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A Protein That Terminates 70% Of Common Cancers
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."
Microsoft claims Cox-2 has no effect on the GPL. Film at 11
what are the side effects with flooding tissue with this protein?
this is not a sig.
See this article for a slightly more technical treatment of the item.
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You're probably right, although I doubt it will be 20 years. But, if it upsets you that it won't be useful to today's cancer patients, maybe they should just stop their work and give up? After all, nothing good can come from research.
Honestly, what is the deal with the extreme negativity and cynicism from the Slashdot crowd?
Wouldn't you be cynical if you had never been laid and still live in your parents' basement?
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It's probably to early but anyone who knows people with inoperable cancer would probably love to try anything.. just the hope it would give them would make there last days/months/years of life more bareable.
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...
After some of the things that have made front page lately I'd think that a way to stabilize 70% of cancers would make it. It's no flying car, but hey, it's nice.
I wonder if all those UD packets I crunched had anything to contribute. Probably not.
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.
while I agree with you that medical companies have probably gone a bit far with overcharging I really don't see why the medical industry should be that different from other industries.
If they put billions into research and don't get paid for it then they won't do research.
Think of it not as "poor people don't get this cause we patented it"
instead think of it as "rich people pay exhorbitant amounts of money for new treatments so that eventually poor people can have them".
If you actually read the report, it says "70% of cancer cells", not "70% of cancers". Big difference.
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
if cancers can evolve, eventually becoming immune to these proteins. I think not, but nature is often quite surprising.
reason defies logic