closer look
Radiopharmaceuticals are booming
Mike Reddy for STAT
Here's the idea behind radiopharmaceuticals: Make more effective and widely applicable treatments that deliver toxic radiation specifically to cancer cells. It's an approach that drug companies have tried — and failed with — before, but in 2017 and 2018, Novartis spent roughly $6 billion to acquire two startups in the field. One drug from Novartis's investment, Pluvicto, is on track to become a blockbuster for its success against prostate cancer. And there are now 75 radiopharmaceutical startups in the U.S., with large financing rounds to keep them going.
"It's going to be another arrow in the quiver," Chad Tang, associate professor of radiation oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told STAT's Allison DeAngelis of the potential impact on cancer patients. Radiopharmaceuticals are made by fusing radiation-emitting molecules called isotopes with a targeting molecule that steers the radiation to microscopic bull's-eyes on cancer cells. Read more, including a look at the manufacturing and distribution intricacies companies are facing.
health
Antimicrobial resistance is deadly and under the radar
We should all be very concerned about antimicrobial resistance, according to a panel gathered yesterday at the Milken Institute's Future of Health Summit in Washington, D.C. AMR is a leading cause of death worldwide, killing 1.2 million people a year; almost 50,000 people in the U.S. died of AMR infections in 2019.
Yet only 52% of adults around the world have heard of AMR, STAT's Annalisa Merelli tells us. Even patients with infections may not be informed about what type of infections they have or presented with treatment options. Physicians often have to make decisions without sufficient diagnostics to help them choose what antibiotics to use.
"There is a branding issue with AMR," Gunnar Esiason, a cystic fibrosis and rare disease patient advocate, said at the summit. Ignorance of the issue is made worse by a lack of research funding — in 2020, $160 million was invested in AMR research, compared to $27 billion in oncology.
cancer
Healthy tissue near a tumor may hold answers to lung cancer's return
Lung cancer is the deadliest form of cancer in the U.S. When treated early with surgery, a form called lung adenocarcinoma still comes back in 3 out of 10 patients. Predicting who will do well and who won't hasn't worked, despite attempts to map tumors' genomic landscape. A paper published today in Nature Communications reports more success when looking not at the tumor, but at nearby normal tissue to find predictors of cancer progression.
The researchers studied 147 people treated for early-stage lung cancer. After analyzing their transcriptomes — all the RNA molecules that instruct cells which proteins to make — they found that RNA from tissue near tumor cells accurately predicted cancer recurrence 83% of the time, while RNA from tumors themselves did so 63% of the time. Genes associated with inflammation were particularly good signals, hinting that escaped tumor cells might trigger an immune response in adjacent tissue and suggesting more aggressive treatment might be appropriate.
On this week's First Opinion podcast, Editor Torie Bosch talks with emergency physicians Utsha Khatri and Brooks Walsh about retiring the diagnosis "excited delirium." Listen here.
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