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The good news: Five-year survival rates have increased globally. Between 1970 to 2013, five-year survival rates have increased from roughly 50% to 67%, so while we still have a long way to go in mastering cancer, we're making slow but steady progress. 🎉

>"Merck is now exercising its option on mRNA-4157, a personalized cancer vaccine in a phase 2 clinical trial for skin cancer. It’s being studied in combination with Merck’s cancer treatment Keytruda, a humanized monoclonal antibody."

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>" To create each vaccine, Moderna takes a sample of a patient’s tumor. It then uses genetic sequencing technology to identify proteins in the tissue called “neoantigens.” These proteins are found only on the surface of cancer cells, and they are unique to each person’s tumor."

I hope you enjoy this post, I'm a progress studies writer and thinker, and I've genuinely appreciated being part of this subreddit. Keep being awesome team.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/tonymmorley:

The good news: Five-year survival rates have increased globally. Between 1970 to 2013, five-year survival rates have increased from roughly 50% to 67%, so while we still have a long way to go in mastering cancer, we're making slow but steady progress. 🎉

>"Merck is now exercising its option on mRNA-4157, a personalized cancer vaccine in a phase 2 clinical trial for skin cancer. It’s being studied in combination with Merck’s cancer treatment Keytruda, a humanized monoclonal antibody."

​

>" To create each vaccine, Moderna takes a sample of a patient’s tumor. It then uses genetic sequencing technology to identify proteins in the tissue called “neoantigens.” These proteins are found only on the surface of cancer cells, and they are unique to each person’s tumor."

I hope you enjoy this post, I'm a progress studies writer and thinker, and I've genuinely appreciated being part of this subreddit. Keep being awesome team.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ydt4ei/merck_pays_moderna_250m_for_personalized_cancer/itu0kqh/

43 years for 17% of survival rates? That's one very slow progress tho.

Much better than the last few million years.

Well, there's some good news hidden in the data. Cancer rates will continue to rise, this is largely due to an aging population with a high life expectancy. On average, cancer is still a +50 disease. The fact that we're still making progress with an aging population is indicative of more progress than it looks. Travel back 100 years, and cancer rates were not as high, not because it was a synthetic chemical-free world, but rather because average life expectancy was not as high.

Indeed.

Sure, and by no mean Im not happy about that. But we won't get much further with simple medicines. mRNA tech and tweaking our genes will prevent and treat cancer, which no lifestyle adjustments, medicine and other stuff will achieve.

Universally, the best way would be to adress aging itself as root od every disease and just cure aging as disease, reversing our bodies to youthfull state.

I'd think we would love a 50% survival rate for pancreatic cancer in the next 20 years.

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I can’t wait to get cured of cancer for the low low price of all of my money plus.

It's an ~33% increase in five year survivor rates

At this rate, that would mean 85%+ will survive 5+ years by 2053 (30 years from today)

Pretty good no?

To be fair most progress has only been in the last few years so we will likely see rates improve at a faster rate especially if we can find better screening methods.

That’s great to hear!

Not so great if your parent just lost the battle after 1,5 year

Is it possible to use the mRNA method in a different delivery system? It seems like the key here is to “scan” the tumor for its unique identifier which can then be synthesized into a treatment. So can’t that system be simplified?

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Going from half of all cancer sufferers dying within 5 years to two thirds of them surviving longer seems pretty good.

For skin cancer you can, but the last time I made plans discussing on the internet with photos of progress netted me a frivolous search warrant. You see the problem here right? Cheap “cure”? That’s waging a war on big pharma who makes billions off of dying cancer patients.

Forward is forward

>five-year survival rates have increased from roughly 50% to 67%

Sounds more impressive if you flip it around slightly in my opinion. 1.5x fewer people are dieing of cancer within the first 5 years of their diagnosis.

Great i love that there will be a monopoly on life saving cancer treatment

Progress in technology tends to increase at an exponential rate if it is being seriously pursued.

The first sustained powered and controlled flight by man happened in 1903

...We landed on the moon 66 years later.

In that context, if it took 47 years to get here, we're only at the beginning of the ramp, and it's possible that it will be something humanity overcomes well within the next 50 years.

Please, go on. I want to hear this story!

I have no doubt in my mind any big pharma company is going to take large advantage of these vaccines and make them unaffordable.

The word “personalized” all but guarantees it will be expensive

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I also drink much more water than before I was born.

Gonna blow you away when you see survival rate increases from 2013-2025. I'm working clinical trials that can't close because they're survival studies, meaning we follow the patients until they die. Many of these studies started around 2013-2015. We're having to combine these studies into a broad protocol so that we can continue to follow everyone.

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If you keep spreading the good word then you are going to drive demand up and price yourself out of tinfoil.

this is already patently false. life expectancy is down. cancer is skyrocketing. the fact that billons of people have injected synthetic spike protein that self replicates causing a cancer explosion is proof that there will be a devistating consequence in the years coming.

and why would i need tin foil? i cook on cast iron

The overall increase in survival rates masks somewhat the huge progress made on some kinds of cancers and very little progress on others. The more common a cancer is, the more attention and investment it gets, the more patients you have for clinical trials, the drugs are developed, studies done, etc.

But if you have an exceptionally rare cancer, then that one is not going to have the some money, patients or attention, and so survival rates don't move much.

For example, the five year survival rate for stage 3 breast cancer is between 66 and 98%! For renal small cell carcinoma (aka kidney cancer, quite rare), stage 3-4 is a death sentence. Like 12% five year survival.

What we need is a breakthrough on getting the body to kill it's particular kind of cancer. All of us have cancer at any given moment, but it never grows because our bodies see it and kill it. Cancer grows when the body doesn't recognize what's there as something to kill, and that necessarily is a person to person issue. My body (as far as I know) has no problem killing kidney cancer. But someone else's body might not.

I didn't mean to write this much so to sum up, we don't just need better screening. We need personalized medicine that can get each of our bodies to kill the particular cancer our bodies are crap at killing. And in that sense, a personalized cancer vaccine is super, super exciting. Maybe we could get to a point where there is just one figure for 5 year survival and it is 99%. I hope we do.

Pretty soon, the rich will never die of cancer again. Good for them I guess

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I needed that laugh, thank you.

Google black salve. Do your own research not the horror stories on top of search results. And if for any reason you do find yourself using it, apply only a pea amount. This is not a sun tan lotion.

"A +50 disease"? That's just because they keep saying, "you're too young to have that!" and finally diagnosing it 30 years later when it's totally obvious and maybe too late to do anything about it.

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Holy crap you really believe that? Cancer is literally random mutations that occur in your body through DNA malfunction. And pretty everything alters it, even your body as your age because there is more replication errors.

All you have to do is bioengineering body to youthfull state and fight cancer by repairing DNA, not some nature bullshit you say.

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No, I won't do my own research. I want you to explain what it is you are talking about. I also want you to provide me with a lot more than "do your own research".

You clearly have done the research, why am I now having to go find the same stuff but you won't tell me where it is?

This place is comically negative. Everything starts somewhere.

Thank you for this

It's a vaccine, you'll have to pay a yearly subscription for the rest of your life or something

Actually personalised doesn’t mean that at all. Basically if you have a certain gene that makes the disease either possible or easier to target then you can take the “personalised” treatment, even if 50% of everyone with the disease has the gene.

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If it exists for rich people someone will also want to sell it to the other 8 billion people on Earth. The rich will get it first no doubt but like cell phones, cars, the internet etc, it will be more widely available soon.

>To create each vaccine, Moderna takes a sample of a patient’s tumor.

It's going to be hellishly expensive.

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Wasn't there some Nazi scientist saying that variations of cancer is due to modern day diets and our metabolism? Kinda going after sugar as the biggest culprit?