Some one said to me the five year cancer survival rate ​​​​​​​has not change?

[nec209]

Some one said to me that the five year cancer survival rate in the past 10 years have not change is that true?

I found this data not sure what year it is from.

 

 

[exchemist]

10 minutes ago, nec209 said:

Some one said to me that the five year cancer survival rate in the past 10 years have not change is that true?

I found this data not sure what year it is from.

 

 

It doesn't sound right to me. Treatment seems to be improving all the time. But I don't have statistics on it at my fingertips.

[swansont]

17 minutes ago, nec209 said:

Some one said to me that the five year cancer survival rate in the past 10 years have not change is that true?

Not in the US, for cancer as a whole. The trend is toward a larger fraction surviving 5 years

https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/survival

[CharonY]

Also, it is very different depending on the type of cancer type and country. As noted prostrate cancer has a 5yr survival rate cab that is above 90% in many countries.  Improving that is going to be very hard from there. The stage at which cancer is detected is also crucial to this statistic. For lung cancer, stage I detection has above 60% 5-yr survival rate, which drops to about 2.5% at stage IV. Some cancer types are difficult to detect which limits treatment options. For these reasons, a general statement regarding cancer survival is mostly useless and can easily be misleading. 

It should also be noted that we obviously cannot expect indefinite increases and the older one gets, the more likely it is that some form of cancer will present. Depending on how aggressive the type of cancer is folks might die do to other reasons and cancer might only contribute or even only be incidental to the cause of death.

[studiot]

3 hours ago, nec209 said:

Some one said to me that the five year cancer survival rate in the past 10 years have not change is that true?

As with all statistics bandied about, especially by journalists, one must learn to interpret them with a critical eye.

Firstly the question of the population base at the beginning and end of the sampling decade.

Is this the same ?

Secondly have there been any unusual interfering events during that decade?

 

The answer to the first is no, the populationat the start and finish are not the same as medicine attempts more and more difficult ancer conditions.

The answer to the second is that the decade 2014 to 2024 included the covid years which considerably distorts the data for most treatments.

Edited August 10 by studiot
spelling

[nec209]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Not in the US, for cancer as a whole. The trend is toward a larger fraction surviving 5 years

https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/survival

Well looking at that the progress has been relatively slow, and at this pace we'll be at it at least another 45 years to 50 years if it keeps moving up like that.

[zapatos]

5 minutes ago, nec209 said:

Well looking at that the progress has been relatively slow, and at this pace we'll be at it at least another 45 years to 50 years if it keeps moving up like that.

Yes, cancer in general has been a tough nut to crack.

[swansont]

33 minutes ago, nec209 said:

Well looking at that the progress has been relatively slow, and at this pace we'll be at it at least another 45 years to 50 years if it keeps moving up like that.

As CharonY pointed out, progress necessarily slows as the numbers go up.

Another possible confounding factor is that as survivability goes up, your chances of getting some new cancer goes up (you can’t get a second case if you’re dead) and mortality from that is likely going to be higher, if just from being older. 

Until you can actually eliminate cancer, you’re stuck with this, since everybody has to die of something.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, nec209 said:

Well looking at that the progress has been relatively slow, and at this pace we'll be at it at least another 45 years to 50 years if it keeps moving up like that.

Relatively slow to what? For some cancers, prevention had the largest impact. Some of the biggest changes in cancer-related deaths are associated with air quality laws and reduction of smoking. Also, people are getting older on average. Which means, the likelihood to acquire and die of cancer at high age increases. 

But again, prevention is likely going to be the part that is way important than treatment. Recent work for, example have shown that certain cancer types have now increased in younger folks, especially in Western cohorts. Some risk factors are known (e.g., alcohol consumption and obesity), but others less well-known one might be contributing (sleep deprivation.. yikes...). It is usually better to maintain a car than trying to start repairs once it is falling apart.

[nec209]

38 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Relatively slow to what?

Well compared to technology and IT stuff like computers and tech stuff it feels almost like culture shock compared to the 90s to now. If you got new smartphone and tablet now and gone back to year 1992 would be culture shock

But when comes to biology or medicine it feels slower. The same with cancer treatment.

Even now the new AI stuff and robots seem more star trek like culture culture shock now compared to biology or medicine or cancer treatment.

[CharonY]

Biology is way more complicated than any of the It stuff. A single cell outpaces the complexity of even the most complex machines currently. So, this is very much expected. Even in biological sciences, technical developments have been massive. For example, when I did my PhD sequencing a simple bacterium was a multi-million, multi-year effort involving multiple groups and companies. Now, I can sequence on over the weekend by myself.

And yet, our understanding of even understanding bacterial cells is developing slowly. There is a big difference in generating data and generating understanding. In that regard, it is also true for computers. Yes, we can do more fancy things way faster than we used to. Everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket. But can you honestly claim that this has somehow led to an equivalent increase in how everyone understands the world?

Better tools are the easiest bit in everything. Better understanding is the rate limiting step. This is true for cancer as for many other things.

 

[studiot]

11 hours ago, nec209 said:

Well compared to technology and IT stuff like computers and tech stuff it feels almost like culture shock compared to the 90s to now. If you got new smartphone and tablet now and gone back to year 1992 would be culture shock

But when comes to biology or medicine it feels slower. The same with cancer treatment.

Even now the new AI stuff and robots seem more star trek like culture culture shock now compared to biology or medicine or cancer treatment.

Even if you didn't want to reply to my earlier comment,

Please, Please, Please don't tell me you want medics to test new drugs and treatments on people the way IT firms fail to test properly on their customers.
Or would you like they medics put out a half working drug, like a half working operating system ?

[nec209]

4 hours ago, studiot said:

Even if you didn't want to reply to my earlier comment,

Please, Please, Please don't tell me you want medics to test new drugs and treatments on people the way IT firms fail to test properly on their customers.
Or would you like they medics put out a half working drug, like a half working operating system ?

Is it the FDA approval some thing like 5 or 8 years. So when study shows awesome results in mice than have to go to the FDA for drug approval time some thing like 5 or 8 years to do testing on people. Before the drug it is out?

 

[studiot]

46 minutes ago, nec209 said:

Is it the FDA approval some thing like 5 or 8 years. So when study shows awesome results in mice than have to go to the FDA for drug approval time some thing like 5 or 8 years to do testing on people. Before the drug it is out?

 

I suppose thalidomide would be the classic example of why the FDA is so tough, but there are others such as hexachlorophene toothpaste.

[zapatos]

37 minutes ago, nec209 said:

So when study shows awesome results in mice...

Mice are not people.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, nec209 said:

Is it the FDA approval some thing like 5 or 8 years. So when study shows awesome results in mice than have to go to the FDA for drug approval time some thing like 5 or 8 years to do testing on people. Before the drug it is out?

 

You have to test for efficacy and safety; ethics requires small trials before large ones. 

[nec209]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

You have to test for efficacy and safety; ethics requires small trials before large ones. 

But normally they test on mice first than start to test on people before the drug is allowed or not allowed by the FDA. But how long does this take? 

[zapatos]

3 minutes ago, nec209 said:

But normally they test on mice first than start to test on people before the drug is allowed or not allowed by the FDA. But how long does this take? 

Quote

The clinical trial phase can take years to complete. However, once research has shown that the drug is safe and useful, the FDA typically reviews and either approves or denies an application for a new drug within 6 months.

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/pharma/conditioninfo/approval#:~:text=The clinical trial phase can,new drug within 6 months.

 

[swansont]

20 minutes ago, nec209 said:

But normally they test on mice first than start to test on people before the drug is allowed or not allowed by the FDA. But how long does this take? 

Years. You also have to determine the proper dose; each early step might test for 6 months to a year, and phase III is multiple years. There’s likely administrative delays between the steps as you line up participants. 

 

“There is no typical length of time it takes for a drug to be tested and approved. It might take 10 to 15 years or more to complete all 3 phases of clinical trials before the licensing stage. But this time span varies a lot.”

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/find-a-clinical-trial/how-clinical-trials-are-planned-and-organised/how-long-it-takes-for-a-new-drug-to-go-through-clinical-trials

[studiot]

48 minutes ago, swansont said:

Years. You also have to determine the proper dose; each early step might test for 6 months to a year, and phase III is multiple years. There’s likely administrative delays between the steps as you line up participants. 

 

“There is no typical length of time it takes for a drug to be tested and approved. It might take 10 to 15 years or more to complete all 3 phases of clinical trials before the licensing stage. But this time span varies a lot.”

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/find-a-clinical-trial/how-clinical-trials-are-planned-and-organised/how-long-it-takes-for-a-new-drug-to-go-through-clinical-trials

It isn't only drugs that should be considered.

So I don't know if the FDA is the only or appropriate body to be considered.

 

Many substances, common in the past, have since been found to be carcinogenic.

 

My toothpaste example is one such, another would be Benzene, another would be AMC (since we are talking in journalistic acronyms)  or Amyl Meta Cresol.

[CharonY]

3 hours ago, nec209 said:

Is it the FDA approval some thing like 5 or 8 years. So when study shows awesome results in mice than have to go to the FDA for drug approval time some thing like 5 or 8 years to do testing on people. Before the drug it is out?

 

Most you see in popular press is overhyped. There are few examples of truly awesome results. Almost all of them are preliminary with moderate to low effect sizes. And this is even without the very important issue that others have pointed out: animal models are always very limited.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Years. You also have to determine the proper dose; each early step might test for 6 months to a year, and phase III is multiple years. There’s likely administrative delays between the steps as you line up participants. 

 

“There is no typical length of time it takes for a drug to be tested and approved. It might take 10 to 15 years or more to complete all 3 phases of clinical trials before the licensing stage. But this time span varies a lot.”

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/find-a-clinical-trial/how-clinical-trials-are-planned-and-organised/how-long-it-takes-for-a-new-drug-to-go-through-clinical-trials

And companies also always have to figure out how much they want to invest into a given trial. In many cases they rather fund multiple phase II rather than recruiting over a 1,000 folks in one go, just to see whether it is worthwhile. For some diseases, it is not feasible to get a large group of participants. And in some rare cases the drug or therapy is so expensive that having hundreds of treatments at the same time are not going to happen.

Very little of it is down to regulation, as certain folks like to claim. More important are aspects of cost and feasibility. The COVID-19 vaccines were developed fairly quickly as a) a lot of money was invested so that folks did Phase 2/3 essentially simultaneously, b) the vaccines were easy to produce and c) so many people got infected (which is necessary to assess vaccine efficacy) that they were able to get a sufficiently large infected cohort very quickly.

Cancer, on the other hand is very difficult to treat for a many of reasons, typical drugs have to be toxic, so a lot is aimed at targeted delivery, others like immune therapies have to customized for each patient and so on. And in cases the challenge is to damage just the right cells, which is incredibly difficult. Even just cutting them out can leave cells behind that then start proliferating,so folks need to undergo toxic treatments to kill cancer more efficiently than themselves. Under these conditions, it is easy to see why no one has really fund a magic bullet yet.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

It isn't only drugs that should be considered.

So I don't know if the FDA is the only or appropriate body to be considered.

 

Many substances, common in the past, have since been found to be carcinogenic.

 

My toothpaste example is one such, another would be Benzene, another would be AMC (since we are talking in journalistic acronyms)  or Amyl Meta Cresol.

I recall something from long ago called the GRAS list - Generally Recognized As Safe (in the US)

https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/generally-recognized-safe-gras

I think older substances were grandfathered in, if they’d been used for a long time with no known issues. But newer additives had to undergo safety studies

[nec209]

Well it is worse.

Approximately 40.5% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2017–2019 data).

 

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics#:~:text=Approximately%2040.5%25%20of%20men%20and,will%20die%20of%20the%20disease

 

 

Edited August 11 by nec209

[swansont]

32 minutes ago, nec209 said:

Well it is worse.

Worse than what?

32 minutes ago, nec209 said:

Approximately 40.5% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2017–2019 data).

If people died of a heart attack when they’re 50, they don’t have as much of a chance to get cancer. But if they avoid or survive that heart attack, which happens more these days, they can subsequently get cancer.

All statistics have to be assessed with the understanding that overall mortality is always going to be 100%. If one number goes down, another one has to go up.

[TheVat]

 Given the baby boom in the US, and that cohort at retirement age, and the prevalence of cancers that first manifest in a body with an aging immune system, the cancer rates should be expected to go up.  Especially if there is an overall increase in immune system disorders in the population.  Which there is.  We live in a sea of immune disrupters.  A weakened immune system doesn't handle neoplasmic cells as well.