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Herbicidal_Maniac t1_j8eorhu wrote

My first question when I see these headlines is "In real life or in cell culture?" If you're not a scientist, that question will increase your scientific literacy tenfold or more.

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myusernamehere1 t1_j8ettyi wrote

Cell cultures are perfectly valid modes of study and one of the largest areas of active development.

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blackholesinthesky t1_j8ewdpl wrote

Yes but understanding the difference will prevent you from making embarrassing mistakes like... I dk... suggesting we insert UV light into the human body to kill a pathogen

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Herbicidal_Maniac t1_j8f58pc wrote

Or assuming that adding hypernormal concentrations of drug to a cell culture dish in any way translates to the mechanism of action in the human body.

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Ok_Historian_6293 t1_j8eydsx wrote

This is actually a funny point because in early studies of near infrared photobiomodulation for activating the healing functions of cells, Russian scientists actually tried inserting a fiber optic wire into an IV and then turning on a near infrared light to see if activating the healing aspects of blood cells would help broad spectrum healing abilities.

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Palpitating_Rattus t1_j8ewsm5 wrote

It is also true so many things work in cell culture but not in actual patients. You can kill cancer cells if you put bleach into the dish. But if you put bleach in people you are not going to have a fun time.

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myusernamehere1 t1_j8f3h17 wrote

If this is actually a point of contention for somebody then they dont need to worry about their scientific literacy, as it would be moot.

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Palpitating_Rattus t1_j8f3ob1 wrote

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying every that works in vitro also works in vivo?

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myusernamehere1 t1_j8f4e8c wrote

Absolutely not, i have no idea how you came to that conclusion. I am saying that cell cultures and organoids help to greatly accelerate research, and i dont get why their use would make a study any less valid. Your bleach example is a bad faith argument.

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JoeyBE98 t1_j8ios0k wrote

His point entirely is that just because you can put 2 things in a tube and see something happen doesn't necessarily mean if you put that same chemical into our bloodstream it will react the exact same way if it encounters the same cells. There's thousands of drugs that kill cancer in a test tube, but do absolutely nothing when consumed by a human.

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Palpitating_Rattus t1_j8f6elu wrote

Why is the bleach example a bad faith argument? I gave that as an example that promising in vitro results often fail to make it to the clinic. That statement is absolutely true.

You don't like bleach? Fine, if you put enough table salt into the dish, cancer cells die, but people who eat the same salt still get cancer all the time. Is that still a bad faith argument? Or how about the fact FCCP kills cancer cells in a dish but will likely also kill people if you give it to them?

In vitro research is important, but it should always be followed up by in vivo studies and clinical trials.

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myusernamehere1 t1_j8ffa66 wrote

Believe it or not, cancer research is typically more advanced than just exposing cancer cells to caustic/toxic chemicals.

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Palpitating_Rattus t1_j8fgxw8 wrote

>Believe it or not, cancer research is typically more advanced than just exposing cancer cells to caustic/toxic chemicals.

And how is this argument different from what I stated just prior?

> In vitro research is important, but it should always be followed up by in vivo studies and clinical trials.

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Herbicidal_Maniac t1_j8f47dh wrote

Many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many things*

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seamustheseagull t1_j8hii8g wrote

I mean, I recall having this exact conversation in class with our science teacher at 14. In theory, if you could extract all of someone's blood and subject it to bleach/alcohol/UV/etc then in theory some diseases could be cured.

But extracting all of someone's blood is not a thing. Not if you want them alive anyway.

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crowngryphon17 t1_j8h189p wrote

Until you run into things like the aids prevention treatment that made it worse in effect but looked good in a Petri dish

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seamustheseagull t1_j8hiood wrote

Also how the whole Ivermectin nonsense started for the most part. Some tests on Covid samples in vitro showed early promise for Ivermectin, but came to nothing when tested in vivo.

Yet 3 years later, some people still don't get the difference.

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neurodiverseotter t1_j8h59sv wrote

They are an very important part of the process of development of treatments and for the understanding of how certain cells or substance-cell interactions work. However what an in vitro study does not and will never do is to give proof of something working in a living organism. And a lot of comments here seem to assume this study proves the efficacy of CBD in the treatment of cancer which is plain wrong. Asking yourself "is this an in vitro or an in vivo study?" will make you less likely to come to a wrong conclusion about the significance of this particular study.

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ambrosius-on-didymus t1_j8i86e0 wrote

Very true in the sense that they are a great way to gain proof of concept for a novel drug early in development. But the vast majority of drugs that work well in vitro with cell cultures don’t work in vivo as a living creature (mouse, dog, human) is vastly more complex than a cell culture plate. Additionally, most of the popular cancer cell lines that are used in labs have been selected to be highly responsive to drugs to give research the greatest chance at success. I worked with CBD in a cancer drug development lab and it worked incredibly at killing cancer cells in vitro, but once you tried in an animal model, the effect size shrank dramatically and vanished more often than not.

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