• Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    2 年前

    The vaccine works by instructing the body to make up to 34 “neoantigens.” These are proteins found only on the cancer cells, and Moderna personalizes the vaccine for each recipient so that it carries instructions for the neoantigens on their cancer cells.

    That’s pretty dope

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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        2 年前

        I wonder if, even at this early stage of the therapy’s development, this would actually be more affordable than the alternative.

        Melanoma patients are highly likely to have the cancer come back and or metastasize. Repeat treatments and hospitalizations are not cheap.

        • Overzeetop@lemmy.world
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          2 年前

          Which is why the Moderna vaccine will be priced at just 95% of the cost of the repeat treatments and hospitalization plus the value of the time saved and pain and suffering avoidance by the patient. Say, an extra half a million. I mean, what price would you put on avoiding seeing your parent or child subjected to round after round of chemotherapy?

      • CarrotBottom@lemmy.ml
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        2 年前

        It’ll be reasonably expensive, but sequencing and gene alteration is way cheaper than in needs to be.

        If this can actually cure cancers, it may even be worth it.

        The thing is, surely there’s antibody against cancer antigens anyway, in ordinary cancer. A cancer cell expresses epitopes not on healthy cells.

        Why is this better?

        • qarbone@lemmy.world
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          2 年前

          but sequencing and gene alteration is way cheaper than in[sic] needs to be.

          …what? this sounds like you’re advocating for price increases.

          • CarrotBottom@lemmy.ml
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            2 年前

            Oops, new to Lemmy. But not new to typing, so no excuse.

            I meant than “it used to be”.

            I blame autocorrect.

    • oakey66@lemmy.world
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      2 年前

      Personalized medicine is a way to rob you blind. Drugs cost unreal money. So does the hospital administration.

        • oakey66@lemmy.world
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          2 年前

          I worked for one the first hospitals that was doing genomic testing for oncology patients in the U.S. I am not advocating against genomic testing or precision medicine, but Amerisource Bergen, (at the time) McKesson, and the sales people at the manufacturer were licking their chops at the thought of precision medicine. It was extremely lucrative for some improvements on QoL. I sincerely hope that it’s not cost prohibitive to patients and results in breakthroughs in treatment. But I did watch as a lung cancer drug was administered to patients at the cost of 250k per treatment. I don’t remember how many treatments there were but the cost was insane. The US system of healthcare is absolutely broken and I believe there’s a study that particularly evaluated cancer as a major cause of families depleting whatever savings they had within a couple years of being diagnosed. This is an indictment of the whole system. Not the efficacy of the drugs.