Midjourney, “engraving of Apollo shooting his bow at a distant cancer cell” Introduction and Principles

The conventional wisdom is that we can’t “cure cancer” because every cancer is different.

And it's true that cancer is genetically and biochemically diverse, and that targeted cancer therapies generally only work on very specific sub-populations.

But some of the oldest, most reliable, and still most commonly used classes of cancer treatment -- radiotherapy and cytotoxic chemotherapy -- are also broad-spectrum. That is, they’re effective on many (though not all) types of cancer, based on selectively targeting properties that many cancers have in common (their rapid cell division).

Today, we rarely search for new treatments that work on many types of cancer.

Partially this is because of the belief that we won’t find any, and partly because cancer treatment is so valuable that individual researchers and biopharma companies are rewarded for any [...]

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Outline:

(00:18) Introduction and Principles

(03:40) New Ways To Attack Cancer Cells

(04:11) Historically Undruggable Cancer-Causing Mutations

(06:43) Phospholipid Ethers

(07:38) Endogenous IgG

(08:51) Negative Surface Charge

(09:37) Membrane Depolarization

(10:25) Strategies for Pan-Cancer Translational Research

(12:30) Historical Inspiration: The NCI

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First published:
June 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4rmveLEuARYKapHq2/broad-spectrum-cancer-treatments

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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