On the same day this came out, University of Florida scientists announced a possible new treatment for cancer - not a type of cancer, ALL cancers. It works by stimulating the immune system to kill the tumor, and it's based on a treatment for glioblastoma that had highly successful human trials last year. Hard to believe these same two developments both came out of the nutbin of Florida.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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You got me for a second there.
I thought you would make a "the onion" joke of florida plan's to send cancer patient to work the fields as a "treatment" for cancer.
I'm surprised (and kinda of relieved?) that your comment is actually about a new scientific discovery.
1, 2, 3, 98 99 100 here I go!
Hey, found you! And yes, I can time and space travel to this comment out of this one https://lemmy.world/comment/18397250
Oh yeah it's very exciting. In 2024 a vaccine that targeted glioblastoma, an especially nasty brain cancer with an almost zero survival rate. The vaccine mimics certain aspects of tumor cells, triggering a fast, vigorous immune response that attacks the actual tumor. Encouraged by the results, they've somehow generalized the vaccine over the past year to stimulate an immune response to cancer cells in general. Immunological therapy is totally different from chemo or radiation, and a generalized approach is vastly different from what the whole field has been doing for decades. Very promising.
That happens like all the time, but they never work (yet!). Cancer is so agressive, dividing so fast, and thus adapting through mutations that nothing really works fully.
But maybe it will kill some of them, and let's not stop trying! Fuck cancer.
It's mRNA based, if I recall.
This makes it, essentially, endlessly flexible. We can now take a sample, sequence it, find the mutations, simulate what the protein looks like when folded, generate* the correct complimentary protein for that target and write the actual amino acid sequence directly into mRNA and give it to the patient.
This is currently incredibly expensive because it's being done manually by labs full of PhDs. But every part of this process is being rapidly improved and made cheaper.
mRNA based medicines have amazing promise. For example they had the COVID vaccine designed less than 12 hours after sequencing the virus.
*using a diffusion model, like AI image generators but they produce amino acid sequences that generate arbitrarily shaped proteins
mRNA based stuff is indeed incredible, no more randomly just trying things out, it's really the future IMO.
But for cancer it will just be a tool in the toolbox , I mean you gotta get those samples and cancer change maybe a thousand times a minute, which strain is the "bad" one? Etc. etc. etc.
One theoretical way to stop cancer altogether would be to remove the possibility for telomere lengthening (remove the production of telomerase) and "manually" allow the growth of only stem cell from time to time.
But that's a long time from now if ever it can be done.
Oh yeah, cancer is incredibility complex. I'm not remotely qualified to predict how this will be used.
I'm on the tech side of things and the ability to read and write arbitrary amino acid sequences along with machine learning models trained to predict (ex: AlphaFold) and generate (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45051-2) protein structures is absolutely mindblowing.
It's like we've been working on computers by striking flint at their CPU and listening to the traces vibrate in order to interpret the output and now someone has figured out how to plug in a keyboard and monitor.
We're barely scratching the surface with these techniques and we've found multiple ways to make an AIDS vaccine and we're discovering new ways to beat cancer. The rapid development of the COVID vaccine, thanks to mRNA, likely saved millions or tens of millions of people and prevented a global depression.
It's such an incredible time for human advancement, it's a shame we're all drowning in social media fueled toxicity and people don't see it.
Yeah totally agree!
I sometimes feel like I learned a lifetime of things, just to get it all thrown under the bus in the last 5-10 years, biological science is advancing so fast right now it's mind blowing.
mRNA also might treat allergies and take on parts of the deadliest disease too, aging.
Interesting times!
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So let me get this straight. The US needs Migrants so much that we're needing to replace them with teenagers?
I mean, that's one way to look at it.
The more accurate way to look at is that the American right hates migrants and people of color so much that they would force their children into hard labor just to make sure nobody who sounds or looks different receives any kind of benefit.
Not their children.... other peoples children. You know... the poors... those kids can work long hours for low pay and since they are poor, they will be stupid enough to be happy about it. The people voting for this do not need to worry about it affecting their kids... or think they dont....
the American right hates migrants and people of color so much that they would force ~~their~~ other people's children
This country has, throughout its entire history, relied heavily on immigrants to make up the shortfalls in its labor force. A full stoppage of immigration is going to collapse the United States economy. Sooner than later.
Yes, if we remove our migrant population then we literally lose the majority of our food production workers. I think it'll also impact our construction work force, much of our factory workforce, our waitstaff, and various other jobs US citizens turn their noses up at - because those jobs literally would not sustain them and would destroy their bodies over time. Most of these jobs are sustained entirely by the desperation of immigrants trying to escape their prior circumstances.
Edit- added more detail in bold to make it clearer the the issue lies in how these jobs are conducted rather than being with US citizens.
jobs US citizens turn their noses up at
Jobs that typically don't pay enough for the cost to your body, health, and mental sanity. The overlords love the illegal immigrant stuff because it lets them put the thumbscrews to the workers, both in terms of downward pressure to the wages paid out, and in terms of desperation so the people without other options are forced to work in horrible conditions for terrible pay.
That's a fair critique, I made it sound more like US citizens are snobby for rejecting underpaid, dangerous jobs when in reality the US's base infrastructure still entirely relies on a form of slave labor to persist. I should've been more nuanced with my description.
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It's telling that they blame the migrants workers for "stealing the jerbs" instead of the businesses that hire migrants workers in order to get around paying a fair wage
Why blame a white capitalist when anyone else can take the fall?
Florida briefly tried to enforce it on this basis and immediately had a labor crisis so afaik they stopped.
Farms have historically used their children as free labor back when they were mostly family owned. That's why most schools here have a three month summer break. Now they want the factory farms to have that same perk, just with other people's children.
Whoa whoa whoa, teenager is already a bit old and commands more hourly
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Not surprising. They didn't plan ahead whatsoever and thought "it'll all work out" as if Conservative promises held more weight than the hot air required to speak them.
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Capitalist rule: If you can't exploit people, just find people who are more exploitable.
Newsweek states on their own website that this article is unfairly leaning left. What a strange editorial decision.
It's an unfortunately looking vote gauge (it's like a poll where readers decide whether it does lean on either side or not), not their opinion about the article.
Its a design decision that is bafflingly stupid. People will use this as evidence of bias.
That's how Newsweek works now.
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Why did the children keep falling apart? Were they made of wet cardboard?
The front fell off
There's I think a dollop on the brassero program that details a past program where they'd ship high schoolers to farms for the summer in an attempt to reduce migratory workers. The program failed immediately. Conservatives are insane in the literal definition of the word.
I haven't listened to the dollop in a minute but I'm pretty sure that same episode is literally about the first wave of illegal immigration propaganda in the US, talks about how the borders changed in the 1930s.
I can't wait to be out of Florida
Best decision I ever made
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