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Comment by ngriffiths | Hacker News Reader

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ngriffiths

IN MICE. (To be fair, also IN SOME OTHER BETTER MICE).

https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598...

(mostly a joke, but I'd be in favor of adding context to the HN headline if possible)

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This context is very important.

"Little by little, over-inflated results and breathless breakthroughs betray trust. They throwing dimes in a wishing well which people rapidly start to expect will never pay compound interest."

"Then, when one of those people is elected to parliament, or Congress, and start to cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, or declares that All Research Should Be In The National Interest (whatever that is), I wonder how much we reap what we have sown."

This isn't quite as bad as the garden variety "in mice" studies:

> The combination therapy also led to significant regression in genetically engineered mouse tumours and in human cancer tissues grown in lab mice, known as patient-derived tumour xenografts (PDX).

PDX is a double edged sword. Human tumors are engrafted into mice with no immune system. Immune-cancer interface is incredibly important, yet completely lacking in these models. Consider that some of the greatest cancer drugs ever work specifically on the immune system (e.g. checkpoint inhibitors like Keytruda).

A drug that works even without help from the immune system seems like it might be even better. It's hard to imagine how the immune system might interfere, since it doesn't interfere with other drugs.

>"The combination therapy also led to significant regression in genetically engineered mouse tumours and in human cancer tissues grown in lab mice"

Required XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/

Is PDX considered to be illegitimate? Would be curious to know if prior studies that showed success with PDX methods ultimately resulted in useful therapeutics.

Vorinostat

I wonder how long until we'll start seeing these breakthrough cancer treatment articles for clinical trials done in dogs. Oncologists think dog research is a better fit than mice because of greater genetic similarities to humans and the fact that pet dogs live in similar environments as their owners. I think in general people definitely wouldn't be as ok with inducing cancer in dogs as in mice, but finding volunteers owners of dogs with existing cancer is certainly easier.

That's interesting because rodents and apes share a more recent common ancestor (75Mya) than dogs and apes (85 Mya).

I used to work at a biomedical institution that did cancer treatment experiments on dogs. There was basically a kennel and periodically they would take a dog and irradiate it.

That was fine in the abstract, but there were computational labs above the kennel and periodically you'd just get this huge outporing of dogs barking and howling and it was really hard to get any work done.

Mice have the best drugs.

Also the worst. You win some, you lose some.

There really has never been a better time to be a critically-ill mouse. They've got something for you.

I opened the comments fully expecting the top reply to be “In mice.” Bingo.

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