all the research on prr that you need to know, page-20

I disagree with Decan's assessment of the early PRR data, but I also fail to fully understand the level of hostility being expressed towards someone who is merely attempting to put an alternative viewpoint.

It's perfectly OK for others to disagree with the point(s) being made, but responders should address those points, and not attack the person.

Now, on to the science.

Early 'trials' of potential cancer treatments are not the same as fully funded peer reviewed journal type trials. Because the proposed treatment is usually at a very early stage of development small numbers of patients are usually involved, and these are often patients who have failed to adequately respond to existing treatments.

A 'success' in this situation may mean less response in a marker (such as CA125), or disease bulk than one would look for in later trials involving patients at an earlier stage of their disease.

The 21 CVac trial patients had all had extensive previous treatment and were deemed to have reached the stage of being beyond further therapy. All were regarded as being terminal within a 3-6 month time frame.

Of the 21 patients involved 4 responded positively, with three of these having what was termed a significant response, including measurable tumour regression.

Now on face value 4 out of 21 patients responding may not seem like a raging success, but as one of the researchers stated ""it's significant when you consider that all patients were terminal upon commencement of the trial with other forms of treatment proving unsuccessful".

'Success' in this preliminary trial, therefore, was not defined as being proof that CVac works, it was based upon seeing that some of these patients who had reached the end of the road with conventional treatments responded to CVac, and therefore it is worth moving forward to more development/clinical studies.

I agree that the treatment may yet prove to be less effective than hoped (always a chance in situations like this), but I certainly disagree that the preliminary data did not give sound reason to keep moving forward.

If CVac gets to the peer reviewed well funded research stage they will use the commonly accepted measures of response, such as CA125 levels, and do so according to scientific convention.

In examining the preliminary data, though, getting too bogged down in CA125 levels is, I believe, missing the point.