Typically, cancer cells evade a person’s immune system because it is recognized as that person’s cells. Wagner developed a tumor lysate particle only (TLPO) vaccine that uses a person’s tumor cells to identify particular parts that are then presented back in the body using the vaccine in a way that can stimulate their immune system to gain the ability to detect these cancer cells like an infection, allowing the immune system to fight the cancer itself.
“People used to ask me the question, ‘When will there be a cure for cancer?’ And I’ve been doing this for 60 years and I could never answer that question,” Wagner said. “Until recently, until the last three or four or five years.”
While I agree participating research is a wonderful and generous thing for them to do, it’d be very incorrect to say “we let them die because of science.” First of all, these are all people who got the standard of care, our currently available known effective treatments. It’s not like they had treatments taken away from them. Second, before a study, we don’t know if a new treatment idea works, or even if it may end up actually harming people, that’s why the study is being done. Most experimental treatments end up being ineffective, and the way you figure that out is by comparing to control groups without the experimental drug. If we did know if an experimental drug was effective there wouldn’t be any trials for this on going at all, it’d just be given to patients already and on the market. There are even studies where harms are uncovered and people end up better in the placebo group. And third as someone else has already pointed out, this isn’t survival, it’s disease free survival, which is different.
Another way researchers deal with this issue, is that many/most large trials now define what are called interim analyses. These are periodic checkpoints done throughout the study where an independent statistical analysis is done of the results so far, and based on certain pre defined criteria, the trials could be stopped early, either because it’s clearly helping or clearly not helping, or even harming. Studies are also modeled statistically beforehand, to try and design them (eg how long, how many participants) to demonstrate effectiveness or lack thereof as soon as possible and also minimize potential harm exposures to experimental treatments.