this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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On the same day this came out, University of Florida scientists announced a possible new treatment for cancer - not a type of cancer, ALL cancers. It works by stimulating the immune system to kill the tumor, and it's based on a treatment for glioblastoma that had highly successful human trials last year. Hard to believe these same two developments both came out of the nutbin of Florida.
That is nothing new. Immunotherapies have been around for at least 10 years.
That happens like all the time, but they never work (yet!). Cancer is so agressive, dividing so fast, and thus adapting through mutations that nothing really works fully.
But maybe it will kill some of them, and let's not stop trying! Fuck cancer.
It's MRNA based, if I recall.
This makes it, essentially, endlessly flexible. We can now take a sample, sequence it, find the mutations, simulate what the protein looks like when folded, generate* the correct complimentary protein for that target and write the actual amino acid sequence directly into MRNA and give it to the patient.
This is currently incredibly expensive because it's being done manually by labs full of PhDs. But every part of this process is being rapidly improved and made cheaper.
MRNA based medicines have amazing promise. For example they had the COVID vaccine designed less than 12 hours after sequencing it.
*using a diffusion model, like AI image generators but they produce amino acid sequences that generate arbitrarily shaped proteins
mRNA based stuff is indeed incredible, no more randomly just trying things out, it's really the future IMO.
But for cancer it will just be a tool in the toolbox , I mean you gotta get those samples and cancer change maybe a thousand times a minute, which strain is the "bad" one? Etc. etc. etc.
One theoretical way to stop cancer altogether would be to remove the possibility for telomere lengthening (remove the production of telomerase) and "manually" allow the growth of only stem cell from time to time.
But that's a long time from now if ever it can be done.
You got me for a second there.
I thought you would make a "the onion" joke of florida plan's to send cancer patient to work the fields as a "treatment" for cancer.
I'm surprised (and kinda of relieved?) that your comment is actually about a new scientific discovery.
Oh yeah it's very exciting. In 2024 a vaccine that targeted glioblastoma, an especially nasty brain cancer with an almost zero survival rate. The vaccine mimics certain aspects of tumor cells, triggering a fast, vigorous immune response that attacks the actual tumor. Encouraged by the results, they've somehow generalized the vaccine over the past year to stimulate an immune response to cancer cells in general. Immunological therapy is totally different from chemo or radiation, and a generalized approach is vastly different from what the whole field has been doing for decades. Very promising.
Here's an article for those who want to know more.