Humanities Federation

Cancer Reducing the guesswork - a quest (since 2008) to enable much needed improvements to evidence-based treatment decisions and speeding research.

With a little help along the way, a bio-med graduate and I have been ambitiously working on the development of methods to reduce the vast guesswork in cancer by improving our ability to detect, Grade, Monitor and make better treatment selections.

This includes the development of new, innovative Laboratory and Medical equipment to rapidly speed research and enable progress on evidence-based treatment decisions.

The central goal is to build support for a new model of social enterprise to facilitate a cancer project aimed at rapidly speeding progress on the technical challenges and obstacles in cancer, such as: enabling pre-testing of treatments on patient specific live cells (reducing the guesswork. Even though several of the advances we're pushing for also involve making available tests and procedures simpler and cheaper (available to more patients) there's little support from larger organisations or those with current monopoly positions on authority for outsiders for a model that "although driven by active competition" involves a format with no excessive management salaries and conflicts of interest.

We need all the support we can get in overcoming obstacles to gaining seed funding for this. If we succeed with our CHESS model for causes, this could also be used to help speed progress on other worthy causes. ***Pushing for necessary change like this while being critical of excessive management salaries excludes finding passionate sources of help in many organisations and departments with monopoly positions. This includes the Social monopolies which are often horrendously inefficient, top heavy with almost absolute authority and heavily resistant to change. Adding practical competition is necessary as a means to improve progress, helping ensure cause & low cost end-products and services come first, while also enabling a better environment for global OpenSource contributions to R&D.

From my extensive secondary interest and contributions to international conflict related OpenSource investigations, I'd learned the value of forming Dynamic Teams of individuals with specialist skills and knowledge sets for specific tasks. (Bringing together small international teams of passionate people suited for each complex tasks working together could sometimes outperform organizations with massive resources) With the scale of the technical challenges in reducing the guesswork in cancer, I knew this is exactly what's needed. However to facilitate this in cancer would require support for a new cause focused model, and significant seed funding for a central management team and facility.

Key goals

Cancer "Reducing the guesswork" - a quest (since 2008) to enable much needed improvements to evidence based treatment decisions and speeding research.

Every Cancer is Unique - we wish to rapidly improve existing methods alongside introducing new methods and prototypes that we have been developing over this past decade in an unusual "need-driven" endeavour. This will enable the use of patient specific cells (Live Samples) on which to pre-test a range of licensed drugs to better gauge treatment choices.

Today, due to limitations, patients commonly receive expensive drugs based on data which is often very limited. Making it simpler and cheaper to extract, grow and test live cells in new ways has the potential to rapidly speed research, saving lives and resources.

Cell Cluster Displacement

Encouraging clinical practice to catch up with research and pay attention to limiting the potential for Cell Cluster Displacement

Despite today's common consensus, single circulating tumour cells rarely seed secondary tumours (although research doesn't have all the answers as to why). In terms of saving lives this has massive potential. (Some details mentioned here).

Fast forwarding the development and adoption of less invasive Biopsy methods.

Various forms of Liquid Biopsies, CTCs, ctDNA, etc. - (Existing products are on the market at this stage but remain expensive).

Funding a practical entity and team to free up restrictions which cost lives and resources.

Imagine if we could build platforms with teams to hunt for solutions to waste in everything from government procurement to conflicts and use some of the financial savings to fund the development of a new better networks for worthy causes. These ethically driven social enterprises would focus on progress for the big challenges. This would be based on a new model (resourced and driven by active competition). It would overcome the limitations of private, state and traditional social enterprises. Social Monopolies (appointed bodies with almost absolute authority and monopoly positions without practical active competition to drive efficiencies) which are serious obstacles to progress and heavily resistant to change.

For a basic description of this, see the (CHESS) page on Competitive-Humanitarian-Enterprise-Serving-Society.

I’ve long been interested in finding better ways to enable passionate, rational individuals to work together on overcome these massive challenges. I’ve spent years on a few specifically dedicated challenges.

Misconceptions surrounding cancer are common and unhelpful. The simple reality is that it's extremely challenging to selectively kill cancer (damaged misbehaving cells) which are often almost biochemically identical to the cell types from which they'd originally mutated, while limiting damage to the rest of our cells. mutating.

(Cells are like microscopic biological cities. They contain vast amounts of DNA. The instructions for protein assembly and damage to those instructions is mostly unique among individuals)

After exhaustive years on the technical challenges (approaching these from a different angle), we're certain we have valuable prototypes of several important components of the medical devices we wish to produce. What we need is urgent support for Research and Development with initial production.

To deliver the best products and advances (as fast as we can) we need support for a new ethically- driven but efficient business model. A model which remove limitations to wider teamwork, enabling an environment to flourish, were the very best of passionate experts from near and far can contribute enthusiastically, or be available to assist when called upon, knowing for sure their input is serving the goal of overcoming the toughest obstacles in Cancer. At present the lucrative world of biotech, alongside Social Monopolies often discourage or obstruct the very teamwork needed to solve complex challenges in an efficient manner.

Traditional partnerships within the biotech industry are not best suited for an unusual ethically- driven project with goals such as delivering low-cost end-products. We wish to create a new type of entity, one in which wide R&D teamwork is neither restricted by financial shareholders, nor hindered by the slackness which can often plague social enterprises. The new model with drive is referred to as the CHESS Model - a Competitive-Humanitarian-Enterprise-Serving-Society.

The devices we wish to assemble would also enable many more experiments to be carried out more safely, faster and cheaper whilst reducing the need for animal experiments. They would enable faster, lower cost approaches to validate or dismiss the likes of the experiment mentioned below which needs explored in wider trials - Yesterday.

Carbon monoxide (minute amounts) may help shrink tumors, amplify effectiveness of chemotherapy

While the subject of cancer is also flooded with unhelpful conspiracies and pseudoscience, currently an approach like the above (With no end drug product) would not easily attract funding for expensive human trials.

If we all can do just a little to help, we may muster the support we need. Components of what we've been passionately working on have potential to rapidly fast-track the process of knowing whether treatments are safe to use on patients or not.

Useful short introduction videos to help interpret some of the actual challenges in cancer