I think we're on the verge of drastically increasing survival rates for people with Glioblastoma. It's an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer with an estimated average survival rate of 8 months and a 5 year survival rate of 6.9 percent.
I've been following the case of Dr Richard Scolyer who is using himself as a guinea pig to treat his own Glioblastoma. He and Dr Georgina Long created a plan based on their expertise in treating melanoma. So far the results have been fairly spectacular as his brain scans have shown no recurrence over a year after his diagnosis. I hope one day that they both share the Nobel prize in medicine.
Immunotherapy is amazing IF your tumor is immunogenic (i.e. it has many mutations and at least some of them create proteins that are very different from your regular cells). If it’s not, then most immunotherapy treatments don’t work. Melanoma is the poster child of immunotherapy because, as you might guess, the radiation attacked cells typically have a ton of mutations making them immunogenic (though even in melanoma a subset of patients don’t respond).
Exception is Car-T cells because they use your immune cell sure but they hijack them for our own purpose to kill cancers. However they don’t work on solid tumors.
I’m always excited for new developments but I hate it when news is spread to be more optimistic than what it really is. False hope is not a good thing to dangle in front of desperate patients especially when the goal is to extract money from orgs and government.
My mother passed from stage 4 gastric cancer last year. Her doctor, whom I respect and appreciate from the bottom of my heart, suggested we try immunotherapy as a last resort once chemotherapy became ineffective.
Sadly, immunotherapy was without positive effect and the side effects (which were more severe than chemo) ended up ailing my mother more than she should have had to endure.
My takeaway from that harrowing experience is that there is no in-between with immunotherapy, at least with where medicinal science currently stands. It either works miracles or does jack squat, you might as well be flipping a coin because you don't even get to have a dice.
I am also sympathetic to the over-positive delivery of these kinds of information, because... fuck, man, cancer is a fucking bitch. Pardon my French(tm).
Im sorry for your loss, cannot imagine having to watch your loved one suffer helplessly!
There is _some_ good news though, I think diagnostics are getting better at letting doctors know if immunotherapy will work in a patient or not. Hopefully that’ll save patients misery and pain if the drug doesn’t have a chance of working.
I've been following the case of Dr Richard Scolyer who is using himself as a guinea pig to treat his own Glioblastoma. He and Dr Georgina Long created a plan based on their expertise in treating melanoma. So far the results have been fairly spectacular as his brain scans have shown no recurrence over a year after his diagnosis. I hope one day that they both share the Nobel prize in medicine.
https://x.com/profrscolyermia
https://x.com/ProfGLongMIA