Ipilimumab, Major step in curing cancer?

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1

Articles are all over, it’s on the news right now… Although it may not seem like staggering numbers, in comparison it’s a pretty exciting breakthrough

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6542C020100605

…or it’s the first step in creating the zombie epidemic… sounds a lot like “Resident Evil” or “I Am Legend” stuff to me…

“This is just the beginning. We’re changing the view of how we can manipulate the immune system to fight cancer in people,” said Dr. Stephen Hodi of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, whose study on ipilimumab appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.
More than 20 percent of patients with advanced melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, were alive two years after getting the drug – compared to a usual nine months.

2

First, the drug is an antibody, not a live virus. It just happens to tweak the patient’s own immune system to attack the cancer. But it won’t do anything sustained re: mutations like you mentioned.

Second, the drug didn’t work for some 70 percent of the patients it was tried on, so more work is needed to figure out why.

3

The zombie thing was a joke…

And it did work on some 30% of the patients it was tried on, which is about 29% higher than usual/previous treatments. Obviously more work is needed, and it’s being done, but I’d say that’s a pretty big step in the right direction.

4

it’s pretty sexy.

anybody in research probably just cringed and thought of that one annoying researcher they know who uses “sexy” to describe a topic. you’re welcome.