Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

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I’ve been on Doxy and it nuked what I had, and as a patient I’d be extremely nervous about detoxifying the badass chemical that’s supposed to kill the thing that was killing me. The side effects weren’t bad enough for me to want to make it less potent. Also worth noting that it sounds like it wouldn’t work for something diffuse like B cell non-hodgkins lymphoma.

“Here’s how Shasqi’s treatment works: Say a patient has a tumor in her breast. The first step is to inject a biopolymer—naturally occurring molecules—into the tumor that essentially function as a magnet. Next, the patient will receive a modified version of the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin, which has been chemically “switched off” so that it’s about 80 times less toxic. But once the drug gets to the tumor site, the biopolymer “magnet” pulls the drug in, causing a chemical reaction that switches the drug on to its full effect. The end result? Higher doses with fewer side effects (or at least that’s what Shasqi is hoping the clinical trial will bear out.)“

Presumably, making it more targeted means they can use more, potentially to the point that the effect on the tumor would correspond to a lethal systemic dose using a course of normal doxorubicin. The patient wouldn’t feel any better while undergoing the therapy in that case, but worse tumors could be successfully treated. The effect/toxicity ratio is the key factor in a lot of these kinds of drugs.

That is absolutely right. By honing the drug to the tumor, and minimizing the effects on the rest of the body, you are essentially able to unlock power on the tumor that would have put the patient's life at risk before. Taken it even a step further, if you have a system that selectively gets the drug to the tumor, then you can give combinations of cancer drugs that would be otherwise lethal, also preventing the possibility of mutations that would make the tumor unaffected by a single drug. The possibilities are immense.

Thank you for your comment. Congratulations on your positive response and recovery.

Our goal is to enable the same response in others who may experience side effects and may have to forgo treatment because of it.

Doxorubicin, also nicknamed red devil or red death, is notorious for its side effects. In addition to the bone marrow toxicity common to most chemotherapies, a person cannot receive more than 6 doses of doxorubicin in their lifetime without increasing their risk of heart failure. So when patients respond to doxorubicin, but more doses are needed, the patient and the doctors face a difficult choice: risk of death from the cancer or risk of cardiac failure. Shasqi is trying to change that equation for solid tumors. We are not focused on lymphomas yet.

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