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A Protein That Terminates 70% Of Common Cancers

Posted by timothy on from the cancer-sucks dept.

Orne writes "BBC News reports here that researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have located 'a protein CUGBP2 (that) interacted with the mRNA for Cox-2 in eight types of human cancer cells.' Cox-2 (which is already known to affect inflammation in arthritis sufferers) is involved in growing blood vessels to feed cancer cells, leading to their uncontrolled growth. Raising CUGBP2 to normal levels puts the cancer's 'death' cycle back on track."

6 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. More info here... by Simon+Field · · Score: 4, Informative


    See this article for a slightly more technical treatment of the item.

    --

    Free book: Science Toys You Can Make

  2. Re:good, but... by Simon+Field · · Score: 4, Informative


    Normal tissue already produces plenty of this protein.

    It has low levels in tumors, and raising the levels to 'normal' shrinks the tumors.

    --

    Free book: Science Toys You Can Make

  3. Too soon to tell, but... by geekwench · · Score: 3, Informative
    I'm in favor of anything that provides even a minor stepping stone toward a reasonably non-toxic cancer treatment. Chemotherapy is probably the most effective bullet in the current arsenal, but the damages that it causes to healthy calls can be permanent. Depending on the organ, and the severity, the cure has the potential to be not much of an improvement over the disease.

    None of the articles mentioned a timeline to human testing (at least not that I could find). I'm going to be watching this research closely. I've seen too many people succumb to their own bodies going haywire.

    --
    Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
  4. Interesting Statistics by Frodo.20 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The protein doesn't kill 70% of common cancers, it kills 70% of the cells of the 8 tumor types it was tested in.
    A) This means that 30% of the tumor survives the treatment. This is a good start for a treatment but alone it is not a cure as the remaining 30% will continue to grow and spread.
    B) There are many more types of tumor which it hasn't been tested in so this is not exactly the mythic magic bullett.

    In addition this has not been tested in a physiological situation. While it is a natural substance you can't just throw it at patients and see what happens. The dose of this protein required to reach the correct level in tumor cells may in fact push the level in normal cells to extremes. Killing 70% of a tumour is not good if it also causes 70% of your kidney to whither away and die.And delivary stratagies targeting specific cells have still not been well worked out.

  5. Misleading headline by halothane · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you actually read the report, it says "70% of cancer cells", not "70% of cancers". Big difference.

  6. Re: UD.. - Not offtopic by drfrogsplat · · Score: 3, Informative
    The comment about UD packets isn't offtopic, for those who modded it such.

    The United Devices (UD) Cancer Research project allows people to crunch data (much like SETI@Home) but instead of finding alien life the idea is to find a cure for cancer. The software (as far as i can tell) models how various chemicals interact (IANAChemist, so I can't really give much more detail than that - check out the site if you're interested of course).

    Though this post to clarify the previous one may be getting offtopic :p