LESS IS MORE more or less

 

Friday, May 3, 2013

LESS IS MORE, more or less

 On Rhodes, mid 80's

This was a "Stations of the Cross" for a medieval monastery

 

I find the number of important cancer-related articles that are floating  around in the popular press to be remarkable.  Has it always been this way, or am I just paying more attention?  Probably the latter. 

Anyway, the Economist for April 13-19 has one such, an interesting, and blessedly short,  description of research done by  Dr. Meghan Thakur of the Novartis Institute for Biochemical Research.  (Full disclosure: I have a little bit of Novartis s stock – and I wish I had a lot more.)  The article, on p. 81, is entitled Less is More.    Dr. Thakur has discovered that sometimes discontinuing use of a cancer drug  will cause the tumor to shrivel and, one hopes, die.  And there is a good explanation for this, one we all can understand. 

It seems that some drugs do a good job of killing tumor cells the first time they are administered, but eventually their efficacy wears off.  It appears that, if the drug doesn’t kill every last tumor cell, the tumor may return – mutated into a form that is resistant to the drug!  (Talk about bad planning!)  This is illustrated in the article by the drug vermuafenib, used to combat advanced melanoma.   After testing the technique on mice (what would we do without them?), it was tried on 19 patients at a London hospital who were not longer responding to vermuafenib; in 14 the tumor growth slowed.  Unfortunately, the tumors don’t seem to have disappeared, just slowed down.   (That’s progress, I guess, but we could wish for a lot more.)   

The article also has a short, simple explanation of just what is going on, biochemically.  Because I know all of you are eager to absorb more biochemistry, I will let you read it for yourselves.

By the way, I have several more topics to discuss, courtesy of Dick Ingwall, but I will be busy with Cinco de Mayo and other things for the next few days.  If you become restless, re-read some earlier blogs  and write Comments.

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