Breakthrough cancer test predicts whether chemotherapy will work(www.telegraph.co.uk)
72 pointsby bdev123453 days ago5 comments
  • looofooo03 days ago
    Colleagues worked in some project for cancer research where they connected terminally ill patient with certain studies. Most of these studies did the same thing, sequencing DNA of the cancer and then finding the right combination of medicines. It turned out that sometimes the treatment was too successful with the right combination, and it killed all cancer cells in a very short time. This was also bad outcome as it was very toxic. Anyway a bunch of people with very late stages did survive all of this and are now cancer free. So now the researchers try to match the DNA with the right amount of treatment to strike a balance.
  • melling3 days ago
    Unfortunately, chemotherapy is still the best thing to treat many cancers.

    We need to try harder to find other treatments. Poisoning the body is quite an unpleasant experience.

    • xupybd3 days ago
      Nice to be able to avoid it if it's not going to help you
      • pixelpoet3 days ago
        I've always been certain that if I got cancer, I wouldn't even bother trying chemo; a test like this completely changes the calculus.
        • oleander733 days ago
          I thought the same, until I got cancer (stage 4 even, so the chemo wasn't curative). I don't know if I was lucky or it was the type of chemo, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. It's been nearly five years since diagnosis and I'm very happy I got treatment. Considering the fact that I have incurable cancer, my life is spectacularly good!
          • xupybd2 days ago
            Do you mind if I ask at what age you found out?
        • kepoly3 days ago
          Based on personal experience, I believe that when confronted with the reality of a terminal diagnosis and chemotherapy is the available option, one's perspective often shifts—most people will choose to do whatever it takes to preserve their life.
          • oleander733 days ago
            I was quite ready to die (after stage 4 dx), but I thought "What the heck, let's give it a go. I've always been curious what it is like." It turned out to be much less horrible than I expected and nearly five years later I'm still alive.
            • Turskarama3 days ago
              I figure that if it really does get that bad you can just stop the Chemo.
              • pixelpoet3 days ago
                That doesn't undo the trauma of spending your last days poisoning yourself and feeling terrible, being remembered like that, etc. Those are dice which, prior to this test (if reliable!), I would never want to roll.
                • Delk3 days ago
                  The expected effectiveness of chemo treatment would depend on several factors that could inform the choice a lot even before some kind of a specific test.

                  Some forms of cancer are rather susceptible to known chemotherapeutic cocktails and have such high cure rates (in some cases over 90 %) with chemo that you'd have to be suicidal not to take the treatment.

                  Other forms can be significantly less susceptible, and the prognosis can be rather bleak even with the most effective known treatments. I can see how one might not want to suffer intensive chemo for a minuscule chance of survival or to extend life by a few months.

                  Also, n=1 and I don't know how my experience compares to others or to the average, but my experience with chemo wasn't that terrible. Definitely not pleasant, and there's a chance of side effects that could even be permanent. But not terrible. I've got the impression that the treatments for associated nausea etc. have also improved over the decades, and I didn't really have a whole lot of that.

                • 3 days ago
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            • glonq3 days ago
              Ditto. Chemo sucks but for me it is not terrible.
        • xupybd2 days ago
          I thought so too but I read a few studies saying palliative chemo still produces better quality of life for most.
    • DoesntMatter223 days ago
      Unfortunately also most chemo isn't very effective. Some chemo like for testicular cancer is pretty great. But a lot of times the chemo is "statistically shown to extend life" but it's literally a few weeks longer or a month.

      Not that the time isn't worth it. But there is a lot of suffering involved.

  • jader2013 days ago
    I’ve not really educated myself on the details of cancer treatments (I’m fortunate I’ve not had to learn yet), so my uneducated assumption was that chemo always did something for cancer, it was more a matter of weighing how much it helped fight the cancer vs. the harm it did to the otherwise healthy tissue/organs.

    I wouldn’t have guessed the there are types of cancer where chemo just wouldn’t work at all.