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Genetic Linkage

Brain Cancer in Kids: Tailoring Treatment Based on Mutations

I’ll admit it, I was sucked in.

"Sharon was given a few months to live if her cancer wasn’t treated," somberly intones the voiceover. Then the non-descript older woman sitting tall on a plain chair tells her story – she had non-small cell lung cancer, but, thanks to Keytruda, she’s alive a year later. The camera pans to a young relative off to the side, her eyes brimming.

When a new story extolling Keytruda appeared, starring Donna, I began to fret that something dire had befallen Sharon. It was then that I noticed, at the bottom of Donna’s story, the words "Donna is a real patient."

Was Sharon an avatar? I went back to her ad and noticed, for the first time, the scroll at the bottom of the screen: "Actor portrayal of a real patient from the clinical trial."

Oops. Read More 
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Poliovirus To Treat Brain Cancer: A Curious Chronology

Certain things have a natural order. Breakfast before lunch. Infancy before adolescence. Autumn before winter.

So I was surprised to read an article last week in Science Translational Medicine about experiments at Duke University treating cancer in human cells and in mice with an engineered poliovirus, when the television news show 60 Minutes had reported on four patients receiving the treatment for brain tumors back in 2015. Doesn’t preclinical work – cells and animal models – come first?

I decided to investigate. Read More 
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