if true, but generally the research falls short of the initial press coverage, even if it amounts to something.

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    while you're not wrong i do want to reiterate that mRNA vaccines are likely going to be how we treat and cure cancers so there is precedent at least for this to be massive news. if not this there will likely be a real announcement one day.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The likelihood that all cancers express a common surface marker that is never expressed by any non-cancerous cell seems pretty low. Not a cancer biologist, but there's all kind of different genetic paths to cancer - why would they all cause some specific molecule to be expressed and why would no other cell ever use it?

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago

    Your instincts are correct. The approach in the paper is more complicated than this. Here is the abstract:

    Abstract The success of cancer immunotherapies is predicated on the targeting of highly expressed neoepitopes, which preferentially favours malignancies with high mutational burden. Here we show that early responses by type-I interferons mediate the success of immune checkpoint inhibitors as well as epitope spreading in poorly immunogenic tumours and that these interferon responses can be enhanced via systemic administration of lipid particles loaded with RNA coding for tumour-unspecific antigens. In mice, the immune responses of tumours sensitive to checkpoint inhibitors were transferable to resistant tumours and resulted in heightened immunity with antigenic spreading that protected the animals from tumour rechallenge. Our findings show that the resistance of tumours to immunotherapy is dictated by the absence of a damage response, which can be restored by boosting early type-I interferon responses to enable epitope spreading and self-amplifying responses in treatment-refractory tumours.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    It's why I start following it myself when it gets to the human trial stage and less the breakthrough stage. There, you make the assumption that they have a plan and are much more confident in the product.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    How about fusion power and room temperature superconductors...

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    ITER is still well under way as far as fusion goes. I doubt room temp super conductors will ever be a thing though. If we can get a metalic material which superconducts above the boiling point of nitrogen then that will be world changing enough.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    LOL. ITER is not and has never been meant to be a fusion power plant. That would be DEMO.

    Don't hold your breath.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Plant

    Fusion power will never, ever happen. Ever.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah just wait for the oil/LNG and helium reserves to run out. 🫠

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yes, I'm sure something as simple and resource-light as a fusion reactor will be exactly the thing we'll be able to build when the oil runs out.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Oil/LNG not likely to be exhausted in our lifetime, nor do we seem to have the global political willpower to do enough about climate change or perturb capital. Furthermore, the article talks about a lack of VC finding making it unlikely to be viable in the mean time. This is the basis of the sardonic statement in agreement with your comment but also intending to cast a political light on the concern from my end.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Oil/LNG not likely to be exhausted in our lifetime,

    Indeed not, but that EROEI is going towards 1, and maybe even <1. That's not the same type of civilization any more. One sends people to play golf on the Moon to impress the neighbors.

    The other densifies its cities in desperation hoping the food doesn't run out.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Look at CFS SPARC, not ITER

    They will have an actual functioning fusion machine with Q>10 by end of this year thanks to high temperature superconductors that were not available when ITER started

    https://cfs.energy/

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