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Pill? What pill? That’s crazy talk.

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It’s in Europe, so there’s at least a chance it doesn’t get buried by the for profit American “healthcare” machine

Violating the rules. Don't talk shit about nice things.

Hope cancer is curable. Fuck cancer

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I read the actual paper.

It achieved complete remission with hematopoietic recovery in 18 of 60 (30%) patients, and remission without hematopoietic recovery (so still likely need a bone marrow transplant) in another 5 of 60 (8%), and "morphological leukemia free state" (leukemia treated, but not cured?) in 9 of 60 (15%). So very positive results in 32 of 60 (53%).

There was no response in 19 of 60 (32%), worsened disease in 7 of 60 (12%), and 2 of 60 (3%) were not reported on.

This drug only works on KMT2Ar and NPM1 variants of leukemia, which make up about 10% and 30% of all leukemias, respectively.

The rate of complete remission for the KMT2Ar is normally 9% with usual treatment, but 33% with the drug in this trial.

The results for survival time were written in a slightly confusing way, but I think the median survival time was 7 months for all patients regardless of remission status. I have no idea why they didn't split up the survival curves between those in remission vs those not in remission.

TLDR: Incremental improvements that might help increase remission rates in some leukemia patients with 2 specific gene mutations comprising 40% of leukemia cases, but it's not a miracle drug.

well it won't be in Europe, but when the pill gets here it 100% will not be affordable.

Only 2 million dollars a pill

Hey my sprycel is only 12k a month.

My RA monthly injections are 5k

This class of drugs is called menin inhibitors and they're going to be a game changer for certain subtypes of leukemia. We are seeing resistance to them already however (just recently published in nature)

So Kyedae has a good chance of surviving this

Are they telling us because we will never get the pill because it will cost too much or because something much much worse is coming?

I wanna believe in just pure good but man capitalism wrecks it so I gotta be happy but not too happy so they don’t make every researcher making this disappear

Hopefully we can make this prohibitively expensive so the treatment actually helps as few people as possible. The real promise of this medicine is that insurance companies will make a ton of profit from this.

Basically a clickbait article. It’s a nice thing to have developed but no cure.

With that cancer out of the way it should be much easier to treat their leukaemia.

30% of them

It doesn't seem like that - the numbers still seem really good if YOU had that one special type of cancer, it would mean that you had a significantly better chance with this treatment.

I don't think that a cancer cure will come in the form of one treatment for ALL (which would be very nice), but it's going to be attacking specific forms and variations.

It's always that way.

As a scientist, we work extremely hard only to be undermined by reporters who cause the public to lose faith in scientists.

Scientist: Our clinical trial for a new therapy saw 18 of 60 patients get complete remission. We would have expected about 6 of 60, so this is an improvement.

Clickbait article: New therapy sees cancer VANISH in 18 patients.

Scientist: 😥

Public: OMG HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE HEARD "SCIENTIST CURES CANCER" ITS ALL LIES AND BULLSHIT

Scientist: 😞

Wow, this is amazing. I fucking hate cancer, it has taken so many loved ones away. This is a huge step in the right direction.

Yeah shitty reporting has basically destroyed science especially now that nobody reads beyond a headline. Scientists are the unsung heroes of the modern world.

Pedantic: KMT2A-R (lysine’s amino acid abbreviation is K, MethylTransferase 2A - Rearranged). For the hematologists and oncologists from a while ago, KMT2a used to be called MLL. Nasty disease.

KMT2a is about 4-5% of acute myeloid leukemia in adults, maybe 20% in kids (but kid AML is rare, their leukemia is mostly ALL, although KMT2a can also be rearranged in ALL, because MLL stood for “mixed lineage leukemia” cause it couldn’t seem to make up its mind which type it was). Sorta don’t think it shakes out to an actual 10%, but if you look at the cases where people do badly it’s enriched.

NPM1 is a common form of AML, 30% seems about right…just for AML. But when you factor in CLL, CML, and other forms of leukemia, it’s not 30% of all leukemias.

TL;DR: this works in a disease where not much works. Percentages are hard when the denominator isn’t made clear, and this is especially true here because there are a lot of leukemia subtypes.

Obligatory - fuck cancer! Hope they'll find cure for all of them and we'll read about it only in textbooks like we read about tuberculosis.

Thanks. It says in the article 30% of AML for NPM1, I misread it. Also 5-15% of "acute leukemias" for KMT2A rearrangements.

30% for AML seems good.

If you look at the metric of pathologist workflow and number of times we have to present at tumor boards…KMT2a leukemias are often a lotta work. Induction chemo often doesn’t work well. They recur all the time. They can be 20-30% of pediatric ALL that doesn’t respond to CAR-T (cell based therapy seen in the news for dramatic effect and obscene cost). If you could precondition patients with this type of leukemia before CAR-T more might be eligible.

Many of the patients aren’t healthy enough for a haircut either, so any treatment that doesn’t often kill em in the process (marrow transplant) is especially good.

I appreciate your knowledge on the subject!

I have a biology PhD but I'm not a cancer specialist by any means. I just try to read the actual science whenever an article like this gets posted to reddit to give a more realistic assessment of the findings.

Reddits lucky to have someone like you summarize this stuff!

You’d get a kick out of KMT2a. The protein is..3700? residues, has a heap of domains, and gets cleaved into two, something like a 320kD and 180kD. The pull-down assays bring down a ton of things where many of the proteins correspond to mutations seen in cancer. Crystal structure was apparently a challenge.

Thanks for the eli5 version.

Neat! BIG BOY! That is really cool.

I thought it would be super rude to promise a leukemia patient a pill, but now that I know promising pills actually works I might do it!

I swear on my life we've already cured cancer like 500 times already

Dont worry, whoever invented it will disappear, along with every trace this wonder drug ever existed at all

As a critical thinker, I've seen enough of these articles to be jaded and not take them seriously. If it's real, it will pass shitty internet article and at least get to TV. For instance, the fifth person cured of AIDS in history just recently happened.

Will be insanely expensive and not able to obtain.

> All Negative comments will be removed and will possibly result in a ban.

This comment consists entirely of electrons.

i used to find this uplifting. then i realized all of these treatments are affordable for normal people. sorry.

>It’s a nice thing to have developed but no cure

Narrator: The pill literally cured cancer in 30% of patients.

What’s the baseline recovery rate for people with similar conditions?

This is the important stuff. Great news, hope to hear more of it.

Wait, really?

How'd they do it? I thought it was terminal

Lost my dad to CML when I was 4. I'm 40 now and am always heartened when they make progress with a cure.

I can feel Ken Griffin salivating

Bone marrow transplant.

Nice! Good for him.

Blessed be those who read the papers

It's uncurable, but I wouldn't call it terminal. Given that the treatment will reverse AIDS into HIV and where almost all HIV carriers* will die of something entirely unrelated to them being HIV carriers.

*In countries with reliable medical care.

First time I’ve read the “actually looked at the article” top comment and it made me feel hopeful. Not as much as the headline tried, but not as little as I expected.

A very specific form of it for people in very specific circumstances. Obviously you didn’t read the article.

How many steps in the right direction of completely treating it in other types as well have we taken with this? I am not a medical professional but this sounds promising.

Would it work in other animals too?

Excellent. Soon to be USD $100,000. Per pill.

I read every word of it, and several other write ups on it.

There is no treatment on earth that cures every form of cancer.

Every cancer treatment is for specific types of cancer.

This treatment results in complete remission with no need for bone marrow transplant in 30% of patients. And another chunk of patients have complete remission but still require a transplant. It is a cure for 1/3 of people with this type of cancer.

Small miracles add up!

Won’t it be a amazing fucking day when an article is published saying there is now a vaccine or pill to stop cancer completely and it actually be completely true? Keep at it people, every breakthrough is a step in the right direction.

We need more people like you

And nothing will come of it as usual

It’s crazy my Dad has had Leukemia for 8 or so years now??? Maybe a bit longer? It constantly comes back but he did an experimental treatment at Dana Farber when he was diagnosed and he’s the only 1/300 people still alive. My mom is not doing quite so well with throat cancer - currently on her 2nd round of chemo and it’s really not looking good. It’s pretty adorable watching my leukemia dad take care of my cancer mom… but damn the big C can go suck a bag of dicks.

Watched the Fungi documentary on Netflix recently - was amazed to hear that there are some mushrooms out there that can fight back against cancer - or more accurately - amplify your defenses exponentially.

1 pill saves 18 patients.

Out of how many?

I'm sorry that this is happening to your family, and I wish you peace, and strength.

Fuck cancer.

I know cancer will be cured one day I just hope it will be sooner than later. Glad to see we are making progress ;)

I noted with interest that menin blockers was found to significantly prolong life in rats. That was mentioned in r/longevity not to long ago.

Let me guess - Hopes and prayers...?

🏅

Thanks friend… it’s kind of been a big fuck you from life lately but we have lots of family support and doing our best. I just pray it’s not the one two punch that happens sometimes when married couples lose a partner and the other follows shortly after. It’s going to be a rough time either way but there are so many people that have to deal with this - I’m just lucky I’m 38 and I’ve had them in my life that whole time.

And insurance won't cover it

Never believe the cancer headlines. They are usually one or more of the following:

1. Hypothetical
2. Misrepresented
3. Not yet tested in humans
4. Years and years away from actual approval

The other hard part is the pill is the size of a basketball.

I want to add some context to the term complete remission. I was almost killed because of the misunderstanding of it.

In Leukemia, a Complete remission is an outdated metric. Many years ago we had limited ability to detect cancer cells in bone marrow. If you run that test and dont see any cancer cells then it is termed as a complete remission. This sounds wonderful, and many drug companies use this as the basis for their reporting because it makes their drugs look better than they are.

Today, there are tests that can see cancer cells thousands of times better than a complete remission. What we as laymen would call a "complete remission." is actually called MRD negative in leukemia. Any study that does not mention MRD status of the patients is not reporting the full facts and using the term Complete remission as publicity to get investments.

EDIT: since someone pmed me to ask, When I was diagnosed I was given the option of several treatments. The one the doctor wanted me to accept was presented as "99% of patients on this plan have a complete remission in 6months, and it has far less side effects than these other treatments. So obviously I accepted that one. 99% chance of being cancer free? low to no side effects? fuck yeah sign me up doc!

After reading all night I discovered the real terminology in leukemia and found that the treatment I just signed up for had a 99% complete remission rate, but only a 47% MRD negative rate, and a 34% 5 year survivability rate.

While another option had no reported complete remission rate, because its a shitty outdated metric, but had a 88% MRD negative rate, and a 77% 5 year survivability rate.

The option that I was nearly tricked into accepting is far cheaper, and since I had just lost my job (due to being sick.) they were looking to save money.

You have one more internet stranger hoping the best for your family.

I'm sorry to hear about your father, that's awful.

I've been living with CML since 2007. Today there's are a number of treatments that basically didn't exist before 1999. The breakthrough drug is called Gleevec, and now there are several generations of treatments beyond that. I feel lucky to have been diagnosed when I was. A decade earlier and I there's a good chance I wouldn't be here today.

I was on sprycel as well for a couple years. Made it to treatment free remission after a scary pleural effusion. How's it treating you?

Just some helpful context here for those reading your comment: this trial was done on patient with relapsed AML (it came back after having gone away) or refractory AML (meaning the cancer never actually got to remission). The standard treatment for relapsed/refractory acute leukemia is a bone marrow transplant, which is pretty toxic (more so than most standard chemo). Success rates of transplant are much better if you can get in remission prior to transplant. So having a drug that can help get people into remission is a big step forward.

Regarding the outcomes mentioned, there are many ways to try and measure if someone is in remission. Morphological remission just means when they looked at the bone marrow under the microscope, they didn’t see leukemia cells. The better measure of remission is MRD (Minimal Residual Disease), which is a test using a different method called flow cytometry that looks at individual cells and the markers they produce to find cancer cells. If MRD is negative, that’s considered better than morphological remission.

Seems that way because every one of these articles is about a different kind of cancer. Even leukemia has 4 main types with a bunch of variations underneath. Every breakthrough is for a very specific type of cancer. There's no one size fits all "cure for cancer" and I suspect there never will be.

So far so good. I am getting for AML after chemo which seems to be a fairly newish use for it. I have been on it for 6 months and will stay on it for 6 more. Compared to the chemo, Sprycel ain’t bad at all.

Congrats on your remission.

Hey man, 30% full recovery of 40% of leukemia patients ain’t too bad. 12% of all leukemia patients get a cure. Further 3% get a cure with the medicine + a bone marrow transplant. Those are good numbers compared to 0%

Glad to hear that. I didn't know that they give sprycel for AML. I have CML, and it's a common treatment for that.

Watch out for pleural effusion. If you have any trouble breathing, let your doctor know asap. Often times a 50mg dose works as well as 100, but without as many side effects.

Given the current state of medicine in general and oncology itself, I would not doubt this is possible. Everyday pretty much there are new treatments becoming available and a ton of data is being collected to improve the current state of things.

What company’s drug is this? There was no mention of the name of the company that discovered the drug?

Technically cancer is your own body fighting against itself.

Time to block another karma farmer

Described every post I've seen from r/futurology

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CML also here, since 2005. I relapsed on gleevec about 13 years ago, but I've been doing pretty well on Sprycel. Glad to hear you are doing well.

Thanks! Glad to hear you're doing well too! Watch out for that PE!

Complete remission without hematopoietic recovery (CRi) means we don’t see leukemia in the bone marrow (<5% blasts) but their blood counts (white blood cells, platelets) are not back to normal due to the chemo side effects. The patient essentially no longer has leukemia so we call it a win. It does not necessarily mean that patients will have to have a bone marrow (stem cell) transplant in order to be “cured.” That is driven by a whole host of other factors not surprisingly is largely risk vs. benefit. Stem cell transplantation is very costly and toxic and many patients can not even find a match.

MLFS essentially means there’s no leukemia in the bone marrow but something still isn’t quite normal in the blood or marrow depending on which definition you use. For example NCCN criteria says that CRi your platelets and white cells are abnormal but your hemoglobin should be normal. If your Hgb is too low then you would be MLFS.

I agree it’s not a miracle drug by any means, but patients who are getting this most likely don’t have any other options so for them even a small percentage of success at prolonging their lives even a few 7 months is worth it. A 53% response rate is VERY good for adult AML - we still don’t really know how to “cure” it.

I hate click bait articles but this is unfortunately what is needed to get people (investors) excited in funding cancer and medical research

Not invalidating whatever you said. Enhancing the body’s ability to defend itself against cancer cells is a great way to fight it.

they're also always posted here and not r/science

I was diagnosed 2 years ago with CML at age 28. Every day when I take my tasigna I try to appreciate how much of a miracle TKIs are. I'm alive partly because of your father. ❤️

Do you not have insurance? My copay for Sprycel was 3k a bottle. But there was manufacturers assistance that brought it down to nothing.

Yeah, I had pleural effusion about two years ago. It went away after stopping and then resuming at a lower dose. Absolutely sucked, especially with the pandemic in full swing (not a good time to have your lungs compromised). Thankfully, I'm in the clear for now.

I saw I am legend yesterday, just saying

How are we seeing drug resistance in cancer?

I started crying. My dad died 31 years ago so I keep up with this stuff. This is such great news moving forward, I hope for a day no one has to lose anyone to at least cancer…

I'm waiting for I am Legend now

I do, I was just giving the list price. I am very fortunate and pay $15/month out of pocket.

Fair enough - seemed abrasive without the additional context. I take back what I said.

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Oh OK that seems much more reasonable

5. Something reserved for rich people e.g. "Study found people with stress free lives live longer"

Still promising. It's unlikely there will ever be a single miracle drug tbh. Cancer is a collection of diseases.

Cancer is alive...did you not hear? I think trump dropped a deuce in the Denver museum of art that week so it was a little overlooks in the headlines.

Let's not forget cancer prevention is still real. That's where we've made most of our progress unfortunately, proving that exercise, diet, and lifestyle are everything to decrease your odds.

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Just waiting for it to magically disappear now.....

I just lost my gf to GBM IV on March 13th. Fuck Cancer. We need to find a cure!

It costs so much bc someone’s gotta pay for the research and it’s a small group. Once this treatment gets approved worldwide you’ll start seeing costs go down drastically.

shrugs no... Maybe not a miracle but more than tripling the percentage in full remission is a darn good treatment improvement.

Thanks for reading and writing such a precise summary

Once researched and developed, how much are they going to inflate the price of the this pill? Big Pharma is about to gain another trillion, all while the people who need it go on generational debt to pay off medical bills. I'd rather die than pass down debt to my children. A more heroic act than finding the cure for cancer and charing an impossible bill to pay in one lifetime.

As lifespan of Humans increases so will cancer. So by curing cancer will be inadvertently even further extend lifespan.

I laughed...dunno why the down votes

👏🏻👏🏻🎉🎉🎉

Sad to hear &great news regarding the mushrooms.!

Was looking for this comment

I feel like we're getting close and then the next step will be having to refine it for every individual type.

Jesus, I'm sorry

Thank you. Wishing you health and strength x

Thank you. I'm so glad there have been advances, options for my dad were so limited.

And I'm also so happy that you and other people with CML are doing so much better now x

My grandpa died 2 months ago with prostate, lung and spinal cord cancer.

News like this agaisnt cancer warm my heart.

> worsened disease in 7 of 60 (12%)

Does this mean the leukemia worsened or the drug actually worsened the leukemia? They are definitely two different situations. It’s very possible that these people had very aggressive cancers and it slowed them or just had no effect but continued deteriorating.

Thank you for reading past the clickbait.

Yeah because dead people make good customers. /s

I Hope so too…but I’m fearful about the fact that once you see these type of news, you never hear about follow ups of any kind even after a long time.

Cancer deletion in a pill.

Goddamn I love modern medicine

You are being down voted, but you are not completely wrong....

Given the history of these things, I didn’t think what I said was that out there. Oh well, happens

There's already a lung cancer vaccine in Cuba but we can't stop pearl-clutching about "cOmMuNIsM" so we are left without

Interesting that you think our corporate overlords will allow us to increase our lifespans.

Aaaaaand... the inventor is gone

Cancer is essentially the "final boss" for humans.

If any one human manages to avoid death from other sources for long enough, they will eventually die to cancer just due to how the human body works.

Cancer is basically just "there's something wrong in how your cells are reproducing and the body can't take care of it like it usually does." And all humans reach that point eventually.

It's just very unfortunate that some of us reach it well before others.

I mean, we have... significantly, since.... well... all of modern humanity. (Except for a few... rocky times.)

They all take turns licking the communal pill.

Alternatively, and much more morbidly, they're all sewn together like a human centipede.

Yeah I don't love the misleading headline. And it's a small study, with a relatively small success yield.

But imagine being one of those 18 people -- certainly a miracle drug to them.

Making huge strides in the right direction, fyi the goal is to eventually remove Chemo as a need at all. Biologics are making this possible and I cannot wait to see what the future holds.

Their grunt labor needs to be healthy and strong to fabricate their widgets and take them places.

Glad to hear your dad is doing well! I probably worked on that trial and with his doctor. The leuk docs at DFCI are the Babe Ruths of leukemia.

Any chance you remember what the treatment was?

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Rule #1

That sure sounds like a miracle to me.

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Every comment like this is getting a down vote. Unfortunately, it's true. The cure will either go missing along with the inventor, just like that movie, or the patent will cause it to be so expensive, for most people might as well be gone. Same difference. Dead people. Money prevails in America.

Exactly. Constantly reading these and nothing ever comes of it. Leukaemia is now rampant amongst children. It could be bad luck but in my childs school it’s 1 in every 200 children.

Amazing. Hoping it's approved for use on the NHS

It’s kind of depressing to read the posts there regarding medical advancements because of that. It’s like “oh this new med seems great even tho it likely won’t come out in the next 15 years!” Then, even after it does, it would be so expensive and practically out of reach for the average person until it goes generic. There are several newer meds I’d love to try, but they are just so expensive for those of us in the US even with insurance.

That was a joke, in no way violating rule 1. You guys need to lighten up.

We keep hearing lately about all sorts of promising discoveries against cancers. The future is looking good! In a sea of negative news, this is a drop of positivity! Yeey!

If it makes you feel any better, the 5-year survival rate for all cancers combined has increased from 50% to 67% in the last 50 years, and there has been significant improvement in every single cancer category (except uterine cancer) which implies that the improved treatments have not been restricted to only a few rich people, but that therapeutic improvements have been more widespread.