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Comment by hereme888 | Hacker News Reader

Would you be willing to share a few more details for me to understand? It would help me talk more concretely with my colleagues.

So she had stage 4 lung cancer.

"Is alive only because of this drug":

- Was her life expectancy obviously prolonged? If so, by how much has she exceeded it so far?

- Has the cancer progressed more slowly, halted, or regressed?

Thanks.

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I’m not completely read in to all the details but she told me prior to this drug her diagnoses was a “death sentence.” The lung cancer had metastasized throughout her bones. The indication was sudden lower body paralysis caused by a spinal tumor. She had spinal fusion surgery as well. I understand because it’s stage 4 she will never be in “remission” but it has regressed significantly.

Thanks for sharing. At such an advanced stage and aggressive metastasis, for it to have regressed at all... wow. She must have been in so much pain.

My wife had stage 4 melanoma. Prior to the newish immunotherapies about 5 years ago, it was a death sentence — 6-9 months life expectancy from diagnosis. Now, it’s 60-70% 5 year survival rate. Unfortunately my wife wasn’t one of them.

In general, these types of cancers spew mets and spread quickly. Many are resistant to chemo, go to the brain (chemo cannot help there) and only respond to high focused radiation like SRS or proton beam.

Immunotherapies essentially suppress checkpoints that cancer cells use to avoid immune response and/or cause your body to target specific checkpoints. I can’t read FT.com, but I believe it’s talking about a targeted therapy that allows your body to control the cancer.

There’s alot of research happening around things like immunotherapy combined with custom versions of Moderna and other vaccines that will significantly improve treatment and save people going through what my wife went through. It’s a good time.

Sorry to hear about your wife. Yes, once those melanomas go deep enough in the skin, they spread everywhere like a plague.

I know there's even researchers creating AI-assisted treatment regimes that match specific mutations, other aspects of people's DNA, and all the immunotherapy drugs, in order to mix and match the best possible solution. Ongoing research and not yet widely available.

I look forward to learning more about the newer developments.

My dad was in a similar situation ~10 years ago. Stage 4 lung cancer, although a different underlying mutation (ALK). Prognosis was less than a year. But he got on some new-at-the-time inhibitor drugs (Crizotinib iirc) which eliminated ("no evidence") the cancer. What is left does slowly mutates around the drugs, and he goes in for regular monitoring and has had some radiation therapy to knock down specific growth spots, but he's still here with us.

I can't speak to the one in the article, but the drugs he's on aren't chemo, but they interrupt one of the pathways the cancer is using to infinitely grow. They have side effects, but not bad ones comparatively.

Amazing. Thanks for sharing. Oncology is such a complex field. I imagine discoveries in this field will only advance exponentially due to increasing investments and AI tech.

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