Dear pacifiers
The results of a new study have shown that approximately 50% of new cancer drugs are useless
Maxim Agadzhanov, Geektimes
Cancer is a terrible disease. This term refers to a large number of oncological diseases, some of which are treatable.
Pharmaceutical companies are constantly working, trying to put effective cancer treatments on the market.
Nevertheless, so far it turns out so-so. Yes, the media often claim breakthroughs of various kinds, but in fact many of them do not work.
During the period from 2009 to 2013, the European Medical Agency approved 48 different medicines intended for use in 68 different situations. Nevertheless, a study conducted to clarify the effect of such drugs on the course of treatment of the disease or the quality of life of the patient showed that about half of the new drugs are simply ineffective.
10% of the drugs that participated in the study were effective only for improving the patient's quality of life. And 57% of the drugs turned out to be useless – they did not give either a therapeutic effect or an improvement in the quality of life.
Hussey Nasi, one of the study participants, stated the following: "We wanted to get evidence that cancer drugs that are already on the market really have a therapeutic effect or prolong the life of patients." Of course, in the course of such a study, you cannot look at the patient and immediately decide whether the medicine helped him or not. Scientists studied the medical histories of people for a period of 2-3 years, and after that they already concluded about the effectiveness of drugs. As mentioned above, half of these drugs are simply useless. Perhaps, in the course of clinical trials, they gave some effect, but for some reason such drugs did not have a therapeutic effect.
Nasi stated that he was surprised by the fact that his team was the first to decide to start studying this issue, because the problem is really important. Drugs that help cancer patients cope with the disease or at least slow down its development should be extremely effective. But in fact, this does not happen. All this surprised the researchers very much: "It is difficult to understand why half of the drugs approved by the agency do not show any clinical picture." Worst of all, some drugs were approved by the regulator even before evidence of their effectiveness was received.
According to oncology specialists who have read the research results, this work raises the question of the need to conduct these clinical trials for each individual drug. By the way, in Finland, patients can request the provision of promising medicines that have passed preliminary clinical trials, but data on their effectiveness is still being collected. This is, in general, a conscious choice of the patient. But the fact that medicines that have already passed the approval procedure and entered the market do not manifest themselves at all is a serious flaw of regulators and pharmacists themselves.
One of the negative consequences of this situation is that patients who use ineffective medications could use other methods of treatment and medications if they knew that the medications they are currently taking are useless. And so people, in fact, only harm themselves, while pharmaceutical companies make huge profits. At the same time, some of the drugs are simply toxic (which should affect the rate of tumor development or its size), so if the drug is ineffective, the patient's body is harmed – the disease also develops due to the fact that the drug gradually weakens the person.
Sooner or later, doctors can still find a really effective medicine. Maybe someone has already done it. For example, last year it was reported on Geektimes that German scientists have created a universal vaccine that can cope with a number of oncological diseases. The first tests of this vaccine have already been carried out, which proved its effectiveness – the patient's body showed resistance to cancer cells. Currently, cancer vaccines are used to maintain the health of patients who are in remission after successful treatment.
"We know that the immune system has a huge potential to fight cancer cells, so we have been funding research in this direction for 15 years. And there are already amazing new results of work that give hope that a vaccine based on nanoparticles with RNA will work exactly this way," said Helen Rippon, director of Worldwide Cancer Research.
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