Theryq - why would they go with this name when everyone in the field knows about the Therac-25 radiation overexposure incidents?
bilbo0s 50 minutes ago [-]
Exactly what I thought as soon as I learned the name.
It's like, man, how to kill a product?
No pun intended.
It could even work? But you put yourself behind such a poorly placed 8 ball when you do these things. Even among researchers, people are a little superstitious about stuff like this. It's always in the back of everyone's mind.
deadbabe 49 minutes ago [-]
Redemption arc.
slibhb 29 minutes ago [-]
> Currently, the most plausible theory emerging from her team’s research points to metabolism: Healthy and cancerous cells may process reactive oxygen species—unstable oxygen-containing molecules generated during radiation—in very different ways.
It really does feel like all these piecemeal cancer treatments are converging on something resembling a cure.
scythe 1 hours ago [-]
Hey, FLASH finally hit Hacker News! I remember my professors talking about this in graduate school. It's a fairly well-established effect: the tumor selectivity of radiation is much better at ultra-high dose rates. It is still unclear exactly why. But there are a lot of studies about it:
I was starting to infer there was a better focusing ability so it could start and exit as a broad cone of radiation and keep the peak intensity at the tip of the focal cones at the tumor-tissue, and the short pulse also helped the healthy tissue.
But the way this sounds, it's more like a straight beam delivering similar intensity to healthy and tumor tissue but the biological effect strongly differs between healthy vs tumor tissue?
LoganDark 49 minutes ago [-]
My guess would be that the radiation doesn't itself care but that tumors have some other characteristic (like multiplying rapidly) that makes them more susceptible to it. Similarly to how you can sometimes attack them with medication that inhibits cell division.
bitwize 1 hours ago [-]
Sounds a little too close, in both name and concept, to Therac for my comfort.
tiderpenger 1 hours ago [-]
I generally don't trust cancer-communication if it's juiced up like this incredible headline. There has been huge amounts of progress. We don't need silicon valley idiots starting to make proclamations. It's doing fine without your mediocrity.
Rendered at 17:42:06 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It's like, man, how to kill a product?
No pun intended.
It could even work? But you put yourself behind such a poorly placed 8 ball when you do these things. Even among researchers, people are a little superstitious about stuff like this. It's always in the back of everyone's mind.
Reminds me of this which I (think) was linked here a while ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/s12276-020-0384-2
It really does feel like all these piecemeal cancer treatments are converging on something resembling a cure.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41571-022-00697-z
I was starting to infer there was a better focusing ability so it could start and exit as a broad cone of radiation and keep the peak intensity at the tip of the focal cones at the tumor-tissue, and the short pulse also helped the healthy tissue.
But the way this sounds, it's more like a straight beam delivering similar intensity to healthy and tumor tissue but the biological effect strongly differs between healthy vs tumor tissue?