About

The logistical challenges in cancer, both technical & social (The bureaucracy and conflicts of interest in cancer R&D)

Every mutated cell-line (populations of deformed cells we call cancer) is caused by defects which are largely unique for an individual, yet despite the endless marketing & press releases on personalised medicine (finely tuned targeted treatment approaches) often have a long way to go in practice .

My Journey

• Cancer the ambitious exhausting quest to reduce the guesswork in monitoring & treating cancer by making it possible to pre-test treatments on patient specific samples of live cells.

• Quest to make obtaining patient samples of cancer cells less invasive and safer.

• The challenges with Social Monopolies which led me to the acceptance that to achieve our ambitious goals, we'd also need to build a completely new model to fund and make space for passionate ethically driven teams with fewer conflicts of interest, adding much needed competition to both current biotech R&D and the inefficient Social Monopolies in R&D and healthcare which are often top heavy & heavily resistant to change.

• The Idea of building teams to hunt for waste in everything from Government spending to conflict, and using some of the savings to fund new smarter ethically driven initiatives to drive progress on some of the biggest challenges like Cancer (see Rapid Explore)

Obstacles include:

Limitations in actually finding unique cancer cell targets - time, expense & the technical challenges in fully assessing each persons unique mutations (cancer). Today we are still mostly restricted to collecting cores of tumour tissue samples via digging into a tumours multiple times with a fine or standard needle (Standard biopsy procedures) those cores are then treated in a lengthy process so as they can be sliced thin enough to allow light to pass through for examination under a microscope. (we are limited in what can be observed using dead cells) nowadays many patients still receive very expensive drugs with very limited clues as to how effective these may be.

Better gauging which treatments might be best matched to individual patients.

Finding support to make it simpler & cheaper to separate live cell samples and pre-test multiple treatments on these

In 2008 my mother became the latest person in my life to be diagnosed with cancer, (Years before I'd lost my kind grandfather "Bobby" to Cancer), with my mothers diagnosis, the extreme worry cancer brings & trying to find accurate evidence based detail on the usual questions like "How bad is this, what are the best treatments, etc., with little more that a passion for detail, interest in biomedical science and one small microscope which I'd had for years, I dived into learning all I could. Luckily international universities had begun publishing opencourseware online by that point, and Open Access to publicly funded cancer studies (something still not completely open) was making headway.

After the lengthy intense period of learning all i could, this it led to an unusual endeavour to develop mechanisms to reduce the guesswork in cancer, a long struggle fraught with many obstacles. While people commonly share simplistic conspiracies about cancer, few stop to think or help raise awareness of the actual technical challenges and more complex realities hindering progress, The simplistic cancer conspiracies which many share are by no means harmless, these not only distract focus, but can distract patients from making urgent decisions which in some cases can mean the difference in life & death, such as (When possible & rational) quickly speeding the removal of an operative tumour with wide margins (especially after biopsy procedures). Note not every tumour is equally as dangerous & with today's limitations it remains challenging to make accurate assessments, but there are often delays in removing the one's which should be removed.

With the help of a very clever bio-med graduate (and driven by necessity) we'd spent years working on methods to efficiently locate & capture Circulating Tumour cells from blood, these occur at a ratio of approximately 1:600,000,000, definitely not an easy task! through this journey (after years of sheer determination) recently we are 100% positive we now have approaches & prototype devices which are viable important steps towards reducing the vast guesswork in Cancer.

The devices are key components in a systems we wish to develop, not the complete solution, however these could be used as standalone products which supersede the capabilities of a widely used existing product with a large global market, therefore having the potential for serious local job creation and eventually trimming some of the 21 Billion Cancer costs the UK each year, and saving lives.

Time is not a luxury many patients and their families have, and our health services could use money saving initiatives. Making headway requires the will to explore new approaches.

To proceed, one of the essential components we will need is a special space to hit the ground running, the aim is to bring prototypes into production without delays.

A space with several facilities in one place to accommodate initial manufacturing of the prototype devices, two laboratories, one for refining special coatings, and located near the hospital for access to fresh waste blood & tissue samples from cancer patients.

An attractive space where we can bring together an array of skilled industrial professionals, passionate scientists and others willing to lend their valuable experience, including the helpful individual's I’ve already spoke with from industry and academia for advice on manufacturing the Ultra high precision plastic and glass cell separation & handling devices. All of this could help us fast track product development and delivery.

This has always been an ethically driven project which includes the aim of creating a new path to development (Run by passionate people, adding competition to current Industry models, It will need a new approach to make it happen, a model we have in mind for this is what we refer to as a Competitive-Humanitarian-Enterprise-Serving-Society (CHESS).

More on Cancer: why we need simpler, lower cost, more accurate tests.

In-between the cancer conspiracies and most talk of breakthroughs is the harsh reality, dealing with Cancer is complex, unlike a viral or bacterial infection, cancer cells are our own cells, (They remain almost Biochemically identical) only these have been compromised to "varying degrees" in their ability to function, knowing when to stop dividing and forming new daughter cells etc.

By analogy, unlike finding a weed treatment which kills weeds, but not grass, finding treatments which kills some of our own cells (the compromised ones) and not others, is an extremely challenging balancing act. when both cancer & normal cells remain almost Biochemically identical

Current Challenges in accurately Monitoring Cancer

The biological tests sometimes used in attempts to monitor cancer are referred to as Biomarkers. Currently these are often not remotely Sensitive or Specific enough to be anywhere near as useful as we'd like, most are tests which 'attempt' to obtain useful information from detecting small changes in various Proteins shed into the bloodstream. Yet despite their poor performance, current biomarker tests are delivered via the Pharma industry model which lacks practical competition and regulation leaving them expensive.

Like cancer drugs, it takes a lot of money to get a bio-marker approved for use. It also takes a lot of money to challenge manufactures on the effectiveness of their expensive products (Some pushed through approvals despite concerns on their actual effectiveness) . Few independent facilities capable & focused on even properly assessing these products currently exist. The waste is likely astronomical, in more ways than one.

Useful short introduction video's to help interpret some of the actual challenges in cancer

More on me - My first taste of Conflict, Empathy for the victims & interest in the roots of such horrendous wasteful suffering & the surprising overlaps "Common obstacles" Simplistic beliefs & Ignorance on wasteful Social Monopolies by bitter anti-Western extremists at the core of political warfare & management of multiple terrorist organisations.

Besides the "need driven" decade of devotion to the ambitious cancer project and quest to form a new competitively driven model for cause focused Social Enterprise "to overcome the limitations of current State & Industry models, and bring Scientists, Engineers & Clinicians together for a very worthy cause Rapid Explore" my passionate secondary interest in the causes & fuel for Conflicts included having been lucky enough to actually speak with an expert from the former soviet block who'd revealed details on the roles & methods of dictator assisted Marxist National Socialist campaigns (Which include terrorism) in providing the fuel for quite a few conflicts during waves of global instability.

Including the one below which I'd been evacuated from as a child. That knowledge was valuable (In terms of knowing what to look for) As things were heating up in Northern Ireland too, as far back 2014/15, (Long before talk of Russian interference, the murder of Lyra McKee, the release of the Russia Report or the arrest of an overtly Marxist IRA terrorist cell with links to dictatorships & middle east extremists. A little background knowledge, a keen eye & international open source investigations had spotted noteworthy activities, including individuals with links to dictatorships networking with intermediates with connections to NI extremists. I knew hate energy and a core of cult Marxists was essential to run wider terrorism campaigns. Yet it was becoming clear security forces were missing opportunities, most notably to recognise & counter the threat from organised to look at the primary IRA Terrorism from the perspective

Although not immediately obvious there were overlaps. As an anti-Tribalist with an interest in the roots & energy for conflicts, I knew the belief in simplistic unworkable populist Marxist ideology (which at its extremes preaches the tactical use of inflammatory propaganda and violence to bait & provoke simple binary Them V's Us divisions for so-called revolution) had been at the core of extremists & primary terrorist groups since the late 1800's

Ignorance on the same Social Monopolies which hinder progress on cancer more than any greedy industry players also plays a very significant unseen role in conflict, including uniting/bonding (anti-Western anti-Capitalist) extremists which have taken many innocent lives in their National Socialist Terrorists Campaigns sparking conflicts around the world.

In Cancer, Social Monopolies appointed bodies with almost absolute authority, often extremely inefficient , heavily resistant to change and riddled with conflicts of interest.

In Conflict, the anti-Western propaganda used to unite Useful Idiots and extremists to target democracies (and the spread of democracy) has at its core an essential component of the bonding ideology the simplistic installed beliefs of communist/socialism, the simplistic tribal belief that Competitive free market Capitalism is the enemy. Extremists holding such simplistic beliefs totally miss that the actual problems are with monopolies, and seem to know little of the wide spread problems caused by Social Monopolies, or that the regulation of monopolies are challenges & responsibilities of 'governments. not industry.