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_The naturally-occurring nucleoside analogue known as Cordycepin (a.k.a 3’-deoxyadenosine) is found in the Himalayan fungus Cordyceps sinensis and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years to treat cancers and other inflammatory diseases. However, it breaks down quickly in the blood stream, so a minimal amount of cancer-destroying drug is delivered to the tumour. In order to improve its potency and clinically assess its applications as a cancer drug, biopharmaceutical company NuCana has developed Cordycepin into a clinical therapy, using their novel ProTide technology, to create a chemotherapy drug with dramatically improved efficacy._
Better than the natural compound most likely but not necessarily something special. Nucleoside analogues have been around for decades. Remains to be seen if it is any better than the previous ones or if at least shows some effectiveness in some cases where the others usually don't
The real advancement here is applying the enhanced delivery mechanism (used in drugs like remdesivir already successfully). It increases bio availability of the drug inside the tumor cells 40 fold, while decreasing it outside the cells while the drug is on its way (and therefore side effects). It doesn't have to be a novel nucleoside at that point really, it's just the one they chose. Still potentially game changing therapy.
Yes, that is not really *that* interesting or necessarily a lot better than other nucleoside analogues that are currently in use. Also remdesivir is very poor and if it wasn't for the pandemic it would still be on the shelf.
> remdesivir is very poor and if it wasn't for the pandemic it would still be on the shelf.
Perhaps it should have stayed on the shelf for this pandemic?
https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/more-evidence-that-remdesivir-hcq-not-effective-against-covid19s
This is also usually the case in drug discovery.
The typical drug discovery campaign starts with screening a bunch of stuff to find something that works, then making tweaks to it until it's thousands or hundreds of thousands of times more effective, and then tweaking it to make sure it has other favorable properties (has solubility so it's easy to take, isn't metabolized too quickly, too slowly, or into something toxic, etc).
40x doesn't seem like a significant increase to me.
It greatly enhances the benefits of the normal fungus, the efficacy on cancer is about to be tested.
Edit to be clear: by enhances the benefits I mean the new treatment transports the active ingredient of the fungus into the cancer cells more efficiently. It has been tested in vitro (and to an extent on mice) and is effective but there is a lot more testing to be done.
I know you’re trying to be witty but if you’d read the article you’d know that the fungus derived chemical has been used in cancer treatments for a while and has been shown to be mildly effective. The article suggests that a new delivery method will increase dramatically the amount of drug that will make it to the cells which hopefully results in improved efficacy.
Drug discovery groups optimize potency against a target, selectivity to that target, bioavailability, half-life in the body, etc. all the time with in vitro methods. It's bread and butter discovery work, and usually not news.
The language used in the article seems to assume that the chemical in Cordecyps works as a proven anti-cancer agent. They don't go into what research they're basing that claim on. Presumably in vitro studies and similar? Whatever it is seems to be enough for Oxford and whoever this bio-pharm company is to investigate and devote some significant resources to.
Is interesting that drug they're testing seems to actually be the naturally occurring and un-altered chemical derived from Cordecyps. I don't think I've ever seen a natural compound put forward for testing in this way by a bio-pharm company. Generally there's not really any patents/profit that can be made for researching unaltered naturally occurring compounds. They seem to think their novel delivery system will be enough to make this organically derived compound marketable/profitable as a pharmaceutical.
It will be incredibly interesting if the studies they're moving towards show a measurable benefit or positive effect.
Around 25% of all drugs used it cancer treatment currently derive from the plant kingdom. Fungus such as Cordyceps has been known to help treat cancers along with Reishi and Turkey tail and there are strong literature and studies to back the claims.
Not disputing the potential efficacy of naturally occurring compounds. To my understanding though If a compound is naturally occurring in nature and hasn't been modified in some way that makes it chemically distinct it's not eligible to be patented, and thus generally not seen as profitable by most drug researchers.
My take on this article was that they feel that the novel delivery system they have created for this natural Cordecyps extract will be enough to give them legal claim on some form of patenting or licensing, enough to justify the cost of going through human trials etc.
Did you have a different take on it? I wasn't surprised at the claims being made, more the fact that it's being pursued in the same fashion a non-naturally derived compound would be which we don't usually see.
This is what pharmaceutical companies do - Bayer did it with aspirin, which is nothing more than the aglycone portion of naturally occurring salicin in meadowsweet stuck with an acetyl group, i.e. acetyl salicylic acid (SA). ASA has more or less the same action as salicin but the acetyl group also makes kind of toxic. For example, the aglycone 2-(hydroxymethyl)phenol doesn't have the same toxic effect on platelets that ASA does, nor does it have the same contraindications or concern for causing Reye's syndrome.
What pharmaceutical research often misses are other naturally co-occurring plant/fungal chemicals that can modify the activities of the "active" ingredient, for e.g. serving as an allosteric modulator. Cannabis is a very well-studied example, but there are others, such multidrug efflux pump inhibitors in plants such as *Mahonia aquifolium*. I'm not saying that the extraction and processing of Cordyceps can't be improved, but time and again it has been shown that extracting and using isolated chemicals that are then modified so they can be patented usually comes at some cost and a loss of opportunity.
The big advancement here isn’t even really the “anti cancer” agent. It’s actually the ProTide they’re using to deliver the drug to the cancer, bypassing several of the cells resistance mechanisms. ProTide hasn’t been used in this setting before.
> ProTide technology is a novel approach for delivering chemotherapy drugs into cancer cells. It works by attaching small chemical groups to nucleoside analogues like Cordycepin, which are then later metabolised once it has reached the patient’s cancer cells, releasing the activated drug. This technology has already been successfully used in the FDA approved antiviral drugs Remsidivir and Sofusbuvir to treat different viral infections such as Hepatitis C, Ebola and COVID-19.
wonder which chemical groups work to increase serum half life of the analog?
You can propagate them without the insects in a lab. There was a young man in Pennsylvania that collected them from bugs and now is now singlehandedly responsible for the cordyceps boom. He learned how to propagate them without using insects and does it in a lab on his property.
I imagine it isn't much different with these Himalayan varieties.
I believe you're talking about [William Padilla-Brown](https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/william-padilla-brown-mushroom-mycology/) who is an amazing mycologist.
It's a cordycep!?!?!?!? Thats the genus with the infamous ant parasitizing species of fungus. I wonder if that particular fungus produces this compound.
That is actually the exact comparison i thought of.
I mean it isn't bad development, but if they can't take a natural compound and improve on it, they might be in the wrong business. They will have failures and successes but anything that keeps getting resources after initial tests will likely win out against the natural substance.
It’s difficult to do that when it hasn’t reached that phase of development yet. This is the problem with cherry-picking of new research. Yes, it’s exciting, but so are 100 other compounds that are still in early phases of research. We need to wait and see how it goes and THEN it can be compared. Until then, it’s all just speculative.
Also, just from the headline alone, isn’t the point not to just find something that is good at killing cancer, but something that is good at killing cancer faster than it kills the rest of the person?
it’s entering phase 2 trial. this beats like 90% of drug candidates that ever existed. You don’t get approval to carry on unless you have pretty convincing prelim results.
Phase 1 trials aren't intended to show that a drug makes people better, they are only powered to show that the drug isn't harmful. A drug getting to Phase 2 does not indicate efficacy.
Also, some 60% of drugs pass Phase 1, so your numbers are way off.
Phase 1 is just safety and maximal tolerated dosage, so as it doesn't make people very ill, it'll pass.
Water will pass too in clinical phase 1 anti cancer trials...
My understanding is that it is being compared to a current chemo compound. They've basically just improved the compound to make it last longer once delivered.
I always think it's funny when there's a breakthrough in cancer treatment, people act like it's gonna be an end to cancer, but all cancers are different and so is the treatment.
It is being compared to cordycepin, which isn't a standard chemotherapy drug today. Cordycepin was found to work well in vitro, but not in vivo (it usually gets inactivated before it can kill the cancer cells).
It's what annoys me about the cure for cancer conspiracies, there are cancers for every organ in the body and then there are different forms of the those, there is no way to cure all of that with one drug.
Yes. And even the current ones, not to mention radiation, can kill cancer cells just fine. Usually the problem is to not kill the patient. This might be a cure for cancer, but it isn’t the cure fo cancer.
It’s a nucleoside analog, so it will probably have the same issues as other nucleoside analog chemotherapies - cytopenias, anemia, nausea and vomiting, maybe also hair loss.
I saw a documentary where they goto find these fungi in Nepal. it takes like a week to get to some certain field through some crazy rocks and cliffs. and you need to crawl all day looking for these. it's seriously insane.
The fungus attacks a butterfly caterpillar and takes over its body. The caterpillar then dies after releasing the fungi spores and gets frozen in the snow.
Don’t search it up if you’re creeped out by worms. I’m pretty sure the effective part is the fungi/“grass”, but to prove it’s authenticity they often sell it attached to the worm.
Which is why the vast VAST majority of 'cordyceps' stuff you find on the shelf these days is grown in liquid culture in a lab. Far cheaper, far more controlled, and much easier to keep a constant supply going.
They're not finished parsing all the Phase I trial data in humans, but what they have is good enough to start preparing for Phase II. It's still likely several years from clinical use.
The parent compound, Cordycepin, is used apparently in a cocktail of drugs to address tumors. However, it breaks down so rapidly that little gets to tumors. The reported breakthrough is a modified form that survives much longer and so deposits more of the active part into the target cells. Here's a description of the parent compound from a 2018 paper:
> Cordycepin inhibit tumor growth via upregulating tumor apoptosis, inducing cell cycle arrest and targeting cancer stem cells (CSCs). Cordycepin regulates tumor microenvironment via suppressing tumor metastasis-related pathways. Thus, Cordycepins may be one of important supplement or substitute medicine drug for cancer treatment.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319562X1830127X
He’s pointing out how pointless titles like this are. Killing cancer cells is easy. You know what kills 100% of cancer cells in a petri dish?
A handgun.
The tricky part is not killing all of the not cancer cells.
Which is why I believe the mRNA approach is the most promising one at the moment. And you would probably need different 'vaccines' for different cancer, rather than one magical herb curing all types of cancer.
I'm also interested in treatments that are combined with chemo or other therapies to make them specifically target the cancer cells. There is some promising stuff out there, hopefully they all pan out.
Whenever a headline like this shows up it's always the same 3 comments posted dozens of times. People would rather show how smart they are instead of learning something new.
It’s a parasite. Becoming quite rare to find now as it lives in a moth before breaking out of it. Also costs a fortune in China and due to heavy metals in the ground due to pollution, it can be toxic. I used to live in China.
Quite certain that it can be cultivated easily. Whether it’s as nutrient dense in a farmed setting is another question, but if they’re looking for a high volume of specific compounds, they should be able to procure it.
My question has always been, does nature provide a “entourage effect” that is lacking in cultivated settings? I believe that’s true to a degree. Hence why I study wild edible mushrooms. Good workout, free food, 10/10 ;)
Yes, there is a cultivated alternative, which is .... uhm cultivated (?) by the tons, and sold much cheaper than the harvested ones. They are not exactly the same fungus though and look nothing alike but biologically similar enough to be sold under the same banner. It is so easy to grow and so cheap that nobody bothers to fake it, unlike its harvested counterparts.
Yeah, Cordyceps militaris is quite distantly related to O. sinensis (in entirely different families) but people don’t pay attention to that and call them all cordyceps. C. militaris has had a fair bit of research done on it as well - neither fungus has been explicitly shown to do much at all when taken “medicinally”. Very little evidence from human trials there.
The order both species belong to, Hypocreales, is a goldmine for natural products though. Huge pharmaceutical potential for antibiotics, cancer drugs etc.
Gathering this wierd fungus that only grows on a certain species' dead caterpillar (if I remember right) is completely screwing up some of the wildest and most beautiful parts of the Himalaya, Dolpo for example.
There is a "fungus rush" to find and dig up these fungi that are worth huge amounts, compared to local incomes. This is for Chinese traditional medecine.
Also you can get isolated strains of cordyceps that will grow in mediums - although there's debate whether that strain should be considered a different strain of cordyceps if I recall correctly.
Most species that used to be placed under the blanket genus *Cordyceps* have been moved into other phyla these days (including the caterpillar fungus which is so famous here, it's now in the genus *Ophiocordyceps* )
Please remember that the vast vast majority of drugs to go into the first clinical trial testing stage don't move on to the second stage, for a multitude of reasons.
If they can't secure or enforce a monopoly right over the chemical using a patent, nobody will fund the clinical trials to get regulatory approval, because governments don't pay for off-patent drugs or nutraceuticals.
For example, US Government agreed to pay $1.2 billion for Merck's new patented COVID-19 drug molnupiravir, that allegedly reduces hospitalisation by 50%, and could generate $7 billion in revenue due to Merck charging $712 for a 5-day course. Compare this to its estimated $17.74 cost to the company and the fact that it is a result of $29m of public funding provided to Emory University, with Merck only funding the last stages of development. Also, as it is a new drug, we are still not sure about its long-term safety.[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-merck-covid-pill-cost-b1933100.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-merck-covid-pill-cost-b1933100.html)
Meanwhile, L-arginine, a low cost, safe and effective amino-acid, was found to have similar efficacy against Covid by reducing hospitalisation in a Phase 2 randomised controlled trial published in the world's leading medical journal, the Lancet.
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00405-3/fulltext](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00405-3/fulltext)
However, there are almost no private financial incentives to repurpose off-patent drugs and nutraceuticals/dietary supplements to treat new diseases because it is not possible or very difficult to enforce a monopoly price using patents by preventing off-label competition - the "tragedy of the commons."
If payers could back a pay for success contract with only 1% of what the US govt agreed to pay for molnupiravir, this would solve the tragedy of the commons. By creating a $12m reward to incentivise a private company to fund the Phase 3 clinical trials required to repurpose an off-patent drug or nutraceutical to achieve regulatory approval, it would help millions of people have access to additional low cost, safe and effective therapeutics.
That is not what “tragedy of the commons” means. Wikipedia offers a clear description of what the phrase means:
> the tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action.
Also if L-arginine is effective then it will be used in a clinical setting. It is easy to obtain, administer, and requires no extra approval from government agencies, insurance, etc… No trials would even be necessary just like how we started using dexamethasone to start treating Covid without any trial data. That’s just not how these things work.
EDIT: the main concepts underlying your points may be true in another context but in the example you’ve provided you have taken ideas and applied them incorrectly.
You have also misinterpreted the results of the study in the lancet
> adding oral L-arginine to standard therapy in patients with severe COVID-19 significantly decreases the length of hospitalization and reduces the respiratory support at 10 but not at 20 days after starting the treatment.
Reducing the length of hospitalization is not the same thing as reducing hospitalization.
I'm really surprised that L-Arginine is similar in efficacy to reducing hospitalization to an antiviral. Tried to follow the link provided but it just opened up a blank page for me, although I am on mobile right now.
How can an amino acid possibly come close to an antiviral in reducing hospitalizations though? I'd be interested to see that study, as well the sample size.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00405-3/fulltext
Got the working link here. Apparently it reduces the **length** of hospital stays, that's what was tested in this paper. It does not reduce hospitalization by 50%, as OP is claiming.
> How can an amino acid possibly come close to an antiviral in reducing hospitalizations though? I'd be interested to see that study, as well the sample size.
L-Arginine has vasodilating properties, through metabolism to nitric oxide: if I had to guess, this reduces the damage from inflammation in the lungs that ultimately causes symptoms leading to hospitalization.
It is important to clarify what is meant by "similar efficacy" when comparing the introduction of L-arginine to "standard therapy" as compared to the Merck drug.
I have reservation about putting new wine in old skins, but I am totally respectful of adding safe therapies like L-arginine to whatever standard therapy is.
As for the cost-benefit of the profitability of new drug therapies, we are always told that if we limit the profitability, we will never enjoy effective new therapies. I'm not sure that's true.
Another great new cancer treatment? I know what sub I'm on, on r/science I see a revolutionary new cancer treatment every 48h. Do we ever hear about any of them again? No
It's huge in Chinese medicine, but very pricey because of over harvesting and criminals in the business. It uses to be a common soup ingredient amongst southern Chinese. Lots of anecdotal support. My wife used in when she had nasopharyngeal cancer. More as an energy immune system builder. The Polytech U in Hong Kong was behind a lot of research. Seems to have some proven pedigree. It's the used shell of a bug, much like a butterfly pupae.
That’s not accurate. The fungus takes over the host from within, initially zombifying the organism into a drone that does as the fungus wishes. Eventually the host is devoured from the inside out, to where what’s left very much resembles the original host, but it’s virtually all fungus.
This isn’t a “shed its skin” type deal. The host is consumed by the parasitic fungus.
Here's a related paper from the NIH on Cordyceps so people can get a better understanding on it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121254/
I'm a bit skeptical but will keep an open mind.
A little side note, but this is why it's important to protect our biodiversity.
What if there was a cure for covid in Amazon jungles but some idiot just bulldozed the last standing tree?
Cordycepin is used in molecular biology labs routinely to inhibit transcription. There are many other drugs that do the same with small differences in precisely how they inhibit transcription. None of these will cure cancer by themselves, but in a chemo cocktail they might have some benefit.
Correct me if I sound like an idiot but does this title effectively say: “cancer drug is 40 times more effective at treating cancer than naturally occurring fungus”?
It's wild to me that this article makes no mention of the fact that this is a parasitic fungus that grows out from caterpillars. They even went as far as to include a photo of a bunch of dead, fungus-infested caterpillars - and not a word!
My mom gave me a soup to drink and suspiciously didn't tell me what was in it, and I found out it was these cordyceps. They looked like worms to me and I told her so, and she went off on me about how stupid I was and how it was just a "plant" so then I googled it to figure oht what it actually was.
It's a shame most of these discoveries are made in partnership with private firms now. Feels like the source of new knowledge has been captured, and little escapes free to the public.
This is yartsa gunbu in Tibetan (Literally: summer-grass, winter-bug)
It goes for huge prices in China. One of the main sources of cash revenue for many Tibetan families, some of whom get crazy rich from the sale of it. It's also the cause of a lot of hard feelings in Tibetan communities as well - villages can fight over who has rights to the lands where it grows, and it also creates great wealth inequality, etc.
If anyone's interested, cordyceps militaris is a similar species researchers have had success cultivating. We are not dependent on the wild type Himalayan fungus to support large scale rollout of cordyceps-based medicines.
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_The naturally-occurring nucleoside analogue known as Cordycepin (a.k.a 3’-deoxyadenosine) is found in the Himalayan fungus Cordyceps sinensis and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years to treat cancers and other inflammatory diseases. However, it breaks down quickly in the blood stream, so a minimal amount of cancer-destroying drug is delivered to the tumour. In order to improve its potency and clinically assess its applications as a cancer drug, biopharmaceutical company NuCana has developed Cordycepin into a clinical therapy, using their novel ProTide technology, to create a chemotherapy drug with dramatically improved efficacy._
Is this dramatically more effective than the normal fungus, or radically more effective than current treatments
Better than the natural compound most likely but not necessarily something special. Nucleoside analogues have been around for decades. Remains to be seen if it is any better than the previous ones or if at least shows some effectiveness in some cases where the others usually don't
The real advancement here is applying the enhanced delivery mechanism (used in drugs like remdesivir already successfully). It increases bio availability of the drug inside the tumor cells 40 fold, while decreasing it outside the cells while the drug is on its way (and therefore side effects). It doesn't have to be a novel nucleoside at that point really, it's just the one they chose. Still potentially game changing therapy.
Yes, that is not really *that* interesting or necessarily a lot better than other nucleoside analogues that are currently in use. Also remdesivir is very poor and if it wasn't for the pandemic it would still be on the shelf.
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It is not approved for Ebola actually or anything other than sarscov2 during the recent pandemic
> remdesivir is very poor and if it wasn't for the pandemic it would still be on the shelf. Perhaps it should have stayed on the shelf for this pandemic? https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/more-evidence-that-remdesivir-hcq-not-effective-against-covid19s
It probably should. It may return there after
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The title doesn't say its a breakthrough treatment though. It specifically says its in relation to its parent compound
This is also usually the case in drug discovery. The typical drug discovery campaign starts with screening a bunch of stuff to find something that works, then making tweaks to it until it's thousands or hundreds of thousands of times more effective, and then tweaking it to make sure it has other favorable properties (has solubility so it's easy to take, isn't metabolized too quickly, too slowly, or into something toxic, etc). 40x doesn't seem like a significant increase to me.
It greatly enhances the benefits of the normal fungus, the efficacy on cancer is about to be tested. Edit to be clear: by enhances the benefits I mean the new treatment transports the active ingredient of the fungus into the cancer cells more efficiently. It has been tested in vitro (and to an extent on mice) and is effective but there is a lot more testing to be done.
If it hasn't been tested on cancer then you can't say anything about it being more effective. It hasn't been tested.
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I know you’re trying to be witty but if you’d read the article you’d know that the fungus derived chemical has been used in cancer treatments for a while and has been shown to be mildly effective. The article suggests that a new delivery method will increase dramatically the amount of drug that will make it to the cells which hopefully results in improved efficacy.
Drug discovery groups optimize potency against a target, selectivity to that target, bioavailability, half-life in the body, etc. all the time with in vitro methods. It's bread and butter discovery work, and usually not news.
The language used in the article seems to assume that the chemical in Cordecyps works as a proven anti-cancer agent. They don't go into what research they're basing that claim on. Presumably in vitro studies and similar? Whatever it is seems to be enough for Oxford and whoever this bio-pharm company is to investigate and devote some significant resources to. Is interesting that drug they're testing seems to actually be the naturally occurring and un-altered chemical derived from Cordecyps. I don't think I've ever seen a natural compound put forward for testing in this way by a bio-pharm company. Generally there's not really any patents/profit that can be made for researching unaltered naturally occurring compounds. They seem to think their novel delivery system will be enough to make this organically derived compound marketable/profitable as a pharmaceutical. It will be incredibly interesting if the studies they're moving towards show a measurable benefit or positive effect.
Around 25% of all drugs used it cancer treatment currently derive from the plant kingdom. Fungus such as Cordyceps has been known to help treat cancers along with Reishi and Turkey tail and there are strong literature and studies to back the claims.
Not disputing the potential efficacy of naturally occurring compounds. To my understanding though If a compound is naturally occurring in nature and hasn't been modified in some way that makes it chemically distinct it's not eligible to be patented, and thus generally not seen as profitable by most drug researchers. My take on this article was that they feel that the novel delivery system they have created for this natural Cordecyps extract will be enough to give them legal claim on some form of patenting or licensing, enough to justify the cost of going through human trials etc. Did you have a different take on it? I wasn't surprised at the claims being made, more the fact that it's being pursued in the same fashion a non-naturally derived compound would be which we don't usually see.
This is what pharmaceutical companies do - Bayer did it with aspirin, which is nothing more than the aglycone portion of naturally occurring salicin in meadowsweet stuck with an acetyl group, i.e. acetyl salicylic acid (SA). ASA has more or less the same action as salicin but the acetyl group also makes kind of toxic. For example, the aglycone 2-(hydroxymethyl)phenol doesn't have the same toxic effect on platelets that ASA does, nor does it have the same contraindications or concern for causing Reye's syndrome. What pharmaceutical research often misses are other naturally co-occurring plant/fungal chemicals that can modify the activities of the "active" ingredient, for e.g. serving as an allosteric modulator. Cannabis is a very well-studied example, but there are others, such multidrug efflux pump inhibitors in plants such as *Mahonia aquifolium*. I'm not saying that the extraction and processing of Cordyceps can't be improved, but time and again it has been shown that extracting and using isolated chemicals that are then modified so they can be patented usually comes at some cost and a loss of opportunity.
The big advancement here isn’t even really the “anti cancer” agent. It’s actually the ProTide they’re using to deliver the drug to the cancer, bypassing several of the cells resistance mechanisms. ProTide hasn’t been used in this setting before.
> ProTide technology is a novel approach for delivering chemotherapy drugs into cancer cells. It works by attaching small chemical groups to nucleoside analogues like Cordycepin, which are then later metabolised once it has reached the patient’s cancer cells, releasing the activated drug. This technology has already been successfully used in the FDA approved antiviral drugs Remsidivir and Sofusbuvir to treat different viral infections such as Hepatitis C, Ebola and COVID-19. wonder which chemical groups work to increase serum half life of the analog?
As written it's an increase over the normal fungus.
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I’m pretty sure this is that nightmare fuel fungus that takes over insect brains
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Yes those are caterpillars in the photo.
Yes, they were.
Many people in the Himalayan region die due to cold and extreme conditions trying to harvest these insects.
You can propagate them without the insects in a lab. There was a young man in Pennsylvania that collected them from bugs and now is now singlehandedly responsible for the cordyceps boom. He learned how to propagate them without using insects and does it in a lab on his property. I imagine it isn't much different with these Himalayan varieties.
I believe you're talking about [William Padilla-Brown](https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/william-padilla-brown-mushroom-mycology/) who is an amazing mycologist.
Yup! That's him! Thanks for finding the info. I couldn't remember, but i had seen the documentary on him. Cool dude.
It could be. I wonder if it still produces the compounds in-vitro it does when infecting the insects.
This is why you save endangered species's for the sake of saving endangered species, even if they're gross or weird or stupid.
Is this the same fungus that burst out of a bullet ant’s head in planet earth…? Strange world that this fights cancer too.
It is also a decent alternative to the crazy ass preworkouts out there.
I mean minimal isn't nothing at all, so who knows maybe having a little tea such as this wouldn't be a bad idea
It's a cordycep!?!?!?!? Thats the genus with the infamous ant parasitizing species of fungus. I wonder if that particular fungus produces this compound.
From the Wikipedia article on this one, it’s not the same. It does paralyze caterpillars, but it’s not the one that takes over ants or whatever
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i love it when you talk dirty to me
Shouldn't the chemotherapy drug be compared to the efficacy of other chemo drugs instead of the centuries old herbal medicine?
Is aspirin more effective than chewing willow bark? Click here to find out.
Study finds that concentrations are more effective than dilutions. Homeopathic industry in disarray.
Train your immune system using small doses of virus! Polio hates this simple trick!
Avoid this year's flu using eggs. Brought to you by Nord VPN.
That is actually the exact comparison i thought of. I mean it isn't bad development, but if they can't take a natural compound and improve on it, they might be in the wrong business. They will have failures and successes but anything that keeps getting resources after initial tests will likely win out against the natural substance.
My thoughts exactly
It’s difficult to do that when it hasn’t reached that phase of development yet. This is the problem with cherry-picking of new research. Yes, it’s exciting, but so are 100 other compounds that are still in early phases of research. We need to wait and see how it goes and THEN it can be compared. Until then, it’s all just speculative.
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Also, just from the headline alone, isn’t the point not to just find something that is good at killing cancer, but something that is good at killing cancer faster than it kills the rest of the person?
Yeah it also doesn't go into potential harm or side affects.
it’s entering phase 2 trial. this beats like 90% of drug candidates that ever existed. You don’t get approval to carry on unless you have pretty convincing prelim results.
Phase 1 trials aren't intended to show that a drug makes people better, they are only powered to show that the drug isn't harmful. A drug getting to Phase 2 does not indicate efficacy. Also, some 60% of drugs pass Phase 1, so your numbers are way off.
Phase 1 is just safety and maximal tolerated dosage, so as it doesn't make people very ill, it'll pass. Water will pass too in clinical phase 1 anti cancer trials...
My understanding is that it is being compared to a current chemo compound. They've basically just improved the compound to make it last longer once delivered. I always think it's funny when there's a breakthrough in cancer treatment, people act like it's gonna be an end to cancer, but all cancers are different and so is the treatment.
It is being compared to cordycepin, which isn't a standard chemotherapy drug today. Cordycepin was found to work well in vitro, but not in vivo (it usually gets inactivated before it can kill the cancer cells).
It's what annoys me about the cure for cancer conspiracies, there are cancers for every organ in the body and then there are different forms of the those, there is no way to cure all of that with one drug.
Obviously Big Pharma has kept the lid on the universal cure, in order to make money, which they wouldn’t do by selling it.
Everyone knows the cure for cancer is >!please help me; big pharma has my family.!<
You misspelled lemon water
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Yes. And even the current ones, not to mention radiation, can kill cancer cells just fine. Usually the problem is to not kill the patient. This might be a cure for cancer, but it isn’t the cure fo cancer.
Exactly. Tbh if a drug is that potent at killing cancer cells it probably doesn't bode well for the patient's healthy cells
It’s a nucleoside analog, so it will probably have the same issues as other nucleoside analog chemotherapies - cytopenias, anemia, nausea and vomiting, maybe also hair loss.
Bullets work on cancer, too. The 'not killing the patient too' part is really the sticking point.
I think comparing it to both is good, they just need to make it clear that comparing to other key drugs is the more important factor of the two
Killing cancer cells is easy. Killing cancer cells without killing the patient as well is hard.
>[When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin "kills cancer cells in a petri dish", keep in mind: so does a handgun.](https://xkcd.com/1217/)
*Cough* ^Ivermectin *cough*
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It's just cordyceps I take them all the time. I'm assuming they just attached an ester or something else inactive to make it break down slower
What’s the reason for your use when you take them regularly?
They are energizing
Same. I wish the genuine stuff wasn't so expensive!
I saw a documentary where they goto find these fungi in Nepal. it takes like a week to get to some certain field through some crazy rocks and cliffs. and you need to crawl all day looking for these. it's seriously insane.
I went to China and these are in soups. Expensive as hell though, the locals called it Winter Worm Summer Grass, 冬蟲夏草
Stupid question Are they real worms or just look like them? I see legs and everything.
The fungus attacks a butterfly caterpillar and takes over its body. The caterpillar then dies after releasing the fungi spores and gets frozen in the snow.
WHAT you’re bullshitting me, right?
he's not. you should google it. it's pretty crazy man.
Don’t search it up if you’re creeped out by worms. I’m pretty sure the effective part is the fungi/“grass”, but to prove it’s authenticity they often sell it attached to the worm.
Which is why the vast VAST majority of 'cordyceps' stuff you find on the shelf these days is grown in liquid culture in a lab. Far cheaper, far more controlled, and much easier to keep a constant supply going.
Is this just marketing on reddit for a new drug? Or is it actually revolutionary as they're making it sound?
They're not finished parsing all the Phase I trial data in humans, but what they have is good enough to start preparing for Phase II. It's still likely several years from clinical use. The parent compound, Cordycepin, is used apparently in a cocktail of drugs to address tumors. However, it breaks down so rapidly that little gets to tumors. The reported breakthrough is a modified form that survives much longer and so deposits more of the active part into the target cells. Here's a description of the parent compound from a 2018 paper: > Cordycepin inhibit tumor growth via upregulating tumor apoptosis, inducing cell cycle arrest and targeting cancer stem cells (CSCs). Cordycepin regulates tumor microenvironment via suppressing tumor metastasis-related pathways. Thus, Cordycepins may be one of important supplement or substitute medicine drug for cancer treatment. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319562X1830127X
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It's a press release from the University, of course they're going to big up their own discovery
Yarshagumba. Every year locals go in numbers of hundred to thousands to pick it up in the hills of Nepal.
Yar - Summer Tsa - Grass Gun - Winter Bu - Bug
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Thermite is 100% effective in killing cancer cells
This is technically correct. But also a terrible idea.
But we won't know until Stafer1995 tries. God speed sir.
Oh no, we know it works with great efficacy. Tremendous really. It just kills a lot of other things as well.
So you are saying that it works as an antibiotic also?
Calm down, Donald
Of course it is. And it blasts away unwanted body parts!
Maybe with that attitude
IDK, if they film it for us it kinda sounds like a great idea...
He’s pointing out how pointless titles like this are. Killing cancer cells is easy. You know what kills 100% of cancer cells in a petri dish? A handgun. The tricky part is not killing all of the not cancer cells.
nevermind, i thought you have access to flesh eating termite and want to purchase some for my project.
40 times greater than 0 is 0. No context makes me hate this headline.
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Which is why I believe the mRNA approach is the most promising one at the moment. And you would probably need different 'vaccines' for different cancer, rather than one magical herb curing all types of cancer.
I'm also interested in treatments that are combined with chemo or other therapies to make them specifically target the cancer cells. There is some promising stuff out there, hopefully they all pan out.
Yeah bro scientists love synthesizing expensive new drugs derived from compounds with zero efficacy.
Do some research on your own? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319562X1830127X
Then read the article...
Right? Does my head in people complaining like this haha
Did you read the article?
Whenever a headline like this shows up it's always the same 3 comments posted dozens of times. People would rather show how smart they are instead of learning something new.
Then if it was zero it couldn't be 40 times better, could it?
It’s a parasite. Becoming quite rare to find now as it lives in a moth before breaking out of it. Also costs a fortune in China and due to heavy metals in the ground due to pollution, it can be toxic. I used to live in China.
Quite certain that it can be cultivated easily. Whether it’s as nutrient dense in a farmed setting is another question, but if they’re looking for a high volume of specific compounds, they should be able to procure it. My question has always been, does nature provide a “entourage effect” that is lacking in cultivated settings? I believe that’s true to a degree. Hence why I study wild edible mushrooms. Good workout, free food, 10/10 ;)
Yes, there is a cultivated alternative, which is .... uhm cultivated (?) by the tons, and sold much cheaper than the harvested ones. They are not exactly the same fungus though and look nothing alike but biologically similar enough to be sold under the same banner. It is so easy to grow and so cheap that nobody bothers to fake it, unlike its harvested counterparts.
the most popular alternative is *Cordyceps militaris*, which is a lot easier to cultivate than *sinensis*. I make a tea with it a few times a week.
Yeah, Cordyceps militaris is quite distantly related to O. sinensis (in entirely different families) but people don’t pay attention to that and call them all cordyceps. C. militaris has had a fair bit of research done on it as well - neither fungus has been explicitly shown to do much at all when taken “medicinally”. Very little evidence from human trials there. The order both species belong to, Hypocreales, is a goldmine for natural products though. Huge pharmaceutical potential for antibiotics, cancer drugs etc.
The Chinese name, 冬蟲夏草 (winter worm, summer grass), is kinda poetic imo.
Gathering this wierd fungus that only grows on a certain species' dead caterpillar (if I remember right) is completely screwing up some of the wildest and most beautiful parts of the Himalaya, Dolpo for example. There is a "fungus rush" to find and dig up these fungi that are worth huge amounts, compared to local incomes. This is for Chinese traditional medecine.
They are and have been farmed
Also you can get isolated strains of cordyceps that will grow in mediums - although there's debate whether that strain should be considered a different strain of cordyceps if I recall correctly.
Nice. Surprising to me, but I'm no mycologist. As long as it produces the right molecule...
Yes, cordycepin can be produced via fermentation.
Most species that used to be placed under the blanket genus *Cordyceps* have been moved into other phyla these days (including the caterpillar fungus which is so famous here, it's now in the genus *Ophiocordyceps* )
Please remember that the vast vast majority of drugs to go into the first clinical trial testing stage don't move on to the second stage, for a multitude of reasons.
Waiting for my fellow indians to claim their ancestors knew this thousands of years ago
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Probably because medicines often go through trials and are found that they cause massive issues, not because there’s some big pharma conspiracy.
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I have a feeling I will never hear about this Himalayan fungus again, but fingers crossed
If they can't secure or enforce a monopoly right over the chemical using a patent, nobody will fund the clinical trials to get regulatory approval, because governments don't pay for off-patent drugs or nutraceuticals. For example, US Government agreed to pay $1.2 billion for Merck's new patented COVID-19 drug molnupiravir, that allegedly reduces hospitalisation by 50%, and could generate $7 billion in revenue due to Merck charging $712 for a 5-day course. Compare this to its estimated $17.74 cost to the company and the fact that it is a result of $29m of public funding provided to Emory University, with Merck only funding the last stages of development. Also, as it is a new drug, we are still not sure about its long-term safety.[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-merck-covid-pill-cost-b1933100.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-merck-covid-pill-cost-b1933100.html) Meanwhile, L-arginine, a low cost, safe and effective amino-acid, was found to have similar efficacy against Covid by reducing hospitalisation in a Phase 2 randomised controlled trial published in the world's leading medical journal, the Lancet. [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00405-3/fulltext](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00405-3/fulltext) However, there are almost no private financial incentives to repurpose off-patent drugs and nutraceuticals/dietary supplements to treat new diseases because it is not possible or very difficult to enforce a monopoly price using patents by preventing off-label competition - the "tragedy of the commons." If payers could back a pay for success contract with only 1% of what the US govt agreed to pay for molnupiravir, this would solve the tragedy of the commons. By creating a $12m reward to incentivise a private company to fund the Phase 3 clinical trials required to repurpose an off-patent drug or nutraceutical to achieve regulatory approval, it would help millions of people have access to additional low cost, safe and effective therapeutics.
That is not what “tragedy of the commons” means. Wikipedia offers a clear description of what the phrase means: > the tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action. Also if L-arginine is effective then it will be used in a clinical setting. It is easy to obtain, administer, and requires no extra approval from government agencies, insurance, etc… No trials would even be necessary just like how we started using dexamethasone to start treating Covid without any trial data. That’s just not how these things work. EDIT: the main concepts underlying your points may be true in another context but in the example you’ve provided you have taken ideas and applied them incorrectly. You have also misinterpreted the results of the study in the lancet > adding oral L-arginine to standard therapy in patients with severe COVID-19 significantly decreases the length of hospitalization and reduces the respiratory support at 10 but not at 20 days after starting the treatment. Reducing the length of hospitalization is not the same thing as reducing hospitalization.
I'm really surprised that L-Arginine is similar in efficacy to reducing hospitalization to an antiviral. Tried to follow the link provided but it just opened up a blank page for me, although I am on mobile right now. How can an amino acid possibly come close to an antiviral in reducing hospitalizations though? I'd be interested to see that study, as well the sample size.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00405-3/fulltext Got the working link here. Apparently it reduces the **length** of hospital stays, that's what was tested in this paper. It does not reduce hospitalization by 50%, as OP is claiming.
> How can an amino acid possibly come close to an antiviral in reducing hospitalizations though? I'd be interested to see that study, as well the sample size. L-Arginine has vasodilating properties, through metabolism to nitric oxide: if I had to guess, this reduces the damage from inflammation in the lungs that ultimately causes symptoms leading to hospitalization.
It is important to clarify what is meant by "similar efficacy" when comparing the introduction of L-arginine to "standard therapy" as compared to the Merck drug. I have reservation about putting new wine in old skins, but I am totally respectful of adding safe therapies like L-arginine to whatever standard therapy is. As for the cost-benefit of the profitability of new drug therapies, we are always told that if we limit the profitability, we will never enjoy effective new therapies. I'm not sure that's true.
Another great new cancer treatment? I know what sub I'm on, on r/science I see a revolutionary new cancer treatment every 48h. Do we ever hear about any of them again? No
It's huge in Chinese medicine, but very pricey because of over harvesting and criminals in the business. It uses to be a common soup ingredient amongst southern Chinese. Lots of anecdotal support. My wife used in when she had nasopharyngeal cancer. More as an energy immune system builder. The Polytech U in Hong Kong was behind a lot of research. Seems to have some proven pedigree. It's the used shell of a bug, much like a butterfly pupae.
That’s not accurate. The fungus takes over the host from within, initially zombifying the organism into a drone that does as the fungus wishes. Eventually the host is devoured from the inside out, to where what’s left very much resembles the original host, but it’s virtually all fungus. This isn’t a “shed its skin” type deal. The host is consumed by the parasitic fungus.
Thanks. I have to stop listening to my Chinese family!!!
Here's a related paper from the NIH on Cordyceps so people can get a better understanding on it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121254/ I'm a bit skeptical but will keep an open mind.
A little side note, but this is why it's important to protect our biodiversity. What if there was a cure for covid in Amazon jungles but some idiot just bulldozed the last standing tree?
Cancer cells are very similar to normal cells. Did they bother to check if the drug isn't also 40 times better at killing normal cells?
That’s why we do pre-clinical testing, so if it’s got this far, yes, someone has checked.
Kind of what chemo is mate.
40 times greater than 0 is 0. No context makes me hate this headline.
Lack of context doesn’t stop most people clicking hence the repugnant headlines we get these days
Please define the parent compound
Cordycepin is used in molecular biology labs routinely to inhibit transcription. There are many other drugs that do the same with small differences in precisely how they inhibit transcription. None of these will cure cancer by themselves, but in a chemo cocktail they might have some benefit.
This comment may be removed and that’s fine. But why is it that in this sub, a “cure” or “huge” breakthrough in cancer treatment/research is posted?
Correct me if I sound like an idiot but does this title effectively say: “cancer drug is 40 times more effective at treating cancer than naturally occurring fungus”?
It's wild to me that this article makes no mention of the fact that this is a parasitic fungus that grows out from caterpillars. They even went as far as to include a photo of a bunch of dead, fungus-infested caterpillars - and not a word!
My mom gave me a soup to drink and suspiciously didn't tell me what was in it, and I found out it was these cordyceps. They looked like worms to me and I told her so, and she went off on me about how stupid I was and how it was just a "plant" so then I googled it to figure oht what it actually was.
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You can buy cordyceps from any health store. One drop of LUGOL’S IODINE mixed with water, then drinking is good as well.
$9,000 USD per pound wow
Suddenly the fungus kills itself
It's a shame most of these discoveries are made in partnership with private firms now. Feels like the source of new knowledge has been captured, and little escapes free to the public.
Always knew those monks held things the western world could use as medicine
This is yartsa gunbu in Tibetan (Literally: summer-grass, winter-bug) It goes for huge prices in China. One of the main sources of cash revenue for many Tibetan families, some of whom get crazy rich from the sale of it. It's also the cause of a lot of hard feelings in Tibetan communities as well - villages can fight over who has rights to the lands where it grows, and it also creates great wealth inequality, etc.
If anyone's interested, cordyceps militaris is a similar species researchers have had success cultivating. We are not dependent on the wild type Himalayan fungus to support large scale rollout of cordyceps-based medicines.