Scientists find Holy Grail vs cancer tumors. Clinical trials in 2014? (1 Viewer)

[Funkley]

Its not just big pharma. The whole economic structure of healthcare is centered around using the services and technology offered. It has nothing to do with staying away from the services. There are no reimbursement structures which incent non users. People being sick is what keeps the money printing.

Ive negotiated, created and implemented high dollar healthcare reimbursement methodologies for 20 years. I'm jaded and cynical but not crazy.

So, you think a 6 month to 2 year treatment of a 40 year old with terminal cancer is more attractive financially than the additional 50 years of treatment they'll be able to sell that individual if they cure the cancer?

To the healthplan collecting premiums, no. To the oncology group trying to keep the lights on, yes. To the home health agency which is only in business to take care of the currently sick person, yes. To the radiology group who is only in business to view the regular scans of the condition, yes. And what longterm "treatment" will result from a cure? One office visit every year or two to check remission doesn't keep the lights on.

How about every other disease that individual is going to face in his lifetime? How about the exponentially increased health costs that he'll incur past the age of 60 including additional cancer treatments?

If broken down into the opportunity cost of a person spending more for less time vs. spending less for a long time then no doubt. But you won't find many areas in healthcare outside of insurance who can with stand the loss to todays cash flow. Not all at once like a "cure" would do.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Could you Troll feeders knock it off?

Does anyone know why this might work? Seems like such an odd treatment, and I'm wondering how they even thought to experiment with it.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Nevermind...

In this study, the patients—neither with existing antibody to measles virus—received enormous doses of live measles virus infused directly into their vein—not given as a shot like a vaccine. Both became feverish and ill with the infusion, as expected, and both recovered. The measles virus was derived from the strain used in routine measles vaccine but had been carefully altered by scientists to enhance its tumor killing effects. It was still, however, a measles virus, capable of giving a person a measles-like illness. The choice of measles for the cancer was quite deliberate—this virus is known to seek out and attack a type of white blood cell that myeloma arises from. The investigators simply harnessed measles virus’ natural born killer tendency.


As the investigators noted, the patients’ lack of immunity was critical to the success of this study. Most people—at least 95 percent of adults—have pre-existing antibody to measles. This is a good thing to assure they will not develop measles but would be extremely problematic for measles oncolytic therapy—the patient’s own antibody would kill off the killer measles before it could reach the cancer cell. Thus a major problem with all oncolytic virus treatment—the patient’s immune system, which has its own seek and destroy mission—was circumvented in the Mayo trial.

For these patients, it is unclear how long the treatment benefit will last. With a disease like myeloma, cure is unusual. A very long remission and stability is considered a substantial success. But using the muscle power of viruses and other infections is an exciting new frontier, albeit one based on rather old observations.

Scientists have been fascinated by the approach for years. One of the first possible demonstrations of effect was with the use, more than 100 years ago, of something called Coley’s toxin, a mish-mosh of killed bacteria and other proteins that was injected near and directly into solid tumors.

The news that measles virus might have benefit and that a patient is doing well, for now, is credible and exciting—but we are still miles and miles away from this sort of approach becoming routine for cancer.

Although the approach engendered substantial excitement, Coley’s toxins were never proven to be beneficial. Many small trials were performed—some showed effectiveness, others did not. In 1963, more than 70 years after it was introduced, the FDA determined that the product could only be given in the context of clinical trials. The strategy, though, captured the imagination of scientists worldwide and gave birth to the field of immunotherapy, which is extremely hot today.

The next well-publicized study using infection to kill cancer took place in the 1950s. West Nile virus, then considered a harmless infection, was given to more than 100 patients at what is now Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. A scientist, Dr. Chester Southam, had noticed that West Nile, discovered in the late 1930s, had tumor-shrinking properties in various experiments and so offered the treatment to patients without other cancer-treatment options as part of a clinical trial.

A few patients responded, particularly those with lymphoma and one newspaper ran an excited headline, Deep Cancers Temporarily Shrunk by Rare Nerve Virus From Africa, trumpeting the breakthrough.

The problem though was a spate of unexpected side effects—about 10 percent of the patients got drowsy and confused—presumably developing the disease we now recognize as West Nile encephalitis. This unexpected finding, as well as the mediocre antitumor effect, led to the end of the trial.

But once again, the science of the approach was compelling. A generation later, a better understanding of viruses and their ability to enter and destroy certain cells made “oncolytic virus” treatment again of interest to scientists. Herpes virus, adenovirus and many others have been studied against a wide variety of cancers; many trials are ongoing. The enthusiasm is such that even the oldest of all vaccines—vaccinia, the ur-shot used to prevent small pox—has been called into action with interesting preliminary results.

Though an area of very active investigation, no one is certain why this approach works. Some think that the virus has the ability to goose up a person’s immune system in a non-specific way, and that with a heightened and more sharply tuned immune repertoire, cancer cells are attacked and killed more or less accidentally.

 

[Sand]

I'm sure every oncology clinic in existence would love to see cancer cured if they could be reimbursed for the outcome. Meaning that instead of the current backward system where only the maintenance of the condition through 'per click charges' accrued through use of services is reimbursed and instead, be paid for the healthy outcome using the savings of that person no longer needing oncology services as the basis of the reimbursement. That methodology and funding mechanism doesn't exist currently.

Fixed. You may be in the industry, or maybe you're just fishing, but you have NO idea what you're talking about. I had to spend the better part of half a year in an oncology unit with my mom, and I guarantee you, no matter how much you think they're making, there is nothing they would like more than to see cancer cured. I honestly believe that most of them would gladly give up their professions entirely if it meant having a cure for this ####.

I don't agree with Tim often, but here he is absolutely right. Where I work 2/3 of the people are in pharma development and many of those in the cancer area. Three years back a drug for childhood leukemia developed here was put on the market. I can guarantee that these guys/gals' life mission is to cure us of this. Period.

 

[matttyl]

Could you Troll feeders knock it off?

Does anyone know why this might work? Seems like such an odd treatment, and I'm wondering how they even thought to experiment with it.

When I first saw the thread, the first thing I thought of was H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" where basic bacteria kill of an entire alien invasion.

 

[Sand]

Could you Troll feeders knock it off?

Does anyone know why this might work? Seems like such an odd treatment, and I'm wondering how they even thought to experiment with it.

I often wonder this. Who thought to strip the bark off a crapload of yew trees to make Taxol, for example?

 

[GregR]

According to researchers at Stanford, the biggest breakthrough moment came when the group were considering a large assortment of possible cures to test as the Holy Grail of cancer cures, and one of their number snatched up the simplest looking formula and declared, "Now that looks like the CD47-inhibitor of a carpenter!"

 

[higgins]

I say in on a 4 hour meeting with 3 different health tech VCs in the room. Combined experience was 100 years. Combined capital backing these men was somewhere between 500Mil and 2Bil. What I heard of the industry would make your blood boil. And these men were trying to change the current incentive system.

I'd be really curious as to the conversations during this meeting -- would appreciate you elaborating...

 

[NCCommish]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

 

[Amused to Death]

How Big Pharma is slowing cancer research

In a March 27 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team led by physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital revealed that a new cancer drug from Novartis has shown exciting clinical results in a small trial of lung cancer patients. While additional trials are necessary before the drug can obtain approval from the Food and Drug Administration, this type of success story demonstrates why research to develop new cancer therapies is critically important.

Researchers in academia, biotech and pharmaceutical companies are making remarkablediscoveries to help identify new drugs and drug targets for cancer patients. Many new compounds are under investigation — including those that inhibit the growth of cancer cells, block the blood supply to tumors and prevent tumors from evading the immune system.

Even as scientists seek to bring new cancer treatments to market, however, drug patent issues are holding back some researchers. A major hurdle is in combination drug trials that test two or more therapies at once. Pharmaceutical companies often shy away from trials that have great potential, because the drugs may not generate profits if they are used together with a generic drug or a drug patented by a different company.

Recently, there have been major advances in our understanding of how cancer progresses. As scientists have sequenced thousands of cancer genomes, patterns are starting to emerge. One clear insight we have gained is the likelihood that no single drug will be able to defeat cancer. The reason most cancers become drug resistant and come back is because their DNA mutates quickly. Cancer cells that are not killed by the drugs survive, continue to grow and replace the cells that have been wiped out.

So how can we beat the evolution of cancer cells? Most cancer researchers believe that the way to do it is to use the same approach that holds HIV in check for AIDS patients: with combinations of drugs. These drug cocktails, if used appropriately, may someday control many cancers because the cells resistant to one drug will be sensitive to another.

The great challenge is figuring out which drug combinations are likely to work the best. But when it comes time for clinical trials that are necessary to bring drug combinations to market, there are two major hurdles.

The first hurdle occurs when two drugs have been patented by two different pharmaceutical companies. When this is the case, quite often neither company wants to fund the trial. This reluctance is because only 8 percent of new drugs obtain FDA approval, clinical trials can take many years to complete, and there can be legal conflicts regarding ownership and publication of results — resulting in the fear of litigation from the other company. There can also be squabbles over how to divide expenses and profits, with one or both parties looking for a bigger cut of the potential financial gains, and both putting profits before patients.

The second obstacle can arise when there is no patent protection, and thus no financial incentive to test the cocktail and market it if it works. There is only a financial incentive to move forward if all patents are active and held by a single company, and with drug combinations, this is often not the case.

For example, a 2013 study showed that patients who take a generic diabetes drug called metformin have a much lower risk of dying from prostate cancer. However, since the patent for metformin expired in 2003, no drug company has been interested in funding studies of combination therapies that include metformin because there will not be a new, patented drug at the end of the study.

Currently, there are at least 38 clinical trials testing metformin in therapeutic combination studies, but not a single one of them is sponsored by a drug company. Instead, cancer centers, hospitals and universities are searching for support from the government and foundations to finance the trials on their own.

Meanwhile, drug companies are looking for ways to modify metformin, so that they can patent those versions and test them. Those modified versions may or may not perform better than metformin, or have fewer side effects. But they will definitely be more expensive for patients. Development and testing of these drugs will also take considerable time and money.

Of course, patents and intellectual property are essential to the process of bringing new treatments and drugs to patients. My point is not that we should eliminate financial incentives. Those incentives are necessary to pay for the huge cost of ensuring that drugs are both safe and effective for patients, and to fund the research behind new discoveries that will someday defeat cancer.

While pharmaceutical companies have a legal responsibility to their shareholders, they also have a moral responsibility to do their best to help patients’ lives — even if it may not be the most profitable course of action. The mission statements of drug companies usually have two goals: the second focuses on growing their business, but invariably the first goal is something like “to help people…live longer,” “to care and cure” or “to save and improve lives.”

Cancer patients do not have the luxury of waiting until legal battles can be settled, or derivatives of existing drugs can be patented. Cancer drug combination trials should go forward without delay, and drug companies should be in the forefront of making that happen. Doing so will not only save lives, but also generate the good will and favorable publicity that could improve the pharmaceutical industry’s poor public image.

It is time for drug companies to put helping patients first.

 

[timschochet]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

No it doesn't. Please don't buy into the nuts who tell you otherwise.

 

[NCCommish]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

No it doesn't. Please don't buy into the nuts who tell you otherwise.

Are the frontline people dedicated as hell and begging for a cure? Absolutely. Are the guys who only care about their annual bonus begging for a cure? Not so much. More than one investigation has found this to be the reality.

 

[matttyl]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

Or to develop and then sell and profit from the development of a cure! You don't think Alexion Pharmaceuticals is making some serious money from Soliris? It's $400k a year, but has a 90% cure rate for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

How about the cancer drug Folotyn, which is about $30k a month - you don't think they are making huge money off of it?

 

[Amused to Death]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

Or to develop and then sell and profit from the development of a cure! You don't think Alexion Pharmaceuticals is making some serious money from Soliris? It's $400k a year, but has a 90% cure rate for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

How about the cancer drug Folotyn, which is about $30k a month - you don't think they are making huge money off of it?

Do you believe the pharmaceutical companies' number 1 priority is public health or corporate profits? If the 2 are in conflict, which takes priority?

 

[matttyl]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

Or to develop and then sell and profit from the development of a cure! You don't think Alexion Pharmaceuticals is making some serious money from Soliris? It's $400k a year, but has a 90% cure rate for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

How about the cancer drug Folotyn, which is about $30k a month - you don't think they are making huge money off of it?

Do you believe the pharmaceutical companies' number 1 priority is public health or corporate profits? If the 2 are in conflict, which takes priority?

How are the two in conflict with the examples I gave? They developed (at massively huge cost to themselves which obviously hurts their corporate profits) drugs which ended up making them a profit and improving public health.

Now I'm rarely one to ever defend a pharmaceutical company (quite the opposite in other threads actually - they on average make far more than insurance companies which are always vilified in the media) - but to think that they would prevent a cure for cancer (which they very would likely be able to profit off of) for the sake of corporate profits doesn't make sense.

 

[Amused to Death]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

Or to develop and then sell and profit from the development of a cure! You don't think Alexion Pharmaceuticals is making some serious money from Soliris? It's $400k a year, but has a 90% cure rate for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

How about the cancer drug Folotyn, which is about $30k a month - you don't think they are making huge money off of it?

Do you believe the pharmaceutical companies' number 1 priority is public health or corporate profits? If the 2 are in conflict, which takes priority?

How are the two in conflict with the examples I gave? They developed (at massively huge cost to themselves which obviously hurts their corporate profits) drugs which ended up making them a profit and improving public health.

Now I'm rarely one to ever defend a pharmaceutical company (quite the opposite in other threads actually - they on average make far more than insurance companies which are always vilified in the media) - but to think that they would prevent a cure for cancer (which they very would likely be able to profit off of) for the sake of corporate profits doesn't make sense.

Did you read the article I posted?

 

[NCCommish]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

Or to develop and then sell and profit from the development of a cure! You don't think Alexion Pharmaceuticals is making some serious money from Soliris? It's $400k a year, but has a 90% cure rate for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

How about the cancer drug Folotyn, which is about $30k a month - you don't think they are making huge money off of it?

Do you believe the pharmaceutical companies' number 1 priority is public health or corporate profits? If the 2 are in conflict, which takes priority?

How are the two in conflict with the examples I gave? They developed (at massively huge cost to themselves which obviously hurts their corporate profits) drugs which ended up making them a profit and improving public health.

Now I'm rarely one to ever defend a pharmaceutical company (quite the opposite in other threads actually - they on average make far more than insurance companies which are always vilified in the media) - but to think that they would prevent a cure for cancer (which they very would likely be able to profit off of) for the sake of corporate profits doesn't make sense.

The whole huge cost thing is overblown. In fact reports suggest corporate pay and marketing are bigger spends than R&D.

 

[Amused to Death]

Is Big Pharma Addicted To Fraud?

Glaxo is a leader in pharma fraud and wrongdoing, with other industry heavyweights close behind. Over the past decade, whistleblowers and government investigations in the US have exposed a never-ending series of problems by numerous pharma companies in all facets of the industry, starting with fraudulent “research” papers used to bolster marketing and continuing through to the manufacture of contaminated and defective products, the marketing of drugs for unapproved and life-threatening uses and the mispricing of prescription drugs.

 

[Amused to Death]

I say in on a 4 hour meeting with 3 different health tech VCs in the room. Combined experience was 100 years. Combined capital backing these men was somewhere between 500Mil and 2Bil. What I heard of the industry would make your blood boil. And these men were trying to change the current incentive system.

I'd be really curious as to the conversations during this meeting -- would appreciate you elaborating...

 

[Brony]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

Or to develop and then sell and profit from the development of a cure! You don't think Alexion Pharmaceuticals is making some serious money from Soliris? It's $400k a year, but has a 90% cure rate for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

How about the cancer drug Folotyn, which is about $30k a month - you don't think they are making huge money off of it?

Do you believe the pharmaceutical companies' number 1 priority is public health or corporate profits? If the 2 are in conflict, which takes priority?

How are the two in conflict with the examples I gave? They developed (at massively huge cost to themselves which obviously hurts their corporate profits) drugs which ended up making them a profit and improving public health.

Now I'm rarely one to ever defend a pharmaceutical company (quite the opposite in other threads actually - they on average make far more than insurance companies which are always vilified in the media) - but to think that they would prevent a cure for cancer (which they very would likely be able to profit off of) for the sake of corporate profits doesn't make sense.

Did you read the article I posted?

No one is stopping you from doing a study on metformin in cancer. Get off your fat butt and quit waiting for pharma to study it.

 

[glock]

Linky

Massive dose of measles vaccine clears woman's cancerROCHESTER, Minn. - Mayo Clinic researchers announced a landmark study where a massive dose of the measles vaccine, enough to inoculate 10 million people, wiped out a Minnesota woman's incurable blood cancer.

The Mayo Clinic conducted the clinical trial last year using virotherapy. The method discovered the measles virus wiped out multiple myeloma cancer calls. Researchers engineered the measles virus (MV-NIS) in a single intravenous dose, making it selectively toxic to cancer cells.

Stacy Erholtz, 49, of Pequot Lakes, was one of two patients in the study who received the dose last year, and after 10 years with multiple myeloma has been clear of the disease for over six months.

Wow. Just wow...

 

[Sarnoff]

Yeah, it was just as wow yesterday too, glock

 

[Willy]

Could you Troll feeders knock it off?

Does anyone know why this might work? Seems like such an odd treatment, and I'm wondering how they even thought to experiment with it.

I saw your post that explained why they used the measles virus for this one.

It reminded me of a story my doctor told me about a patient of his who had NonHodgkins lymphoma. He was getting sicker due to the disease, but he didn't want to stop working. So he's working outside in some cold/crappy weather and he catches a serious cold. Cold is an understatement, he was seriously sick, almost on death's door. He spends a week in the hospital and starts to get better. They test his blood and suddenly his cancer is gone.

They called it a spontaneous remission and it only happened because he got so sick that it kicked his immune system into overdrive and caused it finally recognized the NonHodgkins as bad.

I know in the cases above they said the disease also happened to attack the cancer cells, but I just had to wonder how much the measles caused their own immune system to wake up.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

Medicine should be non-profit. Being a for profit business introduces perverse incentives to not cure people.

No it doesn't. Please don't buy into the nuts who tell you otherwise.

Well it has certainly shown to be the case in regards to prisons and incarcerations. Profits > *

 

[KCitons]

Could you Troll feeders knock it off?

Does anyone know why this might work? Seems like such an odd treatment, and I'm wondering how they even thought to experiment with it.

I saw your post that explained why they used the measles virus for this one.

It reminded me of a story my doctor told me about a patient of his who had NonHodgkins lymphoma. He was getting sicker due to the disease, but he didn't want to stop working. So he's working outside in some cold/crappy weather and he catches a serious cold. Cold is an understatement, he was seriously sick, almost on death's door. He spends a week in the hospital and starts to get better. They test his blood and suddenly his cancer is gone.

They called it a spontaneous remission and it only happened because he got so sick that it kicked his immune system into overdrive and caused it finally recognized the NonHodgkins as bad.

I know in the cases above they said the disease also happened to attack the cancer cells, but I just had to wonder how much the measles caused their own immune system to wake up.

This is a case where the body healed itself. It can go the other way also. My daughter has type 1 diabetes. When she was sick (not on deaths door), her immune system attacked the islet cells in her pancreas, keeping her body from producing insulin. They can reproduce islet cells, what they can't fix is keeping the body from destroying those new cells.

 

[Rohn Jambo]

A breakthough may come anytime now. It will seriously suck to die from cancer right before a cure is found.

 

[joffer]

Hope this doesn't end with Will Smith talking to mannequins

 

[NREC34]

Wow this sounds promising. A quick search gives me SCTPF as the company working on this and their price is only 46 cents....

So I've been thinking about different biotechs I could possibly invest in and was thinking about companies trying to cure cancer and remembered this thread. I looked this company up. They are called Trillium Therapeutics now and their most recent price is $17.81. Doh!!!! Maybe they are onto some here.

 

[bigbottom]

How Big Pharma is slowing cancer research

In a March 27 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team led by physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital revealed that a new cancer drug from Novartis has shown exciting clinical results in a small trial of lung cancer patients. While additional trials are necessary before the drug can obtain approval from the Food and Drug Administration, this type of success story demonstrates why research to develop new cancer therapies is critically important.

Researchers in academia, biotech and pharmaceutical companies are making remarkablediscoveries to help identify new drugs and drug targets for cancer patients. Many new compounds are under investigation including those that inhibit the growth of cancer cells, block the blood supply to tumors and prevent tumors from evading the immune system.

Even as scientists seek to bring new cancer treatments to market, however, drug patent issues are holding back some researchers. A major hurdle is in combination drug trials that test two or more therapies at once. Pharmaceutical companies often shy away from trials that have great potential, because the drugs may not generate profits if they are used together with a generic drug or a drug patented by a different company.

Recently, there have been major advances in our understanding of how cancer progresses. As scientists have sequenced thousands of cancer genomes, patterns are starting to emerge. One clear insight we have gained is the likelihood that no single drug will be able to defeat cancer. The reason most cancers become drug resistant and come back is because their DNA mutates quickly. Cancer cells that are not killed by the drugs survive, continue to grow and replace the cells that have been wiped out.

So how can we beat the evolution of cancer cells? Most cancer researchers believe that the way to do it is to use the same approach that holds HIV in check for AIDS patients: with combinations of drugs. These drug cocktails, if used appropriately, may someday control many cancers because the cells resistant to one drug will be sensitive to another.

The great challenge is figuring out which drug combinations are likely to work the best. But when it comes time for clinical trials that are necessary to bring drug combinations to market, there are two major hurdles.

The first hurdle occurs when two drugs have been patented by two different pharmaceutical companies. When this is the case, quite often neither company wants to fund the trial. This reluctance is because only 8 percent of new drugs obtain FDA approval, clinical trials can take many years to complete, and there can be legal conflicts regarding ownership and publication of results resulting in the fear of litigation from the other company. There can also be squabbles over how to divide expenses and profits, with one or both parties looking for a bigger cut of the potential financial gains, and both putting profits before patients.

The second obstacle can arise when there is no patent protection, and thus no financial incentive to test the cocktail and market it if it works. There is only a financial incentive to move forward if all patents are active and held by a single company, and with drug combinations, this is often not the case.

For example, a 2013 study showed that patients who take a generic diabetes drug called metformin have a much lower risk of dying from prostate cancer. However, since the patent for metformin expired in 2003, no drug company has been interested in funding studies of combination therapies that include metformin because there will not be a new, patented drug at the end of the study.

Currently, there are at least 38 clinical trials testing metformin in therapeutic combination studies, but not a single one of them is sponsored by a drug company. Instead, cancer centers, hospitals and universities are searching for support from the government and foundations to finance the trials on their own.

Meanwhile, drug companies are looking for ways to modify metformin, so that they can patent those versions and test them. Those modified versions may or may not perform better than metformin, or have fewer side effects. But they will definitely be more expensive for patients. Development and testing of these drugs will also take considerable time and money.

Of course, patents and intellectual property are essential to the process of bringing new treatments and drugs to patients. My point is not that we should eliminate financial incentives. Those incentives are necessary to pay for the huge cost of ensuring that drugs are both safe and effective for patients, and to fund the research behind new discoveries that will someday defeat cancer.

While pharmaceutical companies have a legal responsibility to their shareholders, they also have a moral responsibility to do their best to help patients lives even if it may not be the most profitable course of action. The mission statements of drug companies usually have two goals: the second focuses on growing their business, but invariably the first goal is something like to help peoplelive longer, to care and cure or to save and improve lives.

Cancer patients do not have the luxury of waiting until legal battles can be settled, or derivatives of existing drugs can be patented. Cancer drug combination trials should go forward without delay, and drug companies should be in the forefront of making that happen. Doing so will not only save lives, but also generate the good will and favorable publicity that could improve the pharmaceutical industrys poor public image.

It is time for drug companies to put helping patients first.

And this is why cancer research funding should also come from sources other than the pharmaceutical industry.

 

[culdeus]

Metformin is for all intents an herbal supplement. Fitness models like it. Not sure why it hasn't caught on as a daily use supplement for weight loss. The fact it slows cancer may just be due to it's side benefits

 

[Michael Brown]

Wow this sounds promising. A quick search gives me SCTPF as the company working on this and their price is only 46 cents....

So I've been thinking about different biotechs I could possibly invest in and was thinking about companies trying to cure cancer and remembered this thread. I looked this company up. They are called Trillium Therapeutics now and their most recent price is $17.81. Doh!!!! Maybe they are onto some here.

Up to $28.78 already. Wish I had bought more than ten shares now!

 

[NREC34]

Wow this sounds promising. A quick search gives me SCTPF as the company working on this and their price is only 46 cents....

So I've been thinking about different biotechs I could possibly invest in and was thinking about companies trying to cure cancer and remembered this thread. I looked this company up. They are called Trillium Therapeutics now and their most recent price is $17.81. Doh!!!! Maybe they are onto some here.

Up to $28.78 already. Wish I had bought more than ten shares now!

They must've split to go up like that is only thing I can figure.

 

[Michael Brown]

Wow this sounds promising. A quick search gives me SCTPF as the company working on this and their price is only 46 cents....

So I've been thinking about different biotechs I could possibly invest in and was thinking about companies trying to cure cancer and remembered this thread. I looked this company up. They are called Trillium Therapeutics now and their most recent price is $17.81. Doh!!!! Maybe they are onto some here.

Up to $28.78 already. Wish I had bought more than ten shares now!

They must've split to go up like that is only thing I can figure.

I believe I read that it split last fall. I bought ten shares at like $17 a few weeks ago after remembering this thread and had a couple bucks sitting in my account. Up like 60% since then, crazy.