[extropy-chat] generic curation rates infosite?

[Avatar Polymorph]

A personal anecdote... when going to have my check-up at hospital I showed the article below to the registrar I was seeing (a person of a very conservative bent in tech) and asked what he thought. He said it meant nothing because "mice are very easy to cure". (Of course other species have very different reactions to each other and humans in experiments.) His attitude (as usual) was that nothing was changing. I would say, however, that over 2/3rds of hospital doctors I have met are aware of change and want to accelerate it. (One only has to think of patients with MS who are approaching dying.)

Does anyone know of a website or think tank that measures cures of major human diseases and illnesses over the last century or more generally? (I have read, for example, that cancer cures at five years after onset of cancer have reached over 50% compared to 33% in the 1970s, in the west. Wired magazine has predicted major cancer "curation" within ten years. My own prediction is 6 years for major advances, 2015 for youthful appearance.)

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TARGET: ROGUE IMMUNE CELLS

Technology Review Sept 2003


DNA-derived vaccine advances on MS


Drugs for autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis provide relief from symptoms but don't address causes. Researchers now hope to change that with an emerging class of vaccines made from DNA that shut down the immune cells that go awry in these diseases. Early results have been so promising that human trials for the first treatment-a multiple sclerosis therapy that made paralyzed mice walk again-will begin early next year.


In MS patients, rogue immune cells attack the nerve covering called the myelin sheath, leading to numbness, weakness, cognitive problems, and eventually paralysis. There's no existing cure; a leading drug, called beta-interferon, regulates the immune system to reduce the severity of attacks but can carry severe side effects. "Treatments today for these types of autoimmune diseases are basically blunt instruments," says John Walker, CEO of Bayhill Therapeutics, the Palo Alto, CA, startup developing these DNA vaccines. "We're interested in taking much more of a rifle-shot approach."


Two engineered DNA molecules make up the vaccine; both are taken up by specialized "first responder" immune cells, which are thus transformed into MS-fighting machines. One DNA molecule encodes a protein found in the myelin sheath; the first-responders make this protein, which acts as bait for the rogue immune cells. Once this trap is sprung, the second DNA molecule goes to work. It encodes a protein that switches the rogue cells from a destructive mode to a protective mode.


Lawrence Steinman, the Stanford University Medical Center immunologist and neurologist who developed the approach and cofounded Bayhill, says the strategy has dramatically reduced the severity of the disease in mice-and even made paralyzed mice walk again. "There isn't a mouse we haven't cured," Steinman says. "Now the issue is, can we translate this into man?"


With 350,000 people suffering from MS in the United States alone, that is a critical question. To begin answering it, the company has raised $14.5 million in its first round of financing and plans to begin human trials of the MS vaccine in early 2004. If all goes well, a vaccine could reach patients in about seven years.


Once the technology is proved in humans, Bayhill plans to develop treatments for other autoimmune diseases. Indeed, the same basic approach has met with success in mouse models of rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. New studies are testing whether it may even be possible to reverse existing joint damage. Vijay Kuchroo, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School, believes DNA vaccination "has broad applications" for autoimmune diseases. "I think it has a great future," he says. While that remains to be seen, the root causes of autoimmune diseases are in researchers' rifle sights. -Erika Jonietz

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