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wizzwizz4yesterday at 6:31 PM1 replyview on HN

No, they aren't: the second is irrelevant and unphysical. Highly-pressurised cores? Really? "Dense", I could buy, but:

• If there's blood supply, then (A) it can't be a much higher pressure than the blood pressure (unless there's some Rube Goldberg machine involving active transport), and (B) the tumour is reachable by treatments like this;

• And if there isn't blood supply, then the tumour's core is necrotic, and a treatment to kill the dead cells wouldn't do anything anyway. (Sure, killing the tissue that isolates a lump of necrotic flesh from the rest of the body might cause new and exciting problems, but somehow I think those might be preferable to incurable breast cancer.)

The second is just not a relevant criticism. The third, if it's an actual issue, can probably be worked around by tweaking the molecule slightly – and if not, suppressing the immune system isn't that difficult (it's a known side-effect of many chemotherapies). The first, if it's an issue, can be avoided by injecting the medicine near the target site.

I agree that this treatment might not work in humans, but all the AI's done is taken a generic list of potential concerns, and inserted technobabble to try to make it match the scenario. If you want generic criticism, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209076: at least that's true.


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greygoo222yesterday at 7:14 PM

You're incredibly wrong. You also cited my own comment at me.

The problem of high interstitial pressure (not blood pressure) interfering with drug delivery in tumors is basic cancer biology. If you don't believe me, here's:

A review published in a reputable oncology journal, with over 100 citations, entirely about targeting interstitial pressure, with an abstract leading with "Tumor interstitial pressure is a fundamental feature of cancer biology. Elevation in tumor pressure affects the efficacy of cancer treatment." https://aacrjournals.org/cancerres/article/74/10/2655/592612...

Another review, also a reputable oncology journal, 1000 citations, about tumor stroma more generally, which lists high interstitial pressure as a mechanism by which tumors limit drug access and includes a nice diagram (Figure 2a). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41571-018-0007-1

That's how basic this fact is. 1000 citation reviews in Nature have beautiful fucking diagrams of it. I'm pretty sure it was in the textbook of my undergraduate biology class.

If you don't know shit, don't talk shit. People will criticize LLMs for being overconfident while writing essays from their ass.

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