Aussie Press, NYTimes, Reuters, etc: A story of a possible maybe cancer treatment and that pushes a lot of buttons
Cancer has been cured 100 percent of the time many times – in mice. Also in rats. Thus a pre-clinical, pre-human test success in lab rodents is not news in itself. But when one adds genetic engineering, anti-sense RNA, nanotechnology, assertions that they add up to a bold new tactic against cancer, and an apt Trojan horse metaphor right there in the press release, it becomes hard to resist. Plus, the report from an Australian biotech company is the Nature Biotechnology cover story, accompanied by a laudatory News and Views explainer by two MIT researchers, all an implication it has jumped high peer review hurdles.
The news is complicated, but the idea is that a one-two punch of specially made mini-cells (sort of like cells on the outside, only tinier, and packed with anti-cancer weaponry) can infiltrate tumor cells, disable their ability to become chemotherapy resistant, and then hit them with the poison. Clever exploitation of selective antibodies keeps normal cells out of great peril. Another good part: the treatment demolished a variety of human tumors that had been implanted in the test animals. So it says here. Human trials are set to start.
Australia Stories (very boosterish):
- Melbourne Herald Sun - Bruce McDougall: Trojans outsmart tumours ; a “world breakthrough…” it says ;
- Sydney Morning Herald – Deborah Smith : Killer ‘Trojan horses’ get inside cancer walls ; It worked in dogs, too, she reports.
- Brisbane Times-AAP : Device hopes to cut cancer chemotherapy ; This story looks like a pastiche – as though a routine clinical trial story got hastily updated by reporters and editors unsure what they had. No byline either.
- ABC – Ashley Hall: ‘Trojan horse’ therapy combats chemo resistance ; All enthused and positive till the punultimate graf that says few than 1 percent of promising treatments actually delivers for patients.
- Cosmos – Elizabeth Finkel: Killer ‘minicells’ fight drug-resistant cancer ;
Other Stories :
- National Business Review (NZ) : Australians develop potential cancer killing ‘trojan horse.”
- Reuters – Michael Perry (from Sydney) : Scientists kill cancer cells with ‘trojan horse” ;
Best job:
- NYTimes – Nicholas Wade: New Cancer Treatment Shows Promise in Testing ; Wade injects a cautious note throughout, moderating but not stifling hope – best effort of the bunch, and on a Sunday yet. He has a Trojan Horse too but in a quote that he attributes, in correct full disclosure, to Reuters.
Grist for the Mill: Nature Biotechnology abstract ; EnGeneIc homepage ; EnGeneIc Press Release (via The FULL story) that includes Trojan Horse metaphor – one that few outlets could resist ;
-CP
June 29th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
This story has most of the earmarks of dozens of earlier stories on cancer cures. (I can’t help thinking of the extravagant claims made for antiangiogenesis therapy 11 or 12 years ago–”cancer cure” was on the front page of nearly every newspaper in the world.) Everyone who wrote this year’s story should put a note in their calendars for June 29, 2010 to check on the status of this research. The note should include a promise to write a story no matter what the situation. If it’s real, we’ll know soon enough, but if it’s a flash in the pan, we can use it as a teachable moment for our readers.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Yes, but I’d make the note for 2011 – it’ll give time for clinical trials to have been run and published. Plus be long enough for people to have otherwise forgotten. Maybe we could use a few resveratrol reminiscences right now. It’s been nearly three years since that was going to keep us all as healthy as skinny super-fit people, without the skinny and exercizing part.