Poor Richard’s Almanac was an annual compendium of pithy proverbs and prognostications written and published by Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, under the pseudonym of Poor Richard.
One of the most famous proverbs is, “Lost time is never found again.”
So true, especially if you watched [insert any Marvel movie]. 😆
This proverb also applies to the treatment of locally advanced head and neck cancer (HNC), which is potentially curable, but if it recurs, a dire prognosis, all bets are off. The most common complication during treatment for HNC is severe oral mucositis (SOM), which involves extremely painful ulcerations of the mouth and throat.
The standard preventative measure against dose limiting toxicities like SOM is to stop or delay treatment with cisplatin and radiotherapy. This practice reduces toxicity at the expense of efficacy – and time. In general, the less cisplatin and radiation that patients receive, the more prone they are to disease recurrence, and to much shorter survival times as a result.
So particularly in the case of HNC “lost time is never found again”, since when the hourglass runs out, it runs out for good.
The reason to dose HNC patients with RRx-001 (nibrozetone) in the upcoming KEVLARx clinical trial is that its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties are thought to prevent or mitigate the development of chemoradiotherapy-induced severe oral mucositis, which likely translates to less time lost.
Another oft cited proverb from Poor Richard’s Almanac is “Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”
Our wish for RRx-001 (nibrozetone) treated patients is that they will not only live well with less toxicity from SOM but also long.