No. Sorry. A lot of papers have been reporting work by Dr Justin Stebbing at Imperial College, London. He works on microRNAs and thinks that cures based on this research are possible in the next couple of years. I don’t agree. MicroRNAs are fascinating but there are very, very few drugs aimed at them. New drugs take a long time to develop and even longer to make sure they are safe. Much as I would like to see a micro RNA cure for cancer in the next two years I don’t think it is going to happen.
What do other people think of this research?
Everything I’ve read says this is first class, fascinating research, which is technically very difficult to do. This work is not “voodoo”, if you are a laboratory based scientist it is a great read. If you are a GP treating people with cancer on a day to day basis, it is interesting science but it will NOT change how you treat your patients.
One of the best discussions I have come across is on a blog called “Respectful Insolence” – Scientists are only two years away from developing a cure for breast cancer? This blog is written by an American breast cancer surgeon with an interest in science, in particular microRNAs. He gives an up to date and detailed discussion of the experiments.
As you would expect both Cancer Research UK and NHS choices have written about this story, called “Two years from breast cancer cure – What’s the story?” and “Key breast cancer molecule found“ respectively. Both these articles provide background information on the science, the scientists involved and links to the original research.
I have previously written about microRNAs on this website (see November 2008 microRNAs and cancer) and the difficulties of developing new drugs (see July 2009 In the Pipeline – How do you find new drugs?)
If you have cancer right now, what does it mean for you?
Your treatment will not change as a result of this research, it could easily be another decade before this sort of treatment will be used in the clinic and even then it is unlikely to be widely available (for instance, it might only be available to a few people taking part in a clinical research trial). So what is the point? This is completely new research, 5 years ago we didn’t even know this stuff existed, it is important, it is just going to take time to work out the details. It is great that such cutting edge research is taking place in the UK and this WILL be a good thing in the future. We need research like this today to find cures tomorrow. Sadly, we are not there yet.
If you are more impressed with the images than the text “
I am actually a patient of Dr Stebbing. As I understand it they have a stage 1 trial going on already, so maybe they are closer than you think.