Novel, potentially game-changing, advances in biomedicine

[BacktoCricaddict]

4 hours ago, kepler37b said:

@BacktoCricaddict...need your opinion on this ozempic(and related drugs) hype. Have we finally found the solution for obesity?

GLP-1 agonist drugs like ozempic and wegovy are the closest that we have come to putting the brakes on obesity. They work by suppressing appetite.

 

Since the surge in their usage, obesity rates have declined some, and a good chunk of the decline may be directly attributable to them.

 

Downsides?

1. They are not a "cure." Once you start, you can't stop. It's like exercise - if you stop doing it, you'll go in reverse gear.

2. Expensive. Insurance may not cover it unless it is for a coded condition like diabetes, and it may cost $500 per month.

2. Some people experience very unpleasant side-effects like nausea/vomiting. 

 

 

[coffee_rules]

It’s all in the LED lights bhaion.. the install yellow light and make babies

 

 

[randomGuy]

I was shocked to know that our hearts have neurons (some 40k) , meaning it has memory too.

 

Hridaya is not merely the physical pump; in Ayurveda and Yoga, it is the center of consciousness, emotions, and awareness...in Indian spirituality there is the concept of hriday akash. .Hridaya means heart, and Akasha signifies space or ether. Together, they refer to the "space within the heart"....Modern neurocardiology,could we say validates the ancient idea of the heart as a seat of intelligence? 

 

 the gut has several million neurons btw. Which is why digestion works even under anesthesia.

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/02/universal-vaccine.html

 

Very, very, preliminary - still in the preclinical animal-study stage, but quite exciting if it comes to fruition after rigorous trials are completed. 

 

Quote

Stanford Medicine researchers and collaborators have taken an astonishing step forward in that quest, surprising even themselves. In a new study in mice, they have developed a universal vaccine formula that protects against a wide range of respiratory viruses, bacteria and even allergens. The vaccine is delivered intranasally — such as through a nasal spray — and provides broad protection in the lungs for several months.

 

In the study that was published Nov. 19 in Science, researchers showed that vaccinated mice were protected against SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses, Staphylococcus aureus and Acinetobacter baumannii (common hospital-acquired infections), and house dust mites (a common allergen). In fact, the new vaccine has worked for a remarkably wide spectrum of respiratory threats the researchers have tested, said Bali Pulendran, PhD, the Violetta L. Horton Professor II and a professor of microbiology and immunology who is the study’s senior author.

 

The lead author of the study is Haibo Zhang, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in Pulendran’s lab.

 

If translated into humans, such a vaccine could replace multiple jabs every year for seasonal respiratory infections and be on hand should a new pandemic virus emerge.

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

This is not a potential game-changer. It is a game-changer. Why? Because it has been through the rigors of clinical trials and obtained FDA approval.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04539964

 

Rheumatoid arthritis is a debilitating auto-immune condition that causes very severe multiple joint pain. One of my coworkers, and recently one of my family members have been diagnosed with RA. Swelling of joints, inability to walk or do normal daily tasks takes a severe toll on the patient. For many, the medications that have been used over the decades don't work. For them, doctors prescribe biological medicines by injection. These are quite effective but inconvenient because they have to administered periodically. 

 

A new field of medicine called Bioelectric medicine could change that soon by utilizing the connection between the nervous system and immune system. This new one-time computer chip installation to periodically stimulate the vagus nerve has been found to be quite safe and effective in RA treatment and recently obtained FDA approval after rigorous trials. The link above is the FDA approval. 

 

R&D rocks!!

 

Edited March 14 by BacktoCricaddict

[BacktoCricaddict]

There are multiple posts here in this thread about the potential of immunotherapy to fight cancer. The potential continues to become reality faster and faster:

 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260410-how-a-new-wave-of-immunotherapy-is-eliminating-cancers

 

Excerpt:

 

Quote

After nearly 100 years of development, treatments that bolster the body's immune system to fight cancer are coming of age – and saving patients' lives.

When 71-year-old Maureen Sideris was treated for colon cancer in 2008, she had to go under the knife. Her treatment was successful, but the post-operative recovery process was gruelling.

Fourteen years later, Sideris, who lives in New York, was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer – and this time, her treatment, offered through a clinical trial, looked radically different. Every three weeks, she travelled to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City for 45 minute-long infusions of a drug called dostarlimab.

After just four months of treatment, Sideris' tumour had disappeared – without surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, and with her only major side effect being adrenal insufficiency that causes fatigue. "It's unbelievable," she says. "It's almost like science fiction."

And yet, it's real. Sideris is one of a growing number of patients to benefit from immunotherapy for cancer, a treatment method hitting its stride after more than a century of development. With it comes the promise of personalised therapy, long-term cancer remission and fewer side-effects than other treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

 

"I get choked up and have goosebumps," says Jennifer Wargo, a professor of surgical oncology and an immunotherapy researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. "People are living, and living with good quality lives. We're talking about cures."

The body has a natural ability to "detect and eliminate cells that look like not-you," explains Karen Knudsen, chief executive of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a US nonprofit that furthers immunotherapy development. If all is working well, that should include cells that have become cancerous. But sometimes, cancer cells evade or outsmart that system, leading to dangerous unchecked growth. They hide, in plain sight, indistinguishable from the healthy cells around them. 

Immunotherapy's goal is to unmask those cancer cells so the immune system can see them for what they are. It bolsters the immune system's defences so it can locate and destroy cancerous cells – with potentially incredible results.

 

[kepler37b]

15 hours ago, BacktoCricaddict said:

There are multiple posts here in this thread about the potential of immunotherapy to fight cancer. The potential continues to become reality faster and faster:

 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260410-how-a-new-wave-of-immunotherapy-is-eliminating-cancers

 

Excerpt:

 

 

How costly it is going to be? Can this be done on mass scale. Like those heart surgeries?

[Prakat]

My late aunt was on Keytruda for the last two years of her treatment for lung cancer. She was nearly cured and then on her half-yearly check-up to confirm if the cancer was completely eliminated they detected a tiny clump of new cancerous cells  and she went back under treatment. Under the new plan (same team at Apollo Cancer Specialty) she had a treatment port installed. Sadly, she succumbed while she was recovering from the port procedure. This was in late 2019 (just months before covid) and Pembrolizomab (used in 2015 to treat Jimmy Carter's cancer) cost 4.8L per cycle (Two ampoules) including the hospital bill.

Edited April 17 by Prakat

[BacktoCricaddict]

On 4/17/2026 at 12:50 AM, kepler37b said:

How costly it is going to be? Can this be done on mass scale. Like those heart surgeries?

 

Am shaky on the financial side of the equation, but from a purely scientific standpoint, I can speculate:

 

(1) Checkpoint inhibitors (like the Keytruda mentioned above by Prakat) can be mass-manufactured as bio-similars once they are off-patent, bringing costs down rapidly.

 

(2) CAR-T immunotherapy is patient-specific, because you have to extract the patient's own cells and modify them. So, while the process may come off-patent and be used en masse, the material itself can never be. So, it is likely to be expensive for a long time.

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

@kepler37b @Prakat

 

Here's an article regarding the challenges of immunotherapy. It is still in its infancy, so my hope is that, in the next 10-15 years, things will start to improve from both response-rate and cost standpoints. 

 

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/inhealth/about-us/immunotherapy-precision-medicine-action-policy-brief

 

Quote

5 Immunotherapy Challenges

Participation in clinical trials is low.

Research is key for medical advancements but studies in humans can be difficult because there aren’t enough patients in many trials. Just 3% of adult cancer patients participate in clinical trials and 40% of trials fail to get minimum patient enrollment.

It doesn’t work for everyone.

Immunotherapy drugs work better in some cancers than others and while they can be a miracle for some, they fail to work for all patients.

Overall response rates are about 15 to 20%.

We don’t know who will respond best.

Researchers haven’t yet broken the code to figure out who will respond to immunotherapy and who won’t. This remains a major focus of much research.

Cost

Insurance often covers the cost of these medications but they are expensive — often $100,000 a year with one costing as much as $1 million per patient per year.

Budget

President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal threatened to take $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — a 20% cut that would have negatively impacted potentially life saving research at a critical time.

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

On 3/1/2025 at 8:22 PM, BacktoCricaddict said:

https://www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrna-vaccines-fight-pancreatic-cancer-msk-clinical-researchers-are-trying-find-out

 

In Early-Phase Pancreatic Cancer Clinical Trial, Investigational mRNA Vaccine Induces Sustained Immune Activity in Small Patient Group

 

The latest data from the phase 1 trial are encouraging,” says Vinod Balachandran, MD, principal investigator of the trial and senior author of the new publication. “They suggest this investigational therapeutic mRNA vaccine can mobilize anti-tumor T cells that may recognize pancreatic cancers as foreign, potentially years after vaccination.”

 

Some updates on this study:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/pancreatic-cancer-mrna-vaccine-shows-lasting-results-early-trial-rcna331969

Seems like the mRNA vaccine against pancreatic cancer has a 50% success rate in generating an immune response against pancreating cancer, and pretty much everyone who mounted the immune response have lived over 6 years. 

 

Quote

Pancreatic cancer is the poster child for these difficult-to-treat cancers, Balachandran said, and experts have long believed that people with pancreatic cancer could not generate an immune response against tumors. But after nine doses of the personalized vaccine, Gustafson is one of eight people in the 16-person Phase 1 trial who did just that, producing an army of immune cells called T cells that seek out and destroy tumor cells.

Balachandran and his team published the results of the Phase 1 clinical trial last year. At the time, the patients, all of whom had early-stage disease before they joined the trial, had only been tracked for just over three years, and it was unclear whether the immune response would last and lead to the patients living longer, he said. New data collected during the trial’s six-year follow-up period shows that it may. Those findings will be presented Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting in San Diego.

Six years after treatment, Gustafson and six others who responded to the treatment are still alive, along with two of the eight people who did not respond. Two of the responders, including the one who died, had a cancer recurrence; Gustafson’s cancer has not come back.

“The most important finding here is that the people who mount a response to the vaccine live longer than those who do not,” said Dr. William Freed-Pastor, a physician-scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who was not involved with the trial. He cautioned, however, that the results come from a very small group of patients. More research is still needed.

Genentech and BioNTech, the two drugmakers behind the vaccine, have already launched a larger Phase 2 clinical trial. And Balachandran and his team are digging into the specifics of what appears to be happening in the immune system.

 

For scientists in this field of work, this verse applies:

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

[Lord]

Dont want to open a new thread. So this is all things health

 

@BacktoCricaddict Whats the deal with hantavirus? Another covid?

[BacktoCricaddict]

Another breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment.

 

Independent of the work on pancreatic cancer treatments that I have highlighted above, another Phase 3 clinical trial result with a drub name daraxonrasib has given reasons for even more hope. 

 

https://ir.revmed.com/news-releases/news-release-details/daraxonrasib-demonstrates-unprecedented-overall-survival-benefit

 

The key points to remember are

(a) Cancer is not a monolith. There are many, many cancer types - even for cancers of the same body part. So, 

(b) Two people who get pancreatic cancer will most likely not have the same mutation. So,

(c) A treatment that works for one will not work for the other, because the molecular targets are different. So,

(d) We must have a whole suite of tools to try. 

 

The individualized RNA based treatments described in previous posts here provide excellent customizability. But they can be expensive. That's why it is important to have a while suite of treatments. Like I said before, scientists working in this field are real-life heroes. 

 

Added in Edit:

Rule of thumb: No clinical trial = Not a medicine.

 

 

Edited June 11 by BacktoCricaddict

[BacktoCricaddict]

On 5/7/2026 at 8:38 PM, Lord said:

Dont want to open a new thread. So this is all things health

 

@BacktoCricaddict Whats the deal with hantavirus? Another covid?

 

Sorry bhai, totally missed responding to this. Luckily I had something that I posted in a WhatsApp group, so copy/pasting:

 

If you're worried about Hantavirus, please read:

 

Good news: It's not a novel virus (unlike SARS Cov2). It was first identified in the 1990s in Argentina and contained quickly. So, we already know something about it. While it is initially contracted from rats through air, *person-to-person transmission is unlikely*- it needs sustained contact and exposure. Most importantly, unlike CoViD 19, presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission do not happen. So, it is easy to identify and contain quickly. Outbreaks are short and sporadic. Its mutation rate is also low. So, it is not a pandemic threat at this point.

 

Bad news: If one gets it, it has a high mortality rate. There is no vaccine because outbreaks have been short and sporadic. 

 

Cynical statement: There are companies working on mRNA vaccines (pre-clinical stages). With enough investment, it is not difficult to get this developed and put through clinical trials. However, enough WhatsApp Univ grads will bitch and moan, and make up all sorts of conspiracy theories to devalue it, so why try hard? 

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

Science-based medicine at work:

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

^^

 

I heard an NPR report about this gene therapy, and they were calling it a miracle. It is not. Dr. Norman Borlaug once said "There are no miracles in agricultural production." Same thing applies here. Such successes are the result of unrelenting passion and painstaking work, along with monetary support from government research funds. It is the work of real-life heroes, who in the words of my mentor "work till their fingers bleed." 

 

As stated many times in threads related to India's future, India must also invest heavily in stringent, high-quality research in agricultural biotechnology and biomedicine.  There is a heck of a lot of brainpower and talent in India.

 

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/08/science/human-embryo-gene-editing

 

Quote

Gene-edited babies are now closer to becoming a reality. The ethical debate is far from settled

Pioneering gene-editing treatments are already in clinical use, saving lives and easing the pain of devastating genetic diseases. However, the growing number of patients receiving these treatments still run the risk of passing their disease-causing mutations to their children.

Scientific consensus — and the law in 70 countries — has long acknowledged that it’s too dangerous to use the powerful technique for human germline editing, the process of manipulating human embryo DNA to avoid genetic diseases and prevent them from being passed down from one generation to the next.

New research, however, has found that it’s now possible to edit the DNA of human embryos with unprecedented precision, suggesting that human germline editing might be possible in the relatively near future. Scientists, however, have warned that significant obstacles remain before they reach the point where it’s possible to safely edit viable human embryos.

“It is striking that on the one hand we might have the capacity to spend so many resources and attention on altering the genetic code of an embryo to get it precisely in line with what we think is normal or optimal when we cannot figure out how to provide clean, safe and engaging elementary schools for children with well-paid teachers once they are born,” Zoloth added, noting that knowledge of how human genetics affects physical traits and behavior is still very limited.

A newly released survey on public attitudes toward research on human embryos in four countries indicated that a majority of respondents in the UK, the Netherlands and Spain supported the use of genome editing in embryos that would help establish a pregnancy by eliminate a severe or life-threatening condition. However, in Italy that figure was 46%.

Zoloth noted that while bioethicists have a duty to reflect and raise questions, prohibiting science also has its risks.

“We don’t want to prohibit inquiry,” she said. “That is why setting guardrails for new science is important, and protective both of the inquiry and of the society.”

 

 

Edited July 9 by BacktoCricaddict

[BacktoCricaddict]

https://apnews.com/article/colon-cancer-lynch-vaccines-inherited-87bfce56a19c6b304587f9952acdba99

 

Dr. Stacy Norton was only 7 years old when her mother died of colon cancer, one of several family members struck by aggressive tumors at unusually young ages. Decades later, Norton rolled up her sleeve to help test if a new kind of vaccine might protect her and her own children from cancer.

 

The Houston doctor is among an estimated 1 million Americans who have Lynch syndrome, a faulty gene passed from a parent that puts them at extremely high risk of colorectal cancer and more vulnerable to certain other cancers, too. They’re often urged to get yearly colonoscopies — far more often than usual — that can spot and remove precancerous growths called polyps.