https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598...
(mostly a joke, but I'd be in favor of adding context to the HN headline if possible)
> The combination therapy also led to significant regression in genetically engineered mouse tumours and in human cancer tissues grown in lab mice, known as patient-derived tumour xenografts (PDX).
Required XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/
"Why don't I see these treatments hitting the general public?" Because trials like these are phase I/II. Then you need a phase III that takes a long time to recruit a large cohort and has overall survival as an end point so you need a long time to measure the actual outcome you care about. And most trials fail in phase III because the surrogate end points used in phase II studies, like progression free survival (ie how long did patients go before their disease advanced in screens), are not necessarily great predictors of improved overall survival.
Specifically for cancer vaccines, this paper was a driving force behind MSK establishing a cancer vaccine center to scale up these personalized neoantigen mRNA vaccines. It's very very difficult to do and extremely expensive right now.
Source: https://www.uchealth.org/today/slow-but-steady-progress-impr...
Growth of single human organs or organ tissue is easier, cheaper and less fraught with political peril.
Unfortunately, they can vote.
2. Mice =/= humans, as noted.
However we're heading into a new era of treatments for some cancers including pancreatic. New agents targeting RAS/KRAS pathways will likely deliver the first meaningful treatment advances in decades.
Daraxonrasib (which was used in the linked study) is leading the charge, but there are multiple other drugs (including agents that are a little more targeted, and therefore likely slightly better tolerated, like pan-KRAS or KRAS G12D inhibitors) in development too.
Triple inhibition strategy Pancreatic cancer remains notoriously difficult to treat, with very poor survival rates and limited effective therapies. The new research aims to combat this by targeting RAF1, EGFR family receptors and STAT3 signalling – nodes that are crucial for tumour growth and survival.
The research at treating mouse cancer has been making great strides--people cancer still has a long way to go though.
And yes, most headlines like this don't result in changes to the care provided to anybody outside of clinical trials, but some do, and you and I probably won't hear about those either.
Ugh, of course: "in mice"!
> The combination therapy also led to significant regression in genetically engineered mouse tumours and in human cancer tissues grown in lab mice, known as patient-derived tumour xenografts (PDX).
OK, maybe "in human tissue grown in mice" isn't so bad.
Fingers crossed. Pancreatic cancer is terrible.
More details in https://www.pnas.org/doi/suppl/10.1073/pnas.2523039122/suppl... See page 25
In mice, N=12.
1 survived 200 days without cancer and was euthanized for 'ocular ulcers'.
5 survived 50-150 days, without cancer but were euthanized for other health problems
6 survived 50-150 days, and still had a smaller tumor and were euthanized for other health problems
My take away: Interesting, but the press article is overselling the result by a lot.