I’m both sad and incredibly happy to read this. I lost my wife recently to a recurring metastatic melanoma. She was treated at MSK by an amazing team.
It was a terrifying diagnosis and literally would have been a guaranteed death sentence in 2017. In 2023, she had a very real chance of pulling through due to immunotherapy. Unfortunately some complications led to the worst outcome and we lost an amazing woman.
I remember that my wife said once that the everything she had on that journey was on the shoulders of those before. So maybe in some small way she helped with the research and a future mother, sister, wife, husband, son, dad will have hope where there was none.
PieTime · 2h ago
I lost my wife before they developed sickle cell treatments recently. Knowing the pain she went through everyday, makes me grateful that children soon will not have to know that pain. Thank you for sharing your story.
thinkingtoilet · 4h ago
She absolutely did. Sorry for your loss.
Avalaxy · 4h ago
I'm so sorry for your loss :(
Lalabadie · 4h ago
Oh man, sorry for your loss. Sounds like she was lucky to have you as well.
bamboozled · 4h ago
I remember that my wife said once that the everything she had on that journey was on the shoulders of those before.
Very true and profound, I'm sorry for you loss, what an inspirational thing to say.
nickandbro · 3h ago
She did man
behnamoh · 3h ago
I got goosebumps reading your sad story. So sorry, and I hope you recover from this.
spicyusername · 4h ago
It absolutely did!
idiotsecant · 3h ago
That sucks, man. I wish I had something I could say that made a difference.
rvz · 3h ago
Very sorry for your loss.
znpy · 4h ago
I'm so sorry for your loss.
yahoozoo · 4h ago
Damn. RIP to your wife. Hope you’re doing ok.
zlw241 · 3h ago
I’m so sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing your wife’s story. As a husband, father, and son starting treatment for melanoma tomorrow, your words mean a lot. It’s humbling to think of how much today’s progress is owed to courage of those who came before
loganwedwards · 4h ago
My sister was part of an immunotherapy trial years back. She was given weeks to live; the trial gave us years. Tailored medicine is truly a marvel.
adamsiem · 4h ago
My mother had immunotherapy treatment last year for lung cancer. It caused a lethal arrhythmia within 24 hours that they could not treat. She was dead by the end of that day. The cardiologist said this was a known side effect (he muttered 5% as she lay there). It's still not a perfect solution.
hinkley · 30m ago
What are the odds of chemo sucking every moment of joy out of your life and then you die anyway.
I think I could deal with 20:1 odds if I had a clean before and after. Tell everyone you love them, hope to see them soon, then take your 95% chance of having an extra few years.
John23832 · 1h ago
I'm really sorry for you loss (and the way it happened).
That said, we all know that these are not perfect solutions. They save some more, they don't save all.
ajross · 4h ago
To be fair, not knowing your mother's age or cancer, 5% is right around the mortality rate for major surgery in the elderly too. Things are just dangerous as you approach end of life and there are no good solutions for anything.
sharkweek · 3h ago
Friend was told he had 12 months to live maybe 20 years ago (some rare form of melanoma).
Him and his wife committed hard to tons of clinical trials and is still alive to this day and has no indication he’ll be dying anytime soon.
He’s the very first patient on a number of studies, which he thinks is pretty cool.
choilive · 3h ago
While promising, be VERY skeptical about efficacy claims of these early stage research drugs.
Tons of drugs in the pipeline that goes after these promising receptor targets. PD-1/PD-L1, CD47, CD40 (as mentioned in the article) etc. Keytruda (PD-1) is an incredible success both clinically and commercially, but there are many many other drugs buried in the clinical trial cemetery that initially showed promising results.
> Fc-optimized CD40 agonistic antibody elicits tertiary lymphoid structure formation and systemic antitumor immunity in metastatic cancer
> CD40 agonism enhances antitumor immunity but is limited by systemic toxicity and poor efficacy. Here, we present a phase 1 study (NCT04059588) of intratumoral (i.t.) 2141-V11, an Fc-engineered anti-CD40 agonistic antibody with enhanced binding to the inhibitory receptor FcγRIIB. Among 12 metastatic cancer patients, 2141-V11 was well tolerated without dose-limiting toxicities. Six patients experienced tumor reduction, including two complete responses in melanoma and breast cancer. 2141-V11 induced regression in injected and non-injected lesions, correlating with systemic CD8+ T cell activation and mature tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs) in complete responders. In CD40/FcγRs humanized mice bearing orthotopic tumors, i.t. 2141-V11 promoted de novo TLS formation, facilitating i.t. CD8+ T cell effector responses independent of lymph node priming. The resulting local immune responses by 2141-V11 mediated abscopal antitumor effects and sustained immune memory. These findings demonstrate that i.t. 2141-V11 is safe and promotes immune-privileged tumor microenvironments that promote systemic and durable antitumor immunity.
MostlyFragile · 2h ago
As a young person with Multiple Myeloma, these articles give me hope but I know a cure is a long way off.
I feel like I'm at the stage where Ill be one of the last people to die from it or I'll be one of the first to be cured of it.
I'm watching companies like Deepmind with great interest. It's my hope that these AI tools speeds up a cure before it's too late.
xiphmont · 5h ago
Waiting for the Derek Lowe post, but... if this is legit, it's a 'holy flipping s**' moment. That kind of success in Phase I human trials is incredibly rare.
OsrsNeedsf2P · 2h ago
Had to look this up, seems like Derek Lowe is a reputable blogger[0] in this space
Look at the photos in the study that show the disappearing melanoma. Incredible.
toomuchtodo · 4h ago
Can anyone comment on near term success of the prostate cancer trial? Asking for a friend.
> The findings have sparked a number of other clinical trials that the Ravetch lab is currently collaborating on with researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Duke University. Now in either phase 1 or phase 2 study, the trials are investigating 2141-V11’s effect on specific cancers, including bladder cancer, prostate cancer, and glioblastoma—all aggressive and hard to treat. Collectively, nearly 200 people are enrolled in the studies.
GeekyBear · 4h ago
The fact that they were only testing a tiny group of patients (to make sure the treatment would not do more harm than good) with such astonishing remissions for two different very aggressive cancer types warms my heart.
hinkley · 18m ago
With an autoimmune solution I worry that you have to test on a vast number of people to determine the actual safety. And maybe even to come up with a way to determine if a candidate is in an at risk group.
And then god forbid it turns out to only work for a couple of major ethnic groups and then is starts to look like eugenics if you don’t immediately plow all the money into creating versions that work properly for everyone else.
nick__m · 4h ago
Low toxicity, effective against many cancers, it's almost unbelievable.
If clinical success holds in phase 2 and 3, this is the next Keytruda.
pcmaffey · 2h ago
The day after tomorrow I am driving 12 hours across three states to get my dog the second shot of his immunotherapy treatment for hemangiosarcoma. It’s only available in trial (this is a yale study). Results for him are too early, but the standard prognosis with chemo is 3-6 months.
This feels like we are on the cusp of profound medical breakthroughs treatment of cancer. My thanks to everyone who contributes to this kind of medical and scientific progress.
hinkley · 11m ago
Just remember that you could be at risk for three kinds of cancer. Cancer is the thing that will get you if nothing else does.
And then there are the cancers that are truly unfair. That try to jump the line. Go after kids, mothers, professional athletes. If we can fix those, our relationship with cancer will change. Hope those are the ones we can fix first. Or best.
duffpkg · 1h ago
One of the hugely important takeaways of this study is that even though the therapy was applied at the site of the most significant tumor, the immune response appeared to trigger against presumably ALL tumors throughout the body.
hinkley · 5m ago
Is that worrisome if they thought they could control bad consequences by keeping the treatment hyperlocal?
unsupp0rted · 4h ago
> “The melanoma patient had dozens of metastatic tumors on her leg and foot, and we injected just one tumor up on her thigh,” Ravetch says. “After multiple injections of that one tumor, all the other tumors disappeared. The same thing happened in the patient with metastatic breast cancer, who also had tumors in her skin, liver, and lung. And even though we only injected the skin tumor, we saw all the tumors disappear.”
poszlem · 5h ago
Bring it faster, I beg you.
tldrthelaw · 3h ago
Defunding NIH and gutting the public research pipeline, best we can do.
wileydragonfly · 1h ago
Ha. Living this. :(
SilentM68 · 3h ago
This is a good development. Who's going to have access to this medication if it comes to market? Will it be for the wealthy or will the poor have access to it?
MostlyStable · 3h ago
As with almost everything: first one, then the other.
mc32 · 3h ago
Some of it depends on the cost of manufacture. If it’s tailored to each individual and scaling it is difficult but the drug is effective then it’d likely be costly. If scalability is easy then it’ll be relatively affordable.
refurb · 4h ago
Out of 12, only 6 saw their tumor shrink and 2 were tumor free.
Thats 17% saw a complete response, 33% a partial response and 50% no response.
It’s not particularly striking results, though any progress is welcome.
University press releases aren’t exactly the most unbiased sources of scientific information.
hinkley · 2m ago
Any treatment with a low likelihood of disqualifying other treatments is worth having in the toolbox. So the question is not percent efficacy but percent side effects.
Lalabadie · 3h ago
A 50% occurence of systemic improvements across various cancer types is pretty great.
If it has only minor side effects when treating agressive cancers, it could be a huge quality of life improvement for patients compared to other treatment options.
neuronexmachina · 3h ago
Worth noting that all 12 were already metastatic cancer patients, so they probably already had a rather low 5-year survival chance. I'm under the impression that seeing even a partial tumor response is pretty striking.
mcbain · 2h ago
As others pointed out, these are stage I trials and these are patients that have had other treatments already. In particular the melanoma patients had already had other immunotherapy - which is known to work for 50+% of cases - so this could help plugging the gap for the rest.
Spooky23 · 2h ago
Melanoma grows from incredibly fast. Like you can watch it grow fast.
That type of response is pretty incredible. The details of each patient isn’t known, and obviously there is a lot of work to do. But this is an amazing result and a future drug will save lives.
tptacek · 59m ago
Watch it grow over what timescale?
joe_the_user · 3h ago
I get the impression that the study involved about patients that normally have no chance of recovery.
But it's worth noting the relatively low effectiveness means that someone who has the option of using an "ordinary" treatment with a known, higher effectiveness should do so.
znpy · 4h ago
> University press releases aren’t exactly the most unbiased sources of scientific information.
Can you blame them? They're always looking for funding for their research, and the current climate is not the best.
gus_massa · 25m ago
I blame them. The bad headlines didn't star this year, so it's not about the current climate.
In the university we don't allow the students to cheat. We don't allow researchers to make creative titles of research papers (in spite I've seen a few) or just lie inside the papers (in spite I've seen a few). So I think the university press office has a responsibility to give a simplified but accurate report.
Whom are they lying to? Investors take a look at the data or get professional advice. Grant founding committees read the papers (or at least they shoud) and in particular care more about the grant proposal than the press release. So a bad tite only confuse the layman, that after a few clickbait titles that disappear start to doubt that a university professor is more reliable than the guy from Ancient Aliens.
awesome_dude · 3h ago
I don't blame them for trying to get funding - but I do blame them for over hyping scientific breakthroughs which leads to headlines where a correlation being noticed is reported as a causation has been discovered and people should stop doing whatever immediately (or start eating some new fad diet)
The system is well broken, and the outcome of the over hype is the MAHA movement - people who have not understood the reporting really means "We have found an interesting new avenue of research" not what they hear which is "We've cured disease" which inevitably then leads to "Science is false, they told me they could cure disease, but it didn't, eat more Vitamin C instead"
Maybe this is just my Western sensibilities shining through, but is there reason to trust the reporting coming from Russia? I'm genuinely interested to know if that's just my own bias or if there's something to that.
gbuk2013 · 3h ago
It is mostly your own bias, yes. That said publications about cancer breakthroughs ought to be taken with at least as much salt as those in western mass media.
I had a quick search and the news is apparently about results of a stage 1 trial and an earlier news article from February guessed it would take at least 2.5 years for this to become available assuming all trials were successful.
I have not found any official announcements about results of the trial, only some somewhat shady (mostly-foreign) news sites reposting each other.
According to the registry of clinical trials (https://grls.rosminzdrav.ru) the ЭнтероМикс phase 1 trials run Nov 24 - Oct 26 so I strongly suspect this is scummy clickbait reporting,
yakshaving_jgt · 41m ago
The russians have been selling Герпетическая вакцина within russia since the 1990s. Is it approved outside russia? No. Is there any real evidence that it works? No. Is HSV cured in russia? No. Were there systematic reviews or meta-analyses in credible journals to support its effectiveness? No.
Is there any reason to believe in claims of medical breakthroughs in russia? No.
irjustin · 4h ago
Downvoted.
The mental leaps to connect the two are very very large. If you distrust western medicine's process then let's discuss, but trying say we collectively shouldn't because "look at Russia!" isn't it.
It was a terrifying diagnosis and literally would have been a guaranteed death sentence in 2017. In 2023, she had a very real chance of pulling through due to immunotherapy. Unfortunately some complications led to the worst outcome and we lost an amazing woman.
I remember that my wife said once that the everything she had on that journey was on the shoulders of those before. So maybe in some small way she helped with the research and a future mother, sister, wife, husband, son, dad will have hope where there was none.
Very true and profound, I'm sorry for you loss, what an inspirational thing to say.
I think I could deal with 20:1 odds if I had a clean before and after. Tell everyone you love them, hope to see them soon, then take your 95% chance of having an extra few years.
That said, we all know that these are not perfect solutions. They save some more, they don't save all.
Him and his wife committed hard to tons of clinical trials and is still alive to this day and has no indication he’ll be dying anytime soon.
He’s the very first patient on a number of studies, which he thinks is pretty cool.
Tons of drugs in the pipeline that goes after these promising receptor targets. PD-1/PD-L1, CD47, CD40 (as mentioned in the article) etc. Keytruda (PD-1) is an incredible success both clinically and commercially, but there are many many other drugs buried in the clinical trial cemetery that initially showed promising results.
Medicine is really hard.
> Fc-optimized CD40 agonistic antibody elicits tertiary lymphoid structure formation and systemic antitumor immunity in metastatic cancer
> CD40 agonism enhances antitumor immunity but is limited by systemic toxicity and poor efficacy. Here, we present a phase 1 study (NCT04059588) of intratumoral (i.t.) 2141-V11, an Fc-engineered anti-CD40 agonistic antibody with enhanced binding to the inhibitory receptor FcγRIIB. Among 12 metastatic cancer patients, 2141-V11 was well tolerated without dose-limiting toxicities. Six patients experienced tumor reduction, including two complete responses in melanoma and breast cancer. 2141-V11 induced regression in injected and non-injected lesions, correlating with systemic CD8+ T cell activation and mature tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs) in complete responders. In CD40/FcγRs humanized mice bearing orthotopic tumors, i.t. 2141-V11 promoted de novo TLS formation, facilitating i.t. CD8+ T cell effector responses independent of lymph node priming. The resulting local immune responses by 2141-V11 mediated abscopal antitumor effects and sustained immune memory. These findings demonstrate that i.t. 2141-V11 is safe and promotes immune-privileged tumor microenvironments that promote systemic and durable antitumor immunity.
I feel like I'm at the stage where Ill be one of the last people to die from it or I'll be one of the first to be cured of it.
I'm watching companies like Deepmind with great interest. It's my hope that these AI tools speeds up a cure before it's too late.
[0] https://www.science.org/blogs/pipeline
> The findings have sparked a number of other clinical trials that the Ravetch lab is currently collaborating on with researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Duke University. Now in either phase 1 or phase 2 study, the trials are investigating 2141-V11’s effect on specific cancers, including bladder cancer, prostate cancer, and glioblastoma—all aggressive and hard to treat. Collectively, nearly 200 people are enrolled in the studies.
And then god forbid it turns out to only work for a couple of major ethnic groups and then is starts to look like eugenics if you don’t immediately plow all the money into creating versions that work properly for everyone else.
If clinical success holds in phase 2 and 3, this is the next Keytruda.
This feels like we are on the cusp of profound medical breakthroughs treatment of cancer. My thanks to everyone who contributes to this kind of medical and scientific progress.
And then there are the cancers that are truly unfair. That try to jump the line. Go after kids, mothers, professional athletes. If we can fix those, our relationship with cancer will change. Hope those are the ones we can fix first. Or best.
Thats 17% saw a complete response, 33% a partial response and 50% no response.
It’s not particularly striking results, though any progress is welcome.
University press releases aren’t exactly the most unbiased sources of scientific information.
If it has only minor side effects when treating agressive cancers, it could be a huge quality of life improvement for patients compared to other treatment options.
That type of response is pretty incredible. The details of each patient isn’t known, and obviously there is a lot of work to do. But this is an amazing result and a future drug will save lives.
But it's worth noting the relatively low effectiveness means that someone who has the option of using an "ordinary" treatment with a known, higher effectiveness should do so.
Can you blame them? They're always looking for funding for their research, and the current climate is not the best.
In the university we don't allow the students to cheat. We don't allow researchers to make creative titles of research papers (in spite I've seen a few) or just lie inside the papers (in spite I've seen a few). So I think the university press office has a responsibility to give a simplified but accurate report.
Whom are they lying to? Investors take a look at the data or get professional advice. Grant founding committees read the papers (or at least they shoud) and in particular care more about the grant proposal than the press release. So a bad tite only confuse the layman, that after a few clickbait titles that disappear start to doubt that a university professor is more reliable than the guy from Ancient Aliens.
The system is well broken, and the outcome of the over hype is the MAHA movement - people who have not understood the reporting really means "We have found an interesting new avenue of research" not what they hear which is "We've cured disease" which inevitably then leads to "Science is false, they told me they could cure disease, but it didn't, eat more Vitamin C instead"
Claims today of "100% Efficacy Vaccine"
Some information about the Russian drug from the main (I think) oncology research institute in Moscow: https://new.nmicr.ru/en/pacientam/metody-diagnostiki-i-leche...
I had a quick search and the news is apparently about results of a stage 1 trial and an earlier news article from February guessed it would take at least 2.5 years for this to become available assuming all trials were successful.
I have not found any official announcements about results of the trial, only some somewhat shady (mostly-foreign) news sites reposting each other.
According to the registry of clinical trials (https://grls.rosminzdrav.ru) the ЭнтероМикс phase 1 trials run Nov 24 - Oct 26 so I strongly suspect this is scummy clickbait reporting,
Is there any reason to believe in claims of medical breakthroughs in russia? No.
The mental leaps to connect the two are very very large. If you distrust western medicine's process then let's discuss, but trying say we collectively shouldn't because "look at Russia!" isn't it.
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