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A comment on Why Is It So Difficult to Develop Drugs for Cancer? (2010). Parent comment

Re:Why Is It So Difficult to Develop Drugs for Cancer? (2010) by DanBC on Saturday September 12, 2015 @04:55PM (#10209355)
How do you tell the difference between slow growing cancers and fast growing cancers?

EG: for many men the treatment for prostate cancer has severe side effects and their cancer is something they would have died with, not of. Being able tell which cancers are slow or fast would improve many lives.

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Re:Why Is It So Difficult to Develop Drugs for Cancer? (2010) by iskander on Saturday September 12, 2015 @05:15PM (#10209407)
One idea: if you have a biomarker you can track via CTCs or ctDNA, then you could watch the rate at which that marker's availability increases.

The PSA doubling time for indolent prostate cancers can often be measured in years, whereas CA 19-9 doubling time for pancreatic cancer is more often measured in days or months.

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