Folding Forum

Here is a New York Post article about a possible cure for all types of cancers. It states that researchers at Stanford have found a drug that blocks a protein called CD47 that cancer cells use to basically hide from the bodies immune system.

I'm wondering if Folding@Home had anything to do with this finding. If so, and if this actually does work then all I can say is wow... just wow. It would be truly amazing if this was a cure and it was found because of all the work this distributed computing group has done.


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/internatio ... S848cSzqbP

I don't think it had anything to do with this discovery.

I'd also like to point out the sensationalism going on in the media here, I don't think this is a "holy grail" for cancer, or a full blown cure. It still has a long way to go before it can be used in humans, but it has shown promising initial trials.

Yeah, my first reaction to the article was "this hyperbole seems a little premature". But that's the media for you.

Hopefully it's an improvement, maybe F@H can help in understanding the mechanics of what's going on with the antibody, but until it's gone through human testing and been proven then we can start counting our chickens.

Definately remarkable, but it needs more research: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... umors.html

SodaAnt wrote:I'd also like to point out the sensationalism going on in the media here, I don't think this is a "holy grail" for cancer, or a full blown cure. It still has a long way to go before it can be used in humans, but it has shown promising initial trials.

This is exactly what it is. Saying "cure for cancer" is like saying "ending world hunger". Cancer is a huge, overreaching catagory for a certain type of disease, but it is so varied that a chemical that can "cure" one cancer is most likely going to be completely useless or another kind of cancer.

Just look at penicillin. It was hailed as the cure for all bacterial disease, but just look at where we are now.

And there are multiple types of cancer, and many factors and difficult molecular processes that can lead to "cancer" which is indeed a very broad term. As SodaAnt and k1wi said, the media tends to exaggerate things, and this is why I like to find the original peer-reviewed source if at all possible. Honestly, the discoveries announced in scientific journals can be just as exciting, if not more so, than than announcements from the media, because journal articles are peer-reviewed and tend to concentrate on facts and data. Thus, any exciting news there is news that's worth getting excited about.