be cautiously optimistic. It's real research that has worked in animal models. It remains to be seen whether it will be as effective in humans.
Additionally, shrinking a tumour is a long way from a cure.
For example - The drug Ipilimumab (melanoma) was shown in clinical trials to increase median survival from 6.4 months to 10 months. Some people may have disease-free recurrence for significantly longer than they would have, some may actually be 'cured' (Disease-free survival for 5 years is a fairly standard medical definition of 'cure'), others die at the same time, or a week, or a month, later than they would have anyway.
For all of these drugs, there is no magic bullet, the tumour will evolve around the mechanism.. My understanding of the subject (final year medical student) has lead me to believe that an immunological approach will be best (See my post which links to a nejm article further down the page)
hey robbie, i am working on a crowd sourced site to find evidence based treatment options for a disease. i would like to get feedback from you as you are a med student. would you reach out? my contact is my uesrname at gmail
For example - The drug Ipilimumab (melanoma) was shown in clinical trials to increase median survival from 6.4 months to 10 months. Some people may have disease-free recurrence for significantly longer than they would have, some may actually be 'cured' (Disease-free survival for 5 years is a fairly standard medical definition of 'cure'), others die at the same time, or a week, or a month, later than they would have anyway.
For all of these drugs, there is no magic bullet, the tumour will evolve around the mechanism.. My understanding of the subject (final year medical student) has lead me to believe that an immunological approach will be best (See my post which links to a nejm article further down the page)
hope this helps your understanding