#62

Sure, it helped so much with BBB that he ended up with stroke. There’s simply not enough literature to come to a certain conclusion. However, there’s a connection.

4 Likes
#63

It’s very important to get the details. I’ve been using rapa for 6 years and have always been able to hang my hat on, “ well at least it seems to prevent cancer”.
The animal studies do seem to support that idea, but the human study on renal transplant patients shows a decrease only in non melanoma skin cancer , which isn’t going to metastasize anyway, and an increased risk for prostate, everything else was a neutral effect.
The study posted here showing an increased likelihood of metastasis in mice is also concerning.
I’ve contacted Alan Green and will try to discuss this with him.
For now I’ll be stopping it .

8 Likes
#64

I do believe that the multiparametric mri scan is a very useful early detection method for cancer screening. Early detection is key to cancer prevention, especially solid tumors.

5 Likes
#65

We don’t know enough. He may have developed cancer prior to rapamycin and it slowed down the process, or he may have developed cancer while on rapa and it had no effect or even promoted metastasis.

Or maybe there’s something else going on here with diet, meds, carcinogens, etc. that we aren’t aware of at this point.

It’s very odd to have a a stable nodule for several decades that becomes an aggressive cancer.

6 Likes
#66
8 Likes
#67

That’s certainly concerning. Much we don’t know, especially in humans. I’m not sure at this point how the benefit/ risk ratio is looking.

1 Like
#68

I’m hearing that little voice as well. The Vast majority of studies on mice don’t pan out in humans. It’s why we have 3 phased human studies, and even then we don’t discover everything.

4 Likes
#69

What about the rapalogs? They’re newer, and lots of $$$ and time went to develop them, maybe they improved on rapamycin? I’m reading about everolimus now. I am skeptical about claims like “they’re so similar, they only changed one bit so they could patent it”, it can make a world of difference.

1 Like
#70

I’m personally rooting for him to beat this and appreciate that he’s being transparent and sharing his story.

12 Likes
#71

Yes, but the meta analysis that I posted above showed that almost all of the cancer reduction was from skin cancers.

5 Likes
#72

My thoughts are with Dr B. He is an excellent scientist and out of the box non-linear thinker.

For those ‘worried’ about Rapamycin because of his cancer. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Nothing can be gleaned from a sample size of 1. And, there are lots of complex variables at play, preexisting condition, lots self experimentation with a lot of different molecules, etc. We do him a disservice by not pressing on.

10 Likes
#73

There is this really unfortunate thing that happens when someone gets something like cancer. Everyone wants to come up with a reason why, and it’s usually about something “wrong” the person did in their life. I think this is because it’s less scary when you can blame the cancer on an action, as a kind of punishment for something, bad diet, smoking, too much stress, using this drug or that… it means that we can avoid it if we just avoid the mistakes they did. The real answer is that most cancer happens for multiple reasons converging and the biggest reason is chronological aging. With his sample size of 1, we have no idea what would have happened had he not been taking rapamycin. Maybe it would have happened on a different schedule, or maybe nothing would have been different at all.

I really hope very much he’ll be able to treat his cancer a stick around with us for a long time. His hyperfunction theory of aging has been hugely influential in longevity and was a lot of people’s introductions to mtor and rapamycin.

17 Likes
#74

Sorry for slow response was flying back from Japan and no wifi past 16 hours.

Probably the best podcast indentifying all the playersi in rapamycin 's acient and contemporary times. So here is the transcript.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: And we had this one mouse that kept going and going and going.

AVIR MITRA: They named him Ike.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: Ike, if we translated that linearly to human years, was about 125 years old - 130 years, yeah.

AVIR MITRA: Ike, wow.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: (Laughter) Right.

LATIF NASSER: But is this just, like, one super old mouse who you just made super older?

AVIR MITRA: No, no. That’s the thing. Like, there’s a government study that did this with a bunch of mice. These mice look and act younger. And it’s not just mice. Like, scientists have seen these kind of results in every species they try it on. So it’s yeast, worms, flies. They’re even doing a study to try it in pet dogs.

LATIF NASSER: Wow. And so all of this is just 'cause, like, rapamycin is just, like, clearing out all the junk?

AVIR MITRA: Yeah. Because all that junk basically causes aging and, over time, will kill us. Like Kaeberlein says, take something like Alzheimer’s disease, right? What is that? That’s tangles of proteins and junk that’s sitting around in your brain cells that’s getting in the way of, like, you having a thought.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: And there’s tons of data in mice that rapamycin can improve cognitive aging in mice. Starting rapamycin before the decline starts prevents the decline, and starting rapamycin after the decline starts partially reverses the decline.

AVIR MITRA: So you’re saying that rapamycin reverses Alzheimer’s in mice?

MATT KAEBERLEIN: That’s right.

AVIR MITRA: Wow.

And it’s not just Alzheimer’s. It’s, like, every marker of aging. It’s other diseases, too, like heart attacks, strokes and cancer, which kind of brings us back to Suren. Like, he was given six months in 1998, and now it’s 2002.

Where I got that quote.

6 Likes
#75

No worries. I quoted that change above. I think rapamycin might help slow some cancers, but it’s silly to think that it’s a panacea.

4 Likes
#76

Cancer is a very tricky subject as a lot of things we do that are good for our non-cancerous cells are also good for cancer. This is why anti-oxidants can protect/promote cancer. We have cancer in our body all the time. It’s just our immune system effectively purges it regularly. Here’s a nutshell video:

Also, cancer can take control of parts of your immune system and use it against you.

Both are excellent quick videos that bring you up to speed on cancer.

7 Likes
#77

The prostate cancer incidence is interesting but hard to read into. It could very well be just a detection bias. From the paper that originally showed the association (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25522018/):

"Of note, the increased risk was
primarily driven by an increase in diagnosis of localized
prostate cancers (HR for localized prostate: 1.74, 95% CI:
1.05–2.88), while the five prostate cancers diagnosed
beyond localized stage were detected during sirolimus-unexposed time. This may indicate that the association we
observed is the result of a detection bias, or screening
effect, as localized prostate cancer is frequently detected
through prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening."

The referenced meta-analysis also mentioned something similar: “Sirolimus could promote prostate carcinogenesis through unknown mechanisms, or it may affect serum prostate-specific antigen levels, which would in turn impact the diagnosis of prostate cancer through screening.”

However, some literature suggests rapamycin could decrease PSA levels so this could be a real association. But it’s very hard to say with such limited data. Given that basically all other cancers have reduced incidence, there’s either a novel mechanism we don’t understand yet or a bias…

5 Likes
#78

I wish Dr. B well. I hope that he can beat his cancer and survive as long as possible.

4 Likes
#79

I bet quite a few of you are into flaxseeds or taking things like finasteride/dutasteride to tackle hair loss. So, I wouldn’t stress too much about prostate cancer.

1 Like
#80

Rapa is not a miracle drug, merely a promising add-on, and, no, there is not a reason for everything.

4 Likes
#81

What are the issues with flax seeds (not that I take that many, only really in foodstuffs from the shops).