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Comment by bglazer | Hacker News Reader

It’s not terribly hyperbolic. The headline is that they tamed the protein (MYC). That’s more or less true, they found a molecule that binds to and blocks MYC’s activity. Then in the article they (correctly) note that MYC is dysregulated in 75% of cancer cases. They don’t claim that that they cured or tamed 75% of cancer.

Finding a MYC binder is legitimately a big deal. It’s been known as a primary target for cancer for decades but there are zero drugs that block it. Now this shows the way towards drugging it. It’s a big advance for the field.

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If one can bind it, I wonder if that can be used as a generalized (75%) early test indicator for cancer.

If an assay can be made based off this compound i could imagine some sort of screening tool that could be made. You would just need some sort of linker that could fluoresce or produce a signal.

So would this become a prophylactic drug or a treatment once someone has cancer?

Likely neither. Myc and p53 are these mythical whales that people have been trying to tame for many decades and nothing has happened. Nothing likely ever will. This would probably be the ten thousandth medium impact paper on myc in history to give some context and I’m not exaggerating.

Yeah I do cancer immunobiology and p53, myc, mTOR whatever have been the mythical pan-cancer targets forever. There's just no way they are going to be it. Could an anti-myc be another tool in the toolbox? Sure. But it'll just go in a new version of RCHOP that extends disease free morbidity for like 3 weeks

One exception seems to have been Ras. I would have bet money that Ras would have never been a viable target but here we are now.

Somewhat off topic: Have you read “Tripping over the Truth: The Metabolic Theory of Cancer”[0]? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164

I haven't read this, so I'm sorry, but I cannot really comment on it. I've heard of the Warburg hypothesis but I haven't seen data that support this as the root cause of cancer. I've had my colleagues talk about this book in a way that makes me think it has a pretty good history of cancer and then selects a body of work to convince people of this hypothesis despite a number of failed clinical trials for many cancers.

That being said, I haven't read this myself, so I have to emphasize that I ought to take a look at it before passing judgment. There have been a number of grand hypotheses for cancer that haven't panned out. That doesn't mean we can't benefit from other perspectives.

Definitely a treatment. MYC is only a problem once cancer finds a way to generate too much MYC protein. Only them is it necessary for a drug to knock it back down

Hopefully, but it depends on how it acts in the body. Manx treatments are not used as the side effects are too bad*

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