Many drugs are doomed to fail from the beginning; a Darwin’s Principle

VascodaGama

For the many concerned with the hormonal treatment, I decided to add this thread because I think it to be important in the context of the modality “continuous VZ intermittent”, which was discussed in Ira’s previous thread “Intermittent Hormone Therapy Fails the Test”; (http://csn.cancer.org/node/241249).
Surely my insistence has no intention in recommending to my comrades one to the other approach but to inform on my researches implicating the matter.

It seems that many of the drugs we take with targeted intent are doomed to fail latter and the cause can be assumed/verified before start taking them. This may include the cases of the 5-ARI such as Avodart and Finasteride taken by many on Active Surveillance as a preventive drug. FDA refused their approval in the treatment of PCa because of the many cases found latter to have increased malignancy in terms of higher gleason grades. It is simple; the drug was overpowered by our genes regulating the cells survival. Only the ones with the gene managed to cause the treatment to fail. The others died and in consequence the millions making the present tumour classify it as of higher grade/aggressiveness.
Probably taking the drugs intermittently at least one may expect better outcomes.

I recall an interesting thread posted in this forum in February 2011 where I laid down my opinion on hormonal treatments modalities, particularly with regards to the “Intermittent”.
(http://csn.cancer.org/node/213002#comment-1013947)
Our friend Bob (ob66), a physician, was incredible inquisitive on my approach until I placed a reference to Darwin’s principle on “natural selection”.

My predictions were not that erroneous. A study done to check on this theory confirms the reason of failure of drugs’ treatments. The outstanding results are that a single targeted drug is doomed to fail from the very first start. In fact scientists suggest using at least a compound of two drugs (addressing the same problem but not superimposing) to assure better effective outcomes from treatments.

Here is the study abstract;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19887072

Here is the article “Darwin’s Principles Say Cancer Will Always Evolve to Resist Treatment”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120621101905.htm

I am hopeful for better understanding on the disease and a quick discovery of a bullet that kills the beast.

Best to all.

VGama

ralph.townsend1

Lupron and Zytiga
VGama, I ask My Doctor from MD Anderson about going intermittently on lupron, since the Zytiga was working. He was very firm about staying on lupron and that the lupron was effective against the PC. At same time he said that Zytiga and lupron will fail in time(sooner than later), and there will be something to take its place! hopefully.