Related recent discussions:<p><i>A New Mode of Cancer Treatment</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813</a> - Aug 2023 (205 comments)<p><i>New targeted chemotherapy able to kill all solid tumors in preclinical research</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978199">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978199</a> - Aug 2023 (32 comments)<p><i>'Cancer-killing pill' is now being tested on humans</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36969500">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36969500</a> - Aug 2023 (33 comments)<p><i>Cancer pill AOH1996 shows promise in annihilating all solid tumours</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36960895">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36960895</a> - Aug 2023 (19 comments)<p><i>Cancer pill AOH1996 shows promise in annihilating all solid tumours</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36960292">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36960292</a> - Aug 2023 (16 comments)<p>Edit: @dang: Thanks, incorporated your addition.
<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOH1996" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOH1996</a><p>Look at that molecular structure. Incredible.<p>Two amide bonds, a completely unremarkable aryl ether and an unsubstituted naphthalene ring system. No fussy weird metals or bonds that need pampering, no chiral carbon atom in sight.<p>You could probably pay someone a very modest amount of money to end up with kilograms of this stuff, and it would probably not degrade at all under ambient conditions.<p>I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see desperate, sick, rich people try this out on themselves, skipping FDA approval.<p>Beautiful, uplifting news. Let's hope the clinical trials proceed without issue.
Absolute clickbait fraudulent title.<p>From the article in Cell:<p>"Given orally, AOH1996 suppresses tumor growth but causes
no discernable side effect" is a VERY different result.
The story is beautiful, too: <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/08/02/new-cancer-hope-as-pill-kills-tumors-thanks-to-little-girl/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://nypost.com/2023/08/02/new-cancer-hope-as-pill-kills-...</a><p>Named after a girl that died. Resulted in fundraising for Neuroblastoma, and this medicine.
I guess there's nothing stopping people from just shamelessly making up data on Twitter even when they're linking the actual article. This is very cool and very promising research but "almost completely inhibits the growth of xenograft tumors without causing toxicity to experimental animals" is not the same thing as "kills 100% of tumors." I do understand that there's an incentive to lie like this on the internet - it's not just magical internet points when people get paid real money as creators for getting clicks, but come on, really? Is it worth poisoning the discussion around some actually incredibly cool and promising research while driving false hope (which can actually hurt people!) Just for a few extra pennies from twitter's creator fund?
I am a total layperson in medicine but I try to challenge myself to read Derek Lowes blog posts and comments here from people like isoprophlex who do understand it. I really appreciate the simplicity of this solution - it doesn't need to be customized for each person, it doesn't need years of work on targeting, it's stable, potentially with few side affects of users. I know even this is a long shot but if it works, the power to change society! I imagine that it would even encourage cancer screening earlier for people to make for more effective treatments.<p>A working treatment for many cancers will bump many more preventable forms of deaths up the charts - obesity, cars, weapons. I hope that people will be inspired to take more significant actions to reduce those when we've tackled these really really hard ones.<p>And due to the potential low-cost, easy administration, and storage requirements, I am reminded a bit of how antibiotics ended up working in developing countries. Doctors prescribe them for every pain, making them ineffective at best and spawning antibiotic-resistant bugs at worst. I hope the researchers are able to consider this angle (overprescription) before these medicines become a widely distributed thing in other parts of the world.<p>It's an exciting decade for medicine. I hope that if we don't see the efficacy we want with this one, that more "simple" formulations will come around that do work.
Please don't rely on a x-twitter headline for a de-facto statement on this. Please see other threads posted here on HN.<p>Or read Derek Lowe's response on AOH1996:<p><a href="https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-mode-cancer-treatment" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-mode-cancer-tr...</a><p>Or read about the drug that came before it, but didn't metabolize well:<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6279569/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6279569/</a><p>Or read about other new, interesting anti-cancer drugs:<p><a href="https://med.stanford.edu/cancer/about/news/rewiring-cancer-cells-to-self-destruct.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://med.stanford.edu/cancer/about/news/rewiring-cancer-c...</a><p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06348-2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06348-2</a>
It seems to be getting more popular here to link to a twitter blurb, which links to the actual article. In this case, the blurb adds zero to the discussion, if anything adding blatant misinformation.<p>This is the actual article:<p><a href="https://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/pdfExtended/S2451-9456(23)00221-0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/pdfExtended/S2451...</a><p>I recommend replacing the link and the title with what appears on the Cell website.
If it passes all the tests, how long will it take to get it to the market/hopsitals? I know there are multiple phases but if it works, is there fast track or something?
I'm not versed in reading biomedical studies, but I'm curious about this. A successful in vitro test would <i>not</i> necessarily mean that the medicine could overcome other biological challenges such as the blood-brain barrier for delivering medication to brain tumors. Is my assumption correct?
Also discussed at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813</a>
The patent appears to belong to City of Hope[0], a non-profit cancer hospital.<p>Conspiracy idea: such a simple drug is not what Big Pharma wants, thus was never investigated.<p>Hopefully, if effective, it's affordable for people worldwide.<p>[0]<a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2017049206A1/en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2017049206A1/en</a>
Temper expectations, in vitro tests are very different than in vivo tests.<p>Arsenic also kills 100% of tumors in vitro.<p>In vitro doesn't answers the question of "can this drug be taken safely" nor "can this drug be delivered to the cancer cells"
Given the importance of this medication and it's promising initial data I have no idea why it's not given "warp speed" clearance. We cleared mRNA technology almost overnight in response to the pandemic. I feel like society as a whole has collective amnesia on how this happened. A relatively novel strategy to rapidly produce a vaccine in response to a pandemic was trialed essentially on a global scale. The phase 1/2/3 trials may as well have not existed.<p>It seems strange to me that we can't give such an important novel drug the same treatment. The population size is smaller than global and the effect would be huge. I would seriously doubt anyone stricken with cancer would hesitate to agree to the same "experimental treatment" paperwork we all got when we were vaccinated.
If you are unfamiliar with biotech or FDA, Phase 1 announcement is like OpenAI announcing their mission in 2016. Ambitious, but very low probability of success and will take 5+ years, if not 10.