This email newsletter describes our efforts to "cure cancer" or "end cancer as we know it" by reducing US cancer deaths from the current 600,000 per year to 100,000 per year by 2030. This effort is independent of PathologyOutlines.com, but we appreciate its assistance.
The latest versions of these documents are listed below:
We currently have one grant pending to provide a proposal to research one of the bulleted tasks discussed in our Strategic plan, deadline 30 September 2021.
New articles since our last newsletter:
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16 May 2021: What should our national cancer goals be?, Blog, PDF
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1 Jun 2021: The importance of systemic networks in cancer treatment, Blog, PDF
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11 Jun 2021: What will success look like in the war on cancer?, Blog, PDF
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23 Jun 2021: Combinations of therapy to substantially reduce cancer deaths, Blog, PDF
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4 July 2021: New ideas about cancer, Blog, PDF.
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4 July 2021: Letter to Director, National Cancer Institute, Blog, PDF
This month's "Agree or Disagree" feature is:
We propose that pancreatic adenocarcinoma, NOS and other aggressive cancers can be successfully treated using large combinations of partially effective treatments directed against the tumor's malignant traits because the behavior of the whole is greater than the behavior of the sum of the parts, see Combinations Of Therapy to Substantially Reduce Cancer Deaths. Of course, this will require the development of new treatments against some of these traits. Agree or disagree?
Email Dr. Pernick at Nat@PathologyOutlines.com with your opinion by 31 July 2021. He will reply to all serious responses and will post the best responses in August 2021. Please also advise how you want your name listed (full name, initials or anonymous).
This response is from Adam Palmer, PhD., Asst. Professor of Pharmacology, UNC Chapel Hill:
Partial disagree / agree:
Clinically successful combinations of cancer therapies are often pharmacologically additive. When combining therapies that are individually highly effective, additivity can be the basis for spectacular clinical benefits, such as the RCHOP regimen producing high cure rates in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma. One implication of drug additivity is that 'adding zeros' makes zero. This suggests that developing successful combination therapies for aggressive cancers will first require the development of more therapies that have good individual anti-tumor activity in these diseases. The standard for efficacy is not unattainably high. For example, before combination therapy became standard for pediatric Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, single therapies could produce temporary remissions, around 3 to 6 months in duration, in a quarter of the patients (these 'remissions' meant multiple log-kills resulting in the absence of detectable disease, and should not be confused for temporarily stable disease or partial response). These therapies went on to become the constituents of curative combination regimens.
