This is very exciting news, but to be realistic the reason it's probably not getting a lot of "play " in the news or anything is that things like this happen fairly often.
Scientists use mice in research because for whatever reason they seem to react in similar ways to humans a lot of the time (isn't that nice, that we are so similar to mice!). That said, very few things that show up in mice actually make it all the way to drug stage - I'm not sure what % but it's extremely small.
So this is great news, but could fall apart at any time - and will probably be a couple of years until it is available even in phase I human clinical trials. A drug usually takes about 10-12 years and $100+ million from "discovery" (like what is happening here) to get to market. So that is another reason why people might not see it as so "exciting." That and I think people try to be fairly cautious so that they don't get hopes up about something that might not work.
But I think there is a LOT of reason to celebrate every time we hear news of this kind of advance! The more things that scientists find to work on, the more things will eventually work - and I always have to remind myself that many years ago, before we ever heard of Eloxatin (oxaliplatin), Erbitux, Camptosar (irinotecan), Xeloda, Avastin, Vectibix and many other drugs people have taken, there were mice who were working on those drugs for us!
Hannah
Hannah K. Vogler
Co-Founder, The Colon Club
cousin of Amanda Sherwood Roberts
dx 1/99 Stage III at age 24
died January 1, 2002 at age 27