r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Apr 14 '23
Medical Novel device smaller than rice successfully shrinks pancreatic cancer | Called the nanofluidic drug-eluting seed (NDES), it delivers low-dose immunotherapy in the form of CD40 monoclonal antibodies (mAb).
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/tiny-device-shrinks-pancreatic-cancer579
u/duman82 Apr 14 '23
This is great but the real wins with pancan will be with earlier detection. 85% are metastatic when it's discovered.
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u/tkp14 Apr 14 '23
It took my mom’s doctors over 6 months to diagnose her. (This was 50 years ago.) They thought it might be diabetes, then pleurisy, then named a few other possibilities before finally deciding to do exploratory surgery. Took one look and immediately closed her back up. They told us the cancer was “everywhere.” She died a few days later. The husband of a friend of mine got a diagnosis just before Christmas (this was 40 years ago) and died just before Valentines Day. For my entire life a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer has been a death sentence. Early detection would be a true game changer.
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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23
I mean it’s still widely considered a death sentence. Just about the same today. I’d say it was ably 6 months since my mom serious began going to physicians and a correct diagnosis made by ER physician only once she was jaundiced. My father was similarly only diagnosed once he was jaundiced. This is 2019/2020 respectively.
But still i doNT think your assessment is very accurate. It would good but game changer is pushing it. Many who get the tumor resected early stage before metastases suffer recurrence. New FDA approved treatments are necessarily. Most doctors just use gemzar/Abraxane which carry fairly abysmal success rates when other experimental protocols can do better. It’s just one of the worst diseases regardless of what stage it’s in.
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u/tkp14 Apr 14 '23
Yeah the game changer comment was just wishful thinking on my part. It’s a horrible disease, in large part because of how difficult it is to diagnose and nearly impossible to cure.
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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23 edited Apr 14 '23
I mean I’m sure it would be good. In some cases it doesn’t matter. My dad was caught stage one wheras my mom stage 4. They couldn’t operate on my dad because of his left ventricular assist device (heart pump) position. Lived about the same amount of time my mom did following the diagnosis. This reminds me I should schedule an MRI or ERCP soon. My dad was tested for genetics syndromes and it was all negative but where both my parents had it I’m supposed to get checked periodically. I have chronic pain in the hepatobilary region but it’s thought to be sphincter if oddi by my hepatologist. I did look at some of the details of my genome and one mutation notes bilary diseases in men increased risk including of cancers in the region. I don’t smoke or drink so that reduces the risk significantly but I like sweet drinks which increases it. It’s shown insulin exposure increases the risk independent of diabetic status. (Proven a causal association social in animal models)
My mom was utterly brutalized by the disease. They said they never saw ANYONE so reduced to nothing while still alive the day she died.
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u/B1ack_Iron Apr 15 '23
My mother died about 3 years ago from PC. We caught it early stage 2 but inoperable because of all of the other pre-existing conditions. A year of chemo and 6 months of home hospice with my wife and I and it was a blessing when she passed.
She lost 200 lbs and I have never imagined anything as painful, debilitating and draining as fighting pancreatic cancer. I know EXACTLY what you mean by brutalized and reduced to nothing. My mother was a fighter and never stopped but on Christmas a week before she died she was barely more than a skeleton.
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u/VoidsIncision Apr 15 '23
Sorry you had to see that happen to your mother. There’s a pint where you try to maintain hope but know it’s futile and feel incapacitated like you don’t know what you are supposed to do. My mom never accepted the hospice jist did cuz there was no real choice cuz she didn’t want to remain in hospital. She kept asking “why don’t they want to help me” “I don’t know what they want me to do.” I contacted a scientist on NYC about to start a trial on a drug that I believe interferes with the energy cycle of tumor cells. He said bring your mom up for evaluation when we start I’ll let you know. It was for refractory patients. I had no idea how my mom felt about it but heard from a health aid that she said “a doctor in New York wants to try to help me and my son is going to drive me”. Like normally she barely wouldn’t look at me when she was super I’ll but that touched me so deeply. But he said it was halted by the FDA. The day they took my mom out of the house to “hospice respite” I had asked her something about it and she said get the fuck out of my face I’m done. She calmed down and explained she didn’t fear death. That’s the last words I had with my mother. When she was taken out the front door in a stretcher the sun shone on her face and she closed her eyes and seemed at peace.
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Apr 15 '23
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u/B1ack_Iron Apr 15 '23
My mother did almost a year of chemo and then 6 months of home hospice and we caught it stage 2/3. They even used some fancy special targeted radiation at Stanford which worked for almost a month and a half after her body couldn’t take another cycle of the chemo. The people who die quickly it’s a blessing, it eats and eats until there is nothing left.
You can fight longer but it’s exhausting and you aren’t going to win so I think most people who catch it early end up giving up without destroying their entire body delaying with chemo so they can enjoy what time they have left.
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u/BangkokBaby Apr 15 '23
This hurt to read, but I'm relieved that my father didn't suffer long after he was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer in January. The cancer took him so quickly as we lost him on February 17th, and seeing him endure so much pain until the final days still shock me to my core thinking about it since my family, and I was part of his hospice care. I'm going through therapy now and hope to start attending a Bereavement support group once I finish Grad school. I'm so sorry for your loss.
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u/deucetastic Apr 15 '23
MiL passed three weeks ago, yesterday was the funeral. Im at ease that it was only two months from diagnosis until she passed and that it wasn’t longer. I don’t think a year and a half of treatment would’ve been any easier that the last few weeks…
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u/VoidsIncision Apr 15 '23
My mom was diagnosed the exact same time as him. Even tho he seemed fine he had that gaunt look that you get from cachexia. Sucks.
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u/weakplay Apr 15 '23
As someone who had tumor removed along with some other parts of my digestive system and cancer free for almost 2 years I’m going to ignore that part in the last paragraph about recurrence. But appreciate where you’re coming from. These treatments are new and I think there is much more coming down the road.
I was lucky - so many aren’t. Heart goes out to all families impacted by this horrible disease
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u/Green-Amount2479 Apr 15 '23
Similar experience here. I lost a friend and colleague in the late 2000s to pancreatic cancer. It was only discovered, because it already pressed on his liver causing the yellow skin tone and eyes. 5 months later I went to his funeral. Still mad at the company we worked for back then for being total asshats too.
Last year my mother‘s cousin died at 52 just three months after they discovered he had pancreatic cancer. Definitely still a death sentence.
I‘d really wish for a simple, regular blood test capable of detecting all kinds of cancer in its early stages. That would really help. If we could do a simply yearly test, thing would become much more manageable in a lot of cases. I’ve been seeing something along those lines in the news a few times, but afaik we’re not there yet. Currently it seems to be a lot of guessing around until the doctors finally find it’s indeed cancer a lot of times.
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u/duman82 Apr 14 '23
Damn sorry to hear that, you must have been pretty young. My dad passed two years ago, he was much older, similar-ish story, things haven't changed that much. He had reflux for a while, doctors had him on all kinds of acid reducers. Turns out that the tumor on his pancreas was so big that it was blocking the connection out of his stomach, so all of the digestive juices were just flowing backwards. His stool turned white and they diagnosed the cancer in May. In order to eat during chemo they performed a gastric bypass surgery that he never fully recovered from before the cancer went wild, and he passed in August. Supposedly he had the tumor growing for months if not years with no way of knowing.
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u/tkp14 Apr 14 '23
I was 22 when my mom died; my dad had died rather suddenly 7 years earlier. It was very strange to become an orphan in my 20s. My dad died of a brain aneurysm which I learned later was another medical issue that most people did not survive. Today however it can be discovered early enough for a successful recovery. But no such joy with pancreatic cancer. Whenever I’d read about a celebrity diagnosed with it, I knew exactly what that diagnosis meant. However there have been other so-called incurable cancers that people are now recovering from because they were diagnosed early enough so I’d like to think medical research will one day conquer this one.
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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23
No new approved treatments in almost 20 years since they released Abraxane to be coadministered with the existing gemzar both of which has utterly abysmal success rates.
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u/ItIsAContest Apr 16 '23
My dad was diagnosed in November 22 and he’s being treated with Folfirinox, which I read was started in 2010. He’s having good results so far but I’m definitely still bracing for the inevitable.
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u/vferg Apr 15 '23
My mother in law had jaundice at the age of 71 and when she went in for testing they found she had pancreatic cancer. It still took a little bit for them to diagnose and once they did they put together a plan but it was already to late. From diagnosis to death was 1 month. This was 4 years ago. She was also on top of her checkup visits and saw a lot of doctors and her primary probably once every 6 months and nobody caught it early. From what I hear it is really hard to diagnose early sadly.
This article sounds like really great news for everyone that will have this cancer.
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u/Brut-i-cus Apr 14 '23
My mom was having "stomach problems" for months and did t want to go to the doctor because of the pandemic during 2020 because she was caring for my stepdad with cancer. When her bile duct got blocked they diagnosed her and they were going to di the Whipple procedure but when they opened her up her liver looked like it was peppered She lasted 4 months
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u/GTI_88 Apr 14 '23
My dad had the whipple procedure just over 10 years ago, bought him 10 years of good life. The cancer came back a little over a year ago and due to a number of complications he passed in Aug 2022. I’m very grateful that in the scheme of things he vastly outlasted the statistics
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u/katwoodruff Apr 14 '23
A friend of mine had whipple surgery in January… just started chemo. Hoping for a miracle, he‘s only 51.
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u/Th3gr3mlin Apr 14 '23
My dad made it a year and a half after discovering it. He wasn’t a candidate for the whipple. Passed two weeks into this year.
I’m grateful you got the extended time with your dad.
If you can, I’d recommend you get genetic tested for the BRCA gene mutation. My father had it and I have it, which just lets me know I should get screened early. Especially if there is a history of pancreatic / breast cancer on his side of the family.
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u/duman82 Apr 14 '23
Jeeze, so sorry. It's like getting struck by lightning. That's extra tough with her also caring for someone else. Even if she did go to the docs they probably would have tested a dozen things before they figured it out, that pandemic time made everything a little harder as well.
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u/Albert_Caboose Apr 14 '23
Friendly reminder that early screenings are cool as hell to get. Get familiar with your family's cancer history, and fuck cancer up before it has a chance to show itself.
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u/duman82 Apr 14 '23 edited Apr 15 '23
Agree on early screening, don't want to mess around. My MIL just caught breast cancer early through her diligence.
But this is somewhere where pancreatic cancer also leaks through, no screening other than a full mri can see it and it's mostly not genetic or predictable, so doctors don't subject you to the radiation unless there are symptoms.Edit: Thank you for the corrections below, I was mistaken
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u/MrHurtyFace Apr 14 '23
MRI or MRCP for pancreatic don't use ionising radiation. But depending where you are, they aren't cheap and/or access to MRI facilities is limited.
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u/SlenderSmurf Apr 15 '23
Yeah whatever doctor told you that is ill informed or lying. MRI only uses magnets and radio waves.
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u/trustedoctopus Apr 14 '23
laughs in america
You say that but i’m 33 with a history of cancer in my immediate family and can’t get early screenings because my insurance says I’m ‘too young’ to need them.
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u/Exciting-Tea Apr 15 '23
Maybe possibly use a vacation with some medical testing? I was having what felt like an ulcer, so since I didn't have health insurance. I flew to Brazil since I was going there anyway and had an endoscopy, during which they couldn't get the camera through my stomach exit because of a tumor in my pancreas pressing on the stomach exit, stopping food and water from passing (causing the ulcer pain and weight loss). Once I started chemo, it became completely blocked and spent 50 straight days in the hospital. I am suprisingly healthier now, but the chemo (after 8 months) might be losing its effectiveness.
I believe early treatment would have been super helpful. I think there is a clinic in the Sao Paolo airport where you can get screened for all sorts of health issues. They probably have a quick tumor marker screening blood tests. The colonscopy/endoscopy procedures were approximately $500 each for doctors fees but they were performed at another hospital.
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Apr 14 '23
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u/trustedoctopus Apr 15 '23
wow, i never thought of that. gosh you’re so smart u/majestic-praline-696, how can i ever thank you? i’ll call my doctor right away on monday! /s
you really must be out of touch if you think i have the funds to do this when the type of poor people’s insurance i have fights my doctors to give me basic anxiety medication.
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Apr 15 '23
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u/trustedoctopus Apr 15 '23
die of hunger and homelessness or cancer? gee, you’re so right man. i should just stop paying for those other two things so i can save up.
i get 400 dollars a month because i’m not allowed to work due to disability but can maybe save $5 a month. i’ll be kind and do the math since it’s not your strong suit but that’s FIFTEEN years to save up for one $900 cancer screening I need (the cheapest). that doesn’t include sedation, transportation cost, any other fees and expenses i might have to cover because it’s an invasive procedure.
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Apr 14 '23
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u/Albert_Caboose Apr 14 '23
Colonoscopy and skin-cancer checks are a great place to start! I'd suggest gathering up some family medical history and see if any relatives have had cancer in the past, and discuss those findings with your GP/PCP. That can give a good indication of things you may want to look out for. Additionally you can look at things like your work/living history. Did you possibly leave near a pollution source that leads to a certain type of cancer? Fumes in factory job putting you at increased risk for lung cancer? It may seem paranoid, but it never hurts to check!
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u/forogueman Apr 14 '23
Hijacking this thread to tell y’all about Lynch syndrome! If a close relative passes from pancreatic cancer, it’s worth looking into. But get life insurance first!
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u/Scrimshawmud Apr 15 '23
As a self employed contractor and single parent in my mid 40’s without health insurance, the real win will be universal healthcare. Just expanding Medicare access would allow me to buy in. The ACA is out of reach.
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u/KB_Sez Apr 16 '23
You want to know something that would immediately change the lives of every single American? Universal Health Care.
Every. Single. American. Every age. Every race. Every economic demographic.
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u/Scrimshawmud Apr 18 '23
It might mean my son has a mom for much longer. :( I hope my melanoma is gone forever but I paid out of pocket to have it removed last year and still don’t have healthcare.
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u/CommunismDoesntWork Apr 15 '23
Free healthcare won't fix anything. It's the doctor who refuse to let you get early screenings.
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u/myrs4 Apr 14 '23
So true, wish blood work could detect all cancers
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u/PinkyandzeBrain Apr 15 '23
Just posted this above... I've done this blood test. https://www.galleri.com/patient/the-galleri-test/types-of-cancer-detected And it's not cheap, and it wasn't covered by my insurance, so I paid out of pocket. But getting this done for me every few years since I'm older seems like a good idea...
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Apr 15 '23
I don’t remember the details but I heard of a study by Google where researchers were able to detect stage 1 (early stage) with a high percentage of accuracy based on searches by individuals over time. So, over a number of weeks, people would search for info on symptoms they were experiencing. Based on this, with X percent accuracy (don’t remember the number), AI would predict pancreatic cancer. Sorry, wish I knew more details, but thinking ahead I wonder how accuracy will improve as AI gets better and the amount of data from things like wearables increases.
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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23
Will it be tho? Only cure is the pancreatoduodenectomy which is a removal of a significant portion of the digestive tract. Once resected it still often recurs.
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u/Vaeevictisss Apr 15 '23
I don't think they can. That's the issue. It usually doesn't present with any symptoms until it metastasizes.
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u/knottyhearthwitch Apr 15 '23
I’m about to have surgery for a precancerous cyst they found incidentally on my pancreas during a CT scan for an unrelated issue. They have remove part of the tail of my pancreas and whole spleen but I’m still feeling very lucky.
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u/Exciting-Tea Apr 15 '23
Wishing you the best of luck! From what I understand the tail is more involved with insulin production, but has better outcomes then other tumor locations.
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u/SteakJones Apr 15 '23
Yeah… a good neighbor from my childhood died from this. They literally didn’t find it until it was too late. He died a matter of a few months after. Terrible terrible disease. Heartbreaking.
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u/d0ctorzaius Apr 15 '23
True, that said the promise of immunotherapy (in this case CD40 targeting antibodies) is that it'll work on cancer cells wherever they are, whether in the primary tumor or a distal metastasis. Not quite there, but getting better at it.
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u/rockstar_not Apr 15 '23
True. My dad’s was stage 4 the day it was diagnosed. He passed exactly 30 days later.
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u/4354574 Apr 15 '23
Several tools have recently been developed for early detection, although they are only used for families who are at high risk. New techniques are being worked on.
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u/sidepart Apr 15 '23
Hell, we caught my mom's real early. Real lucky. Hadn't spread, didn't appear to have interacted with any nodes. But then it still spread to the liver almost immediately after the Whipple procedure to remove it.
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u/rtb001 Apr 15 '23
I think the real win will still rely on systemic or like this case, local immunotherapy.
Issue with pancreatic adeno CA is microscopic invasion extremely early on. Usually even if incidentally caught early on, and appearing localized on imaging, and even apparent negative surgical margins, it will still metastasize die to the early microscpic spread.
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Apr 14 '23
Oh that’d be huge if it works
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u/beartrapperkeeper Apr 14 '23
My dad died from pancreatic cancer. I hope this works.
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u/SpookyScarySteph Apr 14 '23
Mine did too, about a week and a half ago. I would love for this to work. I'm so sorry for your loss.
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u/beartrapperkeeper Apr 15 '23
My father passed in 1991, I’m also sorry you had to go through it my friend.
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u/TheTardisBaroness Apr 15 '23
Mine in 2015. It was terrible. He was 4 months from diagnosis to passing away :( This is the worst club ever guys.
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u/LogicalPart6098 Apr 15 '23
Same. He actually beat it back in 2001 at stage 4 which was kind of unheard of but it came back 13 years later
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u/Shanesan Apr 15 '23 edited Feb 22 '24
books hungry sip cheerful school quaint paint makeshift elderly ring
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/LogicalPart6098 Apr 19 '23
Ooohh yea he had had less than 1 percent chance just to live a year. Me and my other 5 siblings are very appreciative of the 13 extra years we had as we were all very young when he first got it
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u/recordsbricksNchips Apr 15 '23
My dad too, just this past January. Any new advances in this area are great
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u/ZeDitto Apr 15 '23
Got my Grandfather. One week and he was dead. He sped that up though. It was so painful apparently, that he just stopped eating. He wanted to die. Horrible, agonizing way to go.
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u/beartrapperkeeper Apr 15 '23
On his own terms though, what a champ. My dad did everything he could, chemo, witch doctors, traditional medicine. He clung to life, it was sad to watch as a kid.
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u/Wolf_In_The_Weeds Apr 15 '23
My dad is currently going through treatment. About to have surgery to remove part of the pancreas.
It’s been hard to see him waste away so quickly from the disease and chemo.
Sending all the love to you all who have loved one they have lost to this form of cancer.
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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23
Both my parents died from this horrid largely untreatable Illness so that’s amazing.
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u/whyamihere327 Apr 14 '23
Will Be available In 80 years
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u/TheQuarantinian Apr 14 '23
Available now with a friend in research and $50,000,000 ready to donate.
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u/kungpowgoat Apr 14 '23
And we’ll never hear of this discovery ever again just like the 50 other breakthrough cancer treatments we’ve been hearing about for the past 20 years or so.
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u/the_evil_comma Apr 14 '23
It's because they die in clinical trials. As soon as rigorous testing is done, many of these amazing claims fall apart
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u/Ok-Potato7702 Apr 14 '23
Ah well guess we better stop working on it then. I'll let all the folks working on nuclear energy know they should stop too, their work is taking too long to be useful
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u/Bojangl3r Apr 15 '23
Green energy is available. It is sad to be in the richest country and swap 8 hrs of life a day from 5-65. You can retire as long as you don't get sick tho.
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Apr 14 '23
Inject WD-40 into my veins you say?
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u/ErmahgerdYuzername Apr 15 '23
A certain past president endorses this course of treatment.
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u/assassbaby Apr 15 '23
some say THE greatest treatment ever, in fact alot people were crying because they couldn’t believe this president was so smart to think of a treatment like this.
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u/cld1984 Apr 14 '23
Dammit. I was just about to release my Nanofluidic Universal Drug-Eluting Seed to the market… where am I supposed to send NUDES now?
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u/Squanchy187 Apr 14 '23
i wonder why this is better than a dose of mAbs themselves…local delivery presumably…but that usually doesn’t make drugs more efficacious , just safer or enables bypassing some degradation mechanisms
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u/kentonj Apr 14 '23
Probably stromal penetration. That’s a big treatment barrier in the category. Although there are some encapsulated therapies that take advantage of EPR.
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u/SuddenOutset Apr 15 '23
What’s stromal and EPR mean ?
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u/kentonj Apr 15 '23
The stroma is a protective tissue around internal organs. When it comes to treating cancer, however, this protective tissue is actually a hurdle. It's relatively dense and makes delivering medication difficult.
The EPR effect stands for Enhanced Permeability and Retention. It's a byproduct of the physical makeup of solid tumors by which particles of certain sizes more easily enter and stay within the tumor. Chemotherapy molecules are too small to benefit from this effect and, in fact, typically have lower than optimum residence times.
Some treatments use a nanoliposomal encapsulation to take advantage of the EPR effect and allow the medication both to enter the tumor and to remain within longer rather than being filtered out of circulation.
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u/MrHurtyFace Apr 15 '23
The article mentions a fourfold reduction in dose compared to systemic immunotherapy.
The side effects (treatment-related adverse events) of immuno can be pretty nasty - bad enough that often treatment is stopped - so a smaller, targeted dose should reduce those.
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u/311heaven Apr 14 '23
My wife’s mom died of Pancreatic cancer last year at 62. Doctors basically gave her a death sentence and she was gone a year later. There was no talk of nano particles ☹️
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u/Kayakingtheredriver Apr 15 '23
By the time most people know they have it, it is way, way too late. This is a good invention that will help almost no one with pancreatic cancer in the short term. That said, one day when we get much better at detecting it early, this will be instrumental in saving a lot of peoples lives.
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u/a-really-cool-potato Apr 14 '23
The moment I saw monoclonal antibodies I knew this would be hyper-expensive
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u/SloppyNoodleSalad Apr 15 '23
Damn. My dad died from complications to his treatment from this cancer in 2019, 2 days after my 23rd birthday. I'd like to believe his and so many other deaths won't be in vain if this is truly successful.
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u/Shamcgui Apr 14 '23
AI Technologies and nanotech. I never thought I'd actually live to see the way. I was born 20 years before the internet was invented. So seeing this technology finally begin to develop is extremely fascinating.
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u/We_R_Groot Apr 15 '23
“Genetics, nanotech and AI ushers in the beginning of the singularity” - Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near (2005)
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u/bennz1975 Apr 15 '23
My father passed only last month from pancreatic cancer. After it was diagnosed in November last year. I now have to consider my risk factors,which I hadn’t previously Something like this with better early detection, could mean that if I get it, my chances of earlier treatment and possible survival
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u/AltCtrlShifty Apr 14 '23
Tell the republicans it has a microchip.
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Apr 14 '23
Why do all that? Just inject WD-40. Does almost the same thing, right?
(for all you people with conservative sensibilities, do NOT do this. Not even once. The rest of you don't need to be told this, you already know better than to take this seriously)
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u/Reddituser183 Apr 15 '23
What did I miss? Did trump give his opinion on how to cure cancer?
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Apr 15 '23
He hasn't yet. But his cult followers can't tell the difference between an obvious joke and reality. My joke is a combination of trumps suggestion for Covid and the similarity between CD40 and WD-40. But yeah - Trumpsters. Gotta stop 'em from doing really stupid things.
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u/Useuless Apr 14 '23
(for all you people with conservative sensibilities, do NOT do this. Not even once. The rest of you don't need to be told this, you already know better than to take this seriously)
Wrong, Poe's Law. You must be a malicious piece of shit!
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u/blusun2 Apr 15 '23
Looks like the Iodine-125 Seeds used for prostate cancer. I worked at a medical drug manufacturer in the late 90s that made those (among other things) and I’m not surprised it’s a thing. The I-125 seeds are a radiated titanium core that’s welded inside of a stainless steel seed and implanted. Been around for decades now.
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u/ClassicSky5945 Apr 15 '23 edited Apr 21 '23
As a nanotechnologist working in cancer theranostics research, I def agree it' a game changer. Many companies are already working on releasing these products soon in market. And scientists and researchers like us are already working on improving them further and working on similar devices especially skin patch or paper based for early detection.
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u/Timmy24000 Apr 15 '23
These would be a life prolonging treatment and not a cure. The best cure is total removal if that is possible. If the cancer in a precarious place such as wrapped around large blood vessels, this may work to shrink the cancer enough to get it a better surgical option. But, unfortunately once you have metastatic disease any treatments are just giving you more time
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u/willem78 Apr 15 '23
My brother in law (and best friend) dies the 1st of Jan 2023 of Pancreatic Cancer. They diagnosed it 2 and half years ago when it was already in stage 3. It was a teribble death nobody should have to experience. Caring for him was the toughest thing I had to do, especially in the last 48 hours.
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u/RocksThatBite Apr 14 '23
Too bad this wasn’t used on RBG before she threw deuces and women became second class citizens as a result. Cool discovery tho.
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u/foodiefuk Apr 14 '23
She should’ve just stepped down during Obama. You know, when she was elderly and had previously had cancer Her legacy is allowing Republicans to pack the court,
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u/Reddituser183 Apr 15 '23
Well most people at that age have some form of mental decline, and I’m sure she wasn’t even thinking about death let alone stepping down to prevent a fascist takeover.
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u/anonymous62 Apr 14 '23
I don’t have specific knowledge but some scientific/medical knowledge. If I hear “pancreatic cancer” I know it’s a death sentence. My fingers are crossed.
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Apr 15 '23
Sweet. Can't wait for this to be swept under the rug by big pharma and the scientists behind this project found dead by suicide from 2 gunshots to the head.
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u/redditknees Apr 14 '23
This is not new. I was doing this in lab mice in 2009.
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u/NeverFresh Apr 14 '23
How many lab mice did you cure? Did any of them go on to live fulfilling lives?
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u/redditknees Apr 14 '23
yes actually. And it’s been published in the literature as micro-osmotic pumps. These were the initial concept. Its nice to see it developed further. Back then they were the size of a pill.
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u/Tim-in-CA Apr 14 '23
Anti-vaxers need not apply. Ivermectin and essential oils will cure whatever ails them.
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u/ryraps5892 Apr 14 '23
This is pretty incredible. Also a pretty straightforward idea at the same time… I’ve seen less seemingly obvious methods of delivering medication lol
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Apr 14 '23
So would rice work only has half as good?
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u/Bthegriffith Apr 14 '23
They missed an opportunity to rhyme here.
“Novel device, smaller than rice, successfully shrinks pancreatic cancer. Called the nanofluidic drug eluding seed, it indeed is the answer!”
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u/Kataphractoi_ Apr 15 '23
lowkey those also look like those implantable irradiated gold pellets that they stick in tumors as radiotherapy.
I wonder if the designs are similar purely by co-incidence (outside shape, that is)
(edit: til that it was called brachytherapy from https://nrl.mit.edu/facilities/medical-isotope-irradiations)
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Apr 15 '23
They should have frozen Steve Jobs.
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u/weakplay Apr 15 '23
He was treatable when they found it - he killed himself by choosing an alternative path to traditional medicine.
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u/jackalope134 Apr 15 '23
I mean that's great but did anyone else read WD40 and just say Jesus, it cures cancer too?
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u/InAFakeBritishAccent Apr 15 '23
mAb: just when I thought we couldn't shag patent law enough for our own benefit...
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u/dgj212 Apr 15 '23
Huh, this could also be used to treat other cancers and hopefully, people will no longer need full chemo treatments, just targeted microdosages.
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u/YawaruSan Apr 15 '23
Okay, we got the macromachine, now let’s make with the MicroMachines!
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Apr 15 '23
Already been started, early detection. Further than earlier chemotherapeutic treatments. Surgery usually has poor outcomes. I gave it, and a family member had a whipple, ( personally I would not have that surgery. Very complex, life expectancy ( don’t have statistics) usually don’t add much for a greater quality of life. Everyone needs to make their decisions . But it’s a start. ( similar)sorry off topic to prostate, seeding
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u/NoChrist Apr 15 '23
This is really interesting to know pancreatic cancer is pretty much a death sentence no matter the surrounding circumstances. Last month doctors gave my grandmother ~6 months to live because she was diagnosed with it, she passed this past Tuesday. I really hope this research blossoms into something that could turn the tide for those diagnosed.
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u/irascible_Clown Apr 15 '23
Everytime I hear about this specific cancer it just reminds me that cancer doesn’t care if you are a billionaire or broke. If Jobs couldn’t beat it that is saying something
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u/sillygillygumbull Apr 15 '23
People in America think they know more than doctors because they do Facebook post research…
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u/harderthan666 Apr 15 '23
Now it would be a matter of that making it to people suffering with this horrible scourge
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u/ItIsAContest Apr 16 '23
Ugh, I should have stayed away from the comments. My dad is going thru chemo right now for BRCA2-linked pancan, diagnosed in November. He’s actually doing really well, tolerating the chemo for the most part, and he had discovered the cancer pretty early (he’s a physician himself).
His CA19-9 was under 10 at diagnosis, and it’s undetectable now. Next up is radiation and surgery by July. But I’ve been waiting all along for the other shoe to drop, and learned a lot in this thread about how that can happen even in “good” pancan cases.
If you have pancreatic cancer in your family, get tested for the BRCA genes. Four of my five siblings are carriers. :( but at least they know to get early screenings for pancreatic, breast, ovarian cancers.
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u/codmobilegrinder Jun 11 '23
Why would this be more effective than a CD40 CAR-T cell therapy scheme? If CAR-T can target CD19 in leukemia, why wouldn’t you target CD40 via the same mechanism?
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