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Fighting Cancer With The Common Cold?
Roland Piquepaille writes "After 30 years of work, Saint Louis University researchers have genetically engineered a common cold virus to fight cancerous cells while leaving unaffected healthy ones. They received a patent for this research and clinical tests on humans will start soon, according to this news release. Dr. William Wold, chair of the department of molecular microbiology and immunology, received the patent No. 6,627,190 for his work. Preclinical testing has already been done so clinical trials should start soon. We can only hope they will be successful. This overview contains many more details and references about this potential cure for all kinds of cancer. [Note: this is a very different project from the one mentioned by a previous
Slashdot post.]"
They can cure cancer but they can't cure the common cold?!
does that mean the Cold kicks Cancers ass for most annoying thing to get in you?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"have genetically engineered a common cold virus"
Only a Microsoft Flu lab could make the claim that they genetically engineered a common cold virus, and all in the same sentence. It must be really hard to genetically engineer out of nothing, something... very... common.. Hmm.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
I thoroughly hope this succeeds for the good f man kind. Any chance that this research will help with cold remedies ?
"have genetically engineered a common cold virus"
Only a Linux zealot would make the claim that they genetically engineered something... when it's a replication of an already known common virus. And, just like the common cold, this common virus (at 97%) is just as likely to have infected your electronic hard drives, too.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
It's great that this is possible, but I'm not sure it should be patented. What ever happened to research for the good of mankind, and academic recognition?
I know medical research is expensive and all, and inventors/researchers need protection from having their ideas stolen, but what it means is that the technology can be held to ransom by the patent holder. "Yes we can save you, but it'll cost you $5000 a week for the rest of your life, etc."
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Any word on how effective the preclinical trials were? I'm assuming they went well since clinical trials are starting soon. But I'd like to know just how useful this treatment actually is.
Hopefully you geeks will celebrate the occasion of Linux 2.6.0 being released by showering.
Thanks.
Y'know, if I was smart enough to work out how to help people fight cancer, the last thing on my mind would be how to patent the technique. I'd want to help as many people as possible.
Great idea! Lets's inject people with functional bacterial antibiotic resistance genes...
When I did Genetic engineering back in the '80s we used antibiotic resistance genes as markers to show which organisms had taken up the gene we wanted to transfer - and antibiotic resistant bacteria are becoming a bit of an "issue" these days.
Could this be in some way related?
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
Two words: Lung Cancer.
That is the alternative, and pollution from traditional power generation plants is killing people every day, and sickening many more.
There is not a single permanent disposal site world-wide. no one can guarantee the safety. the U.S. government even has a website on _just this problem_. Ready-made dirty bombs are driven in trucks all over the country. GREAT IDEA.
If someone wants to kill a lot of civilians, all they need is a garage lab to produce chemical or bio agents. Much more effective, much easier to deal with, even more scary (1 gram of the right bio agent could kill millions). See the recent research on mouse pox for some really scary stuff (did that story make /.?). How 'bout a bio agent that'll only wipe out one ethnic group? The research is just about there. It is always hard to evaluate relative risk, but to me nuke power is way down the list.
BTW, as far as nuke disposal, there's a good reason for a lunar colony... =) Name another major energy source where the pollution could realistically be taken entirely off-planet.
Also BTW, I hope some of the recent solar energy developments lead (finally) to competitive photovoltaic power generation on a distributed basis (that'll tick off the power companies!). One of the more exciting developments is solar fabric, which can be used in curved building designs.
Thanks for telling us the patent number. With the electronic genetic blueprint, this is very important to our society, as now we will know how to create and spread the common cold in digital form without leaving the house. We could even export this kind of cold to India, all without leaving the house.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Genetically engineered Herpes now fights HIV. . . Ghonnerria (sp?) now fights crabs. . .
Now back to your regularly scheduled news. . .
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
All of the news thus far looks to come right off of the press release put out by the pharmaceutical company funding the initial front. I have no doubt this is wonderful information for the relevant shareholders/venture capitalists.
But what about his work leading up to this? I don't read the microbiology journals (not that I would understand them), but I'll bet someone around here does. Is anything relevant to this project peer-reviewed? Have any of his methods been reproduced? Is there anything published relating to this project?
I don't want to sound too skeptical here, but this could be a seriously exciting discovery if 25% of the PR release were to be realized. But until I see some proof (and not a patent award, thanks), I'm going to assume this "scientific discovery" is another turkey-intestines into fuel story.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
this article reminded me of the bacteriophages mentioned in Wired a month or two ago.
it's another example of utilizing existing biology to do our dirty work for us, rather than inventing some new "super drug" from scratch. fight biology with biology, it's much more efficient. sometimes older tech works better.
I think the biggest problem is that cancer undergoes natural selection rapidly, which is why it is so hard to fight. Since cancerous cells have a great deal of genetic mutation, populations of cancer cells can "evolve" to thwart treatments. Targetting almost any individual protein in cancer is bound to fail.
I did not RTFA, but from similar excerpts on the subject matter it is clear that they engineered the virus to only infect cancerous cells. The virus might be attracted to the increased level of telomerase that is being produced by cancer cells. Telomerase is used to replenish the expended telomeres on the end of the shoelaces-like DNA helixes. From what I know RNA attaches itself to the telomeres and starts recreating what it reads off. However, the place where it attaches itself does not get fully read, and therefore not re-created. Thus, the new molecule has a shorter telomere (the shiny end part on your shoelace). Now, when the end of the telomere is reached, the cell knows that it's time to commit senesence (suicide). Some guy called Hayflick figured that out in the 50's and that's why they call it the 'Hayflick limit', which is somewhere around 50 replications per cell (aka mitosis).
The problem is that cancer cells produce a lot more telomerase, which replenish their telomeres, so those suckers just won't die. If I would engineer a virus, I'd have it be attracted to that.
Anyway, just my 2 cents, maybe someone who really knows this stuff can elaborate on my layman explanation of this.
Who's got an explanation for the lay on how these could elude the body's natural immune system?
I agree with you. It does seem... Well, fucking dumb, to put it bluntly. The -only- reasoning I can come up with is that it's non-natural evolution.
"If you can't pay up, then you're too poor and probably not a productive member of society."
It's a sick reasoning, I know, but it's the only one that works. Oh, and/or bloody capitalism runamuck.
received the patent No. 6,627,190 for his work.
Only the sufficiently wealthy may receive access, then. In many economically deficient portions of the world, relatively benign diseases have remained impressively lethal.
Thirty years of effort, plus several decades of awaiting the availability of a less expensive implementation. What an unfortunate circumstance.
Do you like German cars?
Back in '98, Dr. Patrick Lee at the University of Calgary (http://www.med.ucalgary.ca/webs/microinfect/Lee.h tml) did this with a naturally-occuring virus. His company (http://www.oncolyticsbiotech.com) is now well on its way to having this treatment approved for general use.
[Note: this is a very different project from the one mentioned by a previous Slashdot post.]
How ironic that story submitters are now feeling the need to add flameproofing like this to their submissions, in fear of the duplicate article police.
Article seems to indicate that they juiced this virus so it's more effective in killing cells. We can only hope that after it's been out in the environment for a while (and that's bound to happen, they can't keep everyone who gets it isolated for weeks) that it won't start to mutate and infect healthy cells too.
so they patented this, but what's to keep someone from just getting their cancer cure by shaking hands with someone who's getting the treatment?
pollution from traditional power generation plants is killing people every day, and sickening many more.
Do coal power plants with modern air cleaners have nearly the same cumulative effect on Americans' lungs as tobacco smoke?
Two words: Off Topic.
Maybe one hyphenated word.
Seriously, though, moving nuclear waste off-planet is idiotic. The cost to get it into space is beyond prohibitive, and the chances of it being on a rocket that explodes on liftoff and spreads the waste everywhere is infinitely greater than the chances of terrestrial waste disposal causing harm.
The best nuclear waste plan is to reprocess it for nuclides helpful to industry and medicine and for nuclear fuel and then to convert it to borosilicate glass, which is very highly stable, and bury it in Yucca Mountain.
And solar anything is way to inefficient for any normal energy generation (remote locations excepted, perhaps).
But then again, the comment may be a troll, so I shall say no more.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
So, when were you diagnosed?
Are also being tried.
No. They don't have to be *those* types of herpes - there are many types.
The idea is pretty simple - and pretty fascinating - cancers basically occur when the replication processes refuses to shut down in a cell (actually it usually starts up again before it should). So if a virus can be found that interferes with the replication processes - hopefully before the cancer gets to it - voila. The lesser of two evils.
Here's one of many research articles online. These papers are *all over* the journals right now.
This has been in the medical news for a while.
See here, clinical proof from phase I human study.
Not to troll or anything but with all the articles this week about how the Wright brothers weren't 'first in flight' it begs the question, is this a knockoff of the work done in Canada so people can get over US's NIH syndrome?
-
Once they kill the cancer how will the deal with the cold?
I guess it's time to thaw out John Wayne...he's gonna be pretty pissed off, having been on ice all this time.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
did you learn nothing from the episode of ST:TNG where Geordi saves the planet of the GM people who would have killed him at birth for being "defective"?!?
Fighting Cancer With The Common Cold.
Sounds like
Pouring Gasoline on a fire.
Aren't patents supposed to be the ultimate evil on slashdot? Slashdot hardly differentiates between good and bad patents, so why is this one any good? Like software patents it can be argued that common cold viruses were known long ago, cancer is an old problem, and modifying a virus is also no-big deal, so what is new? Apparently, this is an "invention" just like a software invention, and hence a possible subject to patent. So next time you hear the word patent do not freak-out.
Not to invoke the wrath of the anti-humanity moderators out there, but good! To hell with Darwinism. If humanity can do it better then nature, why shouldn't it? Ok, so we can no longer effectively evolve stronger and better humans through evolution. We can still evolve stronger and better humans through genetic manipulation. Granted, we are not able to effectively do this today, but some day within the near future we will be able to. Once that happens we will likely evolve much faster then any species on the face of this planet ever has. Hell, we might not even do it biologically, it might be that a few hundred years from now we have stripped away the organics and 'being human' has nothing to do with the parts you were built out of.
Now, the obvious response is that we are playing god or screwing with mother nature, but consider for a moment that perhaps this is natures grand design?
Biological evolution is just the latest of nature's trends towards greater complexity. Why can't intelligence be the next perfectly natural way to head towards greater complexity? We don't look down upon sexual reproduction because it is more complicated then single sex reproduction. No cries that it is unnatural when sexual reproduction, the next step in evolution, is given its shot. Why look down on intelligence when it contributes to the grand scheme of things? Why would intelligent human evolution brought about in a lab be worse?
Honestly, I think humans are just the next rung on the ladder on the way up. What happens when you get to the top? Who the hell knows. Are we the last step? Probably not. It doesn't bother me though that there is a new order in town. If anything, it is uplifting. Biological evolution likely is not the most reliable way for life to survive when sun dies.
Cool with the cure for cancer out of the way now we can start building the next great Wonder.. Longevity :) only have barely over 6 years to complete it before 2010 when the game is over :)
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
So all along, the cure for cancer was right underneath our noses? *dripping* Shame on us all for not having thought of it sooner while we were sitting at home from work, watching TV and curing cancer at the same time. "Hey, Miss Doesn't-find-me- attractive-sexually-anymore: I just tripled my productivity!" - Homer
~mingust
But then we'll all get sued by the AMA, the RIAA, and SCO for copyright infringement for illegally distributing the patented cure virus to complete strangers. They'll demand royalties every time a cell undergoes mitosis!
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
If you look at the historical records, you will see a marked jump in the percent of people who die of cancer after the introduction of antibiotics. Food does the same thing. In times of famine and wars (for that matter) very few people die of cancer.
It makes sense to fight disease with disease.
There's a whole ecosystem of single celled creatures living inside people. Some things like acidophilous are quite good for the system. IMHO, the occasional cold seems to help keep the immune system in tune.
I think it is healthier to think in terms of maintaining a good balance in the ecosystem than to try and prevent all exposure to disease. Personally, I avoid antibiotics except for extreme diseases. BTW, when people do take antibiotics, they need to take the full subscription, other wise you will turn into a fun little biology experiment where the germs resistent to the anti-biotic can work on their evolution. I read arguments by some doctors that think the government should curtail the use of antibiotics to extreme cases so that we can halt the evolution of antibiotic resistent diseases.
Who cured cancer with the common cold.
Sometimes life reflects some kind of sick little Dr. Seuss tale, doesn't it?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Considering that without their effort the medicine would never exist in the first place, they have every right to be rewarded and have control over their invention that they worked on for 30 years.
Must suck as a patient to have to stay in bed and have a cold *all* the time. I'm not saying that I'd rather have cancer than a cold, but shouldn't they have used some other virus that doesn't have so many side-effects.
Is there such viruses at all?
Will code a sig generator for food
Yes. Yes I did. Did you like that episode too?
There's few things you have to know about viruses and cancer to understand this thing:
First: The viruses (adenoviruses to be specific) work by infecting the host (human) cell and by forcing the host to replicate the viral DNA and to produce the proteins coded in the DNA. After few days of this, a lot of new viruses form inside the host cell and the cell gets broken up (lysed) relasing a lot of new viruses to infect the nearby cells.
Second: Cancer is uncontrolled replication of cells. Actually quite many genes must be deactivated (like p53) and activated (like telomerase) to produce a bad type (neoplastic) tumor. The telomerase is needed in the cancer cells because it extends the ends of the chromosomes in the cell after each replication, thus allowing a cell to replicate more.
Prior art: Some people have taken the promoter (DNA sequence that activates a gene) from human telomerase and put it in an adenovirus (that was mutated to be non-replicating) together with cell-suicide inducing gene. By infecting a cancer cell with this virus, you can kill it nicely if the cell expresses telomerase (i.e. is replicated i.e. is a cancer cell)
The problem with the prior art is that producing non-replicating viruses is difficult and expensive and you have to infect all of the cells more or less individually.
Invention: Use the telomerase promoter to drive a gene required for the DNA replication in the virus. This way the virus will kill (by lysis) the cancer cells and infect the other cells nearby but will not lyse the healthy (telomerase-deactive) cells.
Even though this is not a major scientific breakthrough I still hope this works and think it's clearly worth a patent.
--
Binaries may die but source code lives forever
Looks like someone hit a nerve. Just because you might disagree with something is no reason to mod it as a flame. That post was without a doubt not a flame. It is kind of sad to see moderators use thier powers in such a way. If you disagree with something, post a response why, don't try and censor it.
I think it's time for an cancer-killer roundup article. We have the gold method, the reovirus method, and apparently this one. It seems that soon it won't be about killing cancer, it will be about investing in the drug manufacturer who's product works the fastest.
Damn scientist nerd complex,Wouldn't have a sexually transmitted virus more enjoyable ?
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
I must have skipped the Bioethics class the day they were showing that film.
cancerantibody
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
we want to KILL the cancer, not... give it a cold?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just like DDT was safe.
The owls are not what they seem
It causes symptoms ranging from nothing to a runny nose, but kills cancer quite well. They've known this since '98. It's in advanced clinical trials now, I think.
"I think the biggest problem is that cancer undergoes natural selection rapidly, which is why it is so hard to fight. Since cancerous cells have a great deal of genetic mutation, populations of cancer cells can "evolve" to thwart treatments. Targetting almost any individual protein in cancer is bound to fail."
wrong wrong wrong
For example: ONE discovered type of cancer is caused by a single mutation, and all cancer cells spread from that first cell are exactly like each other and only one mutation point different from surrounding normal cells.
You are so completely wrong, its hard to guess at what the source of your error might be. Thinking of AIDS maybe? or other viruses like flu and cold?
I worry that engineering something normally contagious into a dutiful servant of medicine will work wonderfully and get wide use and provide the stock for unanticipated mutations that are contagious again, and may cause more problems than we started with.
Of course, that's just more fun for the techno-fix wizards, if it doesn't get totally out of hand.
IMO most health problems need something to be subtracted, not something to be added. If we could subtract all the toxic crap out of what we breathe, drink, and eat, my bet is that would eliminate more cancer than any amount of engineering of biochemical cancer killers.
If we would do the same for animals' food, water, and air, we could probably begin to eat some again. Ditto the oceans. Don't eat fish because they have mercury in them. Is that awful, or what? Jeez. Mother Earth has eczema, and it is us. We should wise up.
Once you've actually *done* something, then feel free to stand up and take your bows... they will indeed be well deserved, but these types of promises for the future do nothing to help the people who are dying of cancer right now, many of whom may not even live to see the development of such a cure.
So instead of wasting time making press releases about the "promise" of a cure for cancer, just shut your yap and *CURE* people... Your Nobel Prize in medicine awaits.
(Sorry... do I sound a tad bitter?)
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I think slashdot retards must be cross eyed to +5 funny these two posts.
Let's see if I've got this right.
You've got cancer. You take this medicine. Your cancer catches a cold, but you don't.
So now you have a cancer inside you AND it's got a runny nose, the sniffles, and coughs a lot.
And this is an improvement on just having cancer.
I am anarch of all I survey.
DDT was claimed to be safe, therefore any time anything is claimed to be safe that I don't like, I will pull the DDT card.
By this logic, everything is unsafe.
Now, before everyone flies off the handle with how pseudo scientifically nonsensical the subject Line for this post is just listen. Also if there are any oncologists here who can research this open-mindedly without denying the possibility of it then pay attention very carefully.
There is a link between Cancer and Bacteria (Check Google) that has possibly been found by microbiologists in the past where in their studies of tumors they found bacteria in the growths and continued to find bacteria in all basically all the tumors that they checked. But, it was not normal bacteria, that is just randomly apart of the tumors, it looked to be intrinsically part of the tumors itself by the way it grew.
The Vitamin C and Antibiotics comes into the picture because if Cancer really is caused by a bacteria or some sort of infectious agent like a virus then it can be cured relatively easily. Vitamin C is known the be very effective in the treatment of Colds and Flu's if taken early in the infection cycle if high doses of Vitamin C are taken (First sign of cold or flu symptoms take around 2 Grams of it per 20 minutes for an hour and more if necessary). And antibiotics are necessary for obvious reasons.
Now, the Vitamin C necessary to cure Cancerous Growths will by necessity be high (say 300-400 Grams per day) and it will have to be injected directly into the growths, along with the most effective antibiotic or antibiotics available.
Of course, what I have stated in this piece is heresy to almost every established medical researcher, but ask yourself if nothing else is working and this does infact work, What's to lose? I believe it is worth anything to at least try. If Cancer could be cured so easily just ponder the potential results. Entire Generations might grow up and wonder about why people feared Cancer much like those in the Industrialized world do not need to worry about Cholera and other third world medical problems. In any case I think the ramifications of a cure are too wonderful to ignore.
Every now and then, encouraged by positive developments in anti-cancer research, an honest man can enjoy a ciggie without feeling guilty.
Today is one of those moments...
"Nonetheless, most cancers have quite a large amount of genetic changes (google "gross chromosomal abnormalities in cancer cells" to start with), heterogeneity is a common feature, I can upload microarrays to my web site if you don't believe me, or you can start with Nature vol. 407 pp249-257 for an example of why heterogeneity is important and for a discussion of natural selection based on angiogenesis genes. You were saying?"
You demonstrate a lack of understanding of each and every key word. You are either 12 years old or a machine blinding splitting out words.
Is somebody running a troll-bot?
With that attitude, you wouldn't have the money to do the research and get enough food and shelter for yourself. Your only option would be to get employed by someone who has acquired the money for the research (including your salary) and who consequenntly cares enough about such things to require that any invention of yours will be patented. The other possibility is if you were independently wealthy, but then again few wealthy persons seem to have the motivation to work their butts off on a remote chance of success. That's capitalism for you.
Everything to do with nuclear power is unsafe, yes. Well spotted.
When you are trying to fight cancer with an adenovirus, like a particularly nasty common cold, you get a mutated adenovirus that seems to copy itself only in cells that lack a functioning copy of a gene called p53 that repairs damaged or mutated DNA. If the DNA is then too smashed up to be repaired, p53 instructs the cell to self-destruct.
Since cancer occurs when DNA becomes so badly battered that it stops regulating cell growth and behavior, it is not surprising p53 has stopped working in more than half of human tumors..
Unfortunately those press releases are not really intended for patients but for potential funders. It costs a lot of money to run a pharmaceutical research operation and some evil profit-seeking capitalist will have to see their operation as potentially profitable, if they want to continue their altruistic work. That's research for you.
What is wrong with the nation Institute for Health?
Probably a lot, but not enough to warrant a syndrome named after it?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
189 comments already and not-a one has even made the connection that the guy engineering the common cold has the last name Wold. This is a comedy goldmine, here people! Come all ye and make merryment. Merryment I say!
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
I was not defendind nuclear power, I was simply attacking flawed logic. I don't like nuclear power myself, but I personally don't see the connection between DDT and turning nuclear waste into glass. At least no more connection between DDT and a glass of orange juice. If you want to argue against something, you need more than a baseless comparison to DDT.
It sounds like your reverse tachyon transcriptase bipolarizion technology may come in helpful. Could you please set your knowledge to task on making signature #335 from this petition come true. For those too lazy to click,
"I would like to zap Ellen Feiss with a scientifically-proven magic petrification ray whilst she is in the shower, nude, thus transforming her into a cute naked teenage marble statue, which I would then put in my living room to improve the aesthetics and erotics of my apartment."
And that is no great risk thus far. (i suspect you have been brainwashed by luddite bioactivists into believing GMO's are frankenstein-like monsters. Get over it)
Remember, it is just normal DNA they have inserted and removed, no supermonster genes have been introduced.
Quite the contrary, the virus has been stripped of its defences (the E3 region) so that it can be round up by the patients own immune system. This will also prevent it from spreading/escaping into the wild.
The downside is you have to administer relatively high doses, and the therapy cannot last more then 12 days, (the time it takes the body to mount a immono defence) or you'd have to suppress the patience immune system.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
If anyone on Slashdot are the dupe police, it should be the paying subscribers, who should be intentionally neglecting to renew their subscriptions in direct proportion to the rising number of dupes. I'm still in awe that yesterday the same story was posted twice in a row, that's certainly a new low.
You give the impression that the causes for cancer are not known, and you mention some speculative theories that they might be connected with bacteria.
That is pure Pseudo Science: If Cancer was caused by bacteria, how come you can have millions of cell-lines taken from cancers but nearly none from healthy tissue? You can be very sure that there are no bacteria in those lines.
Besides, most mechanisms how cancer develops have already been figured out: cancer has been a great help in discovering how cellular reproduction works.
Dissidents are healthy for science, but most dissidents talk nonsense and reject scientific process.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
http://biotech.about.com/library/weekly/aa_penicil linpatent.htm
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, the first antibiotic, and for ethical reasons chose not to patent it. The result? No corporation saw any chance for making profit out of it, and so the drug wasn't actually manufactuered until almost 15 years later!
Hope about the neutrino flow? Any medical treatment that doesn't reverse the neutrino flow or have some mention of chronoton particles has got to be made by a quack.
If we had cured the common cold we may not have stumbled upon this...
Marques Johansson
Let's see if someone can make this cancer-killing virus infectious. Imagine riding the subway and being cured of cancer by standing next to an unhygienic stranger.
Yet another example of a sucky patent!
I had to say it, and I'm surprised no one said it already. I was warned to post this anonymously...
To a politician, one email equals one voter.
But how many asses does it have?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I've always thought that something similar to what these guys are doing could be used to treat AIDS. Warning, to understand my arguement, you need to know something about the genetics and microbiology of HIV.
HIV targets, infects and replicates in only a certain class of immune system cells. What I propose is creating an identical strain of HIV (which I call a "dis-infection") that targets these same cells, but is different in a few important ways.
Specifically, HIV uses a Protease to cleave connected polyprotein translational units into functional proteins (thus the value of inhibiting it with HIV Protease Inhibitors). If we created a 2nd type of HIV, HIVb, that has a protease that cleaves normal HIV, HIVn, in the wrong place, it would destory HIVn translation products before they were active.
The genome of HIVb would be compatible with the new protease, so its translation products would be functional. However, a few HIVb translation products would not be functional without the presence of normal HIVn protease.
We have now created a preditor (HIVb) for normal HIV (HIVn) that can only live if HIVn is present. This is a relationship seen in nature all the time at all levels of organisms.
Now would this "cure" HIV. Nope. Once you get a virus, you've got it forever, whether it's a cold or a cold sore (herpes). The only reason HIV is worse than any other virus is that it replicates too effectively - the immune system isn't capable of keeping the viral load down. The "dis-infection" of HIVb, however, would hopefully do the same thing as various drug cocktails that lower viral load, but in a cost effective way.
Bottom Line:
HIVn alone -> trouble
HIVb alone -> nothing (needs HIVn to replicate)
HIVn + HIVb -> lowering of viral load
How much would this lower viral load? Impossible to say without a thoughtful creation of HIVb and careful experiments in an animal model. Drug companies, of course, would never pursue something like this, because there is no business model! And a scientist like me won't pursue it, because it is career suicide to make conjectures like this! So instead I'll propose it on Slashdot, anonymously, such that I can get "useful" feedback on the idea.
It's not a retrovirus. It doesn't actually alter the DNA of the host cell (like AIDS does). What it does is injects it's DNA to hijack the cell's functions and resources to produce more virus. This eventually kills the cell and releases the virus, resulting in a kind of targeted attack on the tumor (more tumor cells lead to more virus in that area).
I don't read AC A human right
Apparently, the virus is modified in 2 different ways:
- It will only reproduce in cancer cells: it would be "preferably" replication-restricted to cancer cells.
- It is better at killing cells (overexpress an adenovirus death protein) = it's not the cold it's the plague.
There is not much in the article that explains that the 2 modifications are inseparable.
So what happens if this very contagious virous mutates to get rid of the cancer-link but keep the enhanced cell-killing ability ?
I would like to be very sure that this has been well taken care of, but, nothing in the article says so.
As quite usual when reading a genetic engineering article, I'm more scared than thrilled.
"If we could subtract all the toxic crap out of what we breathe, drink, and eat, my bet is that would eliminate more cancer than any amount of engineering of biochemical cancer killers."
People are sick from overeating, but the great conspiracy is nobody will say anything about it.
Look around, and look at all the *FAT* people out there. Most of 'em are taking drugs for this and that, they feel like crap, and they're always tired.
If they lost 30-50 pounds, they'd feel like a kid again. But people can't stop eating. Amazing.
I have to pay ...
... you have to take usage patterns into consideration. For running my watch solar is very efficient (better than producing batteries, distributing them and asking cosumers to change them when their 20$ watch dies).
... I hope crises in California and elsewhere (one is coming in Ontario Canada) will lead to some new efficiencies in *consumption*.
The problem with energy in the North is not production but extra-ordinarily high consumption. Energy is too cheap (artificially so) and everything about our enviroment reflects that: badly designed cities and buildings and major sunk investments we have to deal with for 100's of years are the result
If the Spanish moors produced wonderful energy efficient homes that needed no air-conditioning.
So if a buddy of mine gets cancer, is given this cold, and then spreads it to others (thus curing them for 'free') can he (or any of them) be sued for copyright infringement?
Guess that would be the ultimate for of Peer 2 Peer sharing. *rimshot*
and by rimshot I don't mean goatse you pervs
No, I spent the whole series waiting for the episode in which Geordi would use his supposedly great engineering skills to save the day. Unfortunately, what usually happened was a fight, followed by his visor getting knocked off and then lots of groping.
Sales are going through the roof. Now that people are immune to lung cancer, all they have to worry about is that coughing aching sneezing stuffy head fever, etc....No really it is cool to see my school on Slashdot. Am I wrong for kinda wishing it were a Linux article though?
ptelligence
Yep, once you have this special cold virus, you will be legally prohibited from infecting anyone else with it... much in the same way that corn and grain farmers who use genetically engineered seed cannot save any of their crop for use as seed for next season's crop, and if any of the grain falls off the trucks alongside the roads after harvest, and begins growing on the sides of the road, the farmer still gets sued for IP infringement.
IWFAMC (I work for a medical company):
Preclinicals do not involve humans. They are animal experiments to show basic safety and efficacy. Human experiments are always called Clinical trials, even the very early ones.
This has not been applied to people yet. The big unknown is whether the preclinicals results will pan out in actual people.
Okay, how 'bout, "The year 2024, and the remaining 3 million humans on earth who weren't killed in the Common Cold Virus Mutation epidemic of 2004 eek out an existance ...."
"potential cure for all kinds of cancer" - maybe not. Brain cancer would be immune since the Brain-blood barrier prevents colds and flus from getting inside the brain. However, it doesn't prevent herpies from getting into the brain which is why herpies is not curable- it hides inside your brain where you dont have an immune system.
Aren't patents supposed to be the ultimate evil on slashdot? Slashdot hardly differentiates between good and bad patents
I need you to do something for me. Look at your post. See that little "588387" next to your nick? That, my friend, is your Slashdot user ID (UID for short). It is a unique numeric identifier for your account. Now, I'll let you in on a dirty little secret. UIDs are issued sequentially. In case you've never heard this word before, what this means is that the first person to get a Slashdot account was assigned UID 1, the next UID 2, and so on.
You'll notice your UID is 588387. I'll help break it down by re-writing 588,387. That is over half a million. Pretty big number, no? Some people here are over 700,000. Here's a neat trick. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE UIDS INDICATES AN INDIVIDUAL USER. Clear? No? That means there are close to three quarters of a million people who have signed up for a Slashdot account, and could potentially post on a story. Those 700,000+ people, while I know it is difficult to believe, might just possibly have differing opinions. In theory, anyway.
What, did you think "Slashdot" was some automated script that just spewed out commentary on its own stories?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
well, I would say that as long as the side effects are less severe than those of current technology then this willget approved. and even if the side effects are as bad, if it is more successful, then it will still be better.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Imagine you're a cancer patient. You've been handed a death sentence from your doctor, effectively. Might be a few weeks, might be a few years, who knows. Now, once you get over the shock, and start living with the disease (and some people do for quite a long time), what are you going to do with yourself?
1. Wait to die, knowing there will never be a cure, because all of modern science has yet to mention even the possiblity of one.
2. Have some hope, because at least it's *possible* something might happen. It could be very unlikely, but hey, there are a hell of a lot of smart people working on it, so why not give it a shot?
I'm as against snake oil as anyone. Nothing sickens me more than people who stop taking known, working treatments because some quack claims he can "cure" you. But hope? For someone expecting to die in the near future there really isn't anything better.
Actually, I'd say that things like this do more for cancer patients than almost anything else. Certainly more for them than whiny posts to Slashdot.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
First of all to the anti-patent guys, companies need these kinds of patents to fund their R&D which is very costly. I have no real issues here. Governments can subsidize it if needed, but the companies shouldn't be blamed for trying to make their money back and then some (most of these are publicly held companies that have a duty to their stockholders to try to make a buck. Sorry, but that's real life).
Second, I don't really expect this will be a miracle cure. Too many have come and gone that didn't pan out in clincial trials. As an example, angiogensis inhibitors were a HUGE deal when they first came out. They were curing mice of many forms of cancer with almost no side effects. While angiogensis inhibitors have shown some measure of success in human trials, nothing approaches the success they had with mice. Again, real life intrude. People are not mice.
Be that as it may, I have no doubt that eventually cancer and many other diseases will be brought under control. Possibly in my lifetime (given current life expectencies I'm a bit past the half-way point, and probably a quite a bit more than that, as I'm a smoker, but I digress). This sort of continued work will eventually lead to cures for all forms cancer. I hope this is it, but I'm not holding my breath.
Imagine you're an AIDS patient. You've been handed a death sentence from your doctor, effectively.
The deseasse is considered a life style desese. Now if you can help spread it to a billion other other people it might get enough attention to get a cure.
Call me stupid, but I thought patents were for useful inventions, not speculative fiddling.
Wankers.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
The most promising treatments for cancer have been through the use of ozone, electric current, and the application of specific radio frequency wave patterns. Royal Rife was doing it back in the 1930's (rife.org) using resonant frequncy before the AMA forced him out of business. Dr. Robert C. Beck improved on a patent from Dr.'s Kaali and Lyman of the Albert Einstein school of medicine to put a small amount of electricity into the blood to kill all pathogens. The four pieces of his method became known as the "Beck Protocol". Ozone treatment goes back to the 1800's. A good description of treatment is the book "Flood your body with oxygen". The mainstream medical industry wants expensive, patentable "cures". When it comes to cancer and other big money makers, they ignore anything cheap and non patentable.
"They received a patent for this research and clinical tests on humans will start"... as soon as the next person touches that door knob.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" The cost to get it into space is beyond prohibitive, and the chances of it being on a rocket that explodes on liftoff and spreads the waste everywhere is infinitely greater than the chances of terrestrial waste disposal causing harm."
You know, I had the great pleasure of seeing a test of a container that would be used for carrying radioactive materials in space.
They had a rocket on its side, the container on its nose. The igintied the rocket and in flew into the side of a fortified 'wall'. really just a piece if mountian they had sheard off.
Te rocket hit, exploded, shok the earth, and lit up the sky. Later the retrieved the continer. all contents still intact.
so I have my doubt that an explosion would spread nuclear waste. more likely it would fall into the ocean. which isn't so bad.
Of course we could just drop containers into the deepest part of the ocean. We would never see it again.
of course, Aquaman would be pissed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Umm, DDT _is_ safe. Do some research. Banning DDT unnecessarily killed millions.
But hey, maybe you felt better from your rich-world perch about it.
Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Mr Burns finds out he has every disease known to man and so they all cancel each other out. I had to bring that one up. :)
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
Slowly but surely, it seems your hope is being fulfilled (though, sadly, probably not in the US for several years for guess which reason(s)...)
These little guys are entirely natural (ie. found in nature without any of mankind's fiddling) critters that kill specific bacteria. There's a particularly cool image of one at the top of this page (you can pretty clearly make out the shape of the thing; it looks like it was designed to latch-onto something and inject it!!)
Also, there's a definite link between the body's immune system(s) and cancer -- ie. a healthy immune system can keep (at least certain) cancers at bay; a relative who had to begin taking immunosuppressant drugs following his kidney transplant suddenly began developing these little cancers on his skin (mostly on his face, neck, and hands; whatever was exposed to light.) His doctor said this wasn't uncommon and calmly referred him to a plastic surgeon who carved about 15 of the little boogers off him the first year alone!
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
As someone who has had his life touched personally by cancer, I think is fantastic news. However, I just hope that all involved have the sense to make this treatment available to everyone across the planet that it may make a difference for. Charging ridiculous amounts of money for a potential cure, and thus creating a rich / poor divide of cancer treatment would be a disaster.
I refer specifically to the large drugs corporation that are currently attempting to change a law that would prevent Indian drugs manufacturers from creating cheaper generic versions of their AIDS drugs. This just seems so WRONG to me.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
You might be interested to know that your suggestion violates the UN charter forbidding the usage of chemical or biological weapons. *Deliberately* attempting to spread a disease, regardless of what the motive is, is so absurdly sick that one might question the sanity of a mind that would have thought of it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
how to beat the common cold, it can share this information with us.
The greatest wonder drugs of all time* are beyond patent protection and very inexpensive. So will be the case for those that are expensive now and yet to come. Why not blame your ancestors for not timing things more to your benefit? *aspirin, quinine, silver nitrate, anesthetics, ...
What if the virus mutates into a form that starts attacking all cells, then this virus gets loose?
Genetically engineering viruses sounds like a very dangerous task to me, especially if you make mistakes. We definitely don't need a worldwide "super-virus" epidemic that leaves half the population dead.
First, in 1995 patents were extended to 20 years. Second, the pharmaceutical industry in particular uses various methods to extend patents beyond 20 years: legislative loopholes, lobbying, and litigation among them. Companies will often make minor modifications to a drug when the patent is soon to expire, thus obtaining a new patent. Alternatively, inventions can be given trade secret status if companies aren't able to extend the patent.
Finally, the pharmaceutical industry posts the most profit of any U.S. industry(18-21% per annum compared to 14% in the next runner-up), so arguments that they are somehow not recouping their (substantial) investments seem moot.
That reminds me of a safety class I was required to take while working at an aerospace manufacturer.
According to the instructor there is only one substance that can be considered truly non-hazardous.
Most things will kill you somehow - you can drown in water (a bucket full will do), a rock can certainly do damage if thrown with enough force, or tripped over. Paper can cut.
If you look at a list of different causes of death the numbers always add up to 100% We're all going to die, the question is how. Lets say we cure cancer as well as heart disease and the average lifespan jumps to 95 years. The last 20 years probably aren't going to be very productive and we're going to see a huge number of people suffering from Alzheimers disease which is debilitating for family members who have to pay for care and witness the deterioration of a love one. You'll have a small minority of the population supporting the majority of unproductive senior citizens. How? Well if our taxes rise to 80% we just might be able to afford it. The point? Lets cure quality of life robbing diseases like alzheimers and arthritis and depression instead of battling mortality.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
This is probably the 20th post you've made from this guy Piquepalle. Slashdot doesn't have to syndicate his blog; if we want to read what he has to say when can read it ourselves. Please stop crossposting this fucking nonsense and worry about fixing your duplicate posts. If you got no news to post, don't post other people's.
Shut up!? Get back to work!?
People dedicate their lives to doing something good, announce an interesting result and you tell them to shut up and get back to work?
<Flame color=bluewhite>
Whoo-hee, you're the pinnacle of self-centered dickness:
- yeah, don't waste time sharing any info with the world. Peers might be helped.
- How dare they pursue funding to continue the research!
Stop bitching if you're not helping with the research. You and every reply you've got are thick with entitlement-mindset complaining, and rather than getting modded up, should have fallen to the Troll pits. Oh, and stop voting for knee-jerk cheap-labor no-taxes right-wing assholes who cut funding, or that get into right-to-life ethical tizzies and illegalize some research paths, or that really believe there's some sort of cosmic free lunch. This stuff is hard enough without their incompetent meddling.
Oh, and tell me, do you really think that press releases or patent forms take anywhere near as long to write as... um... I dunno... curing cancer?! I think it's safe to say that they'll be able to multitask this little side project without noticeably affecting their progress.
The cure was found... and the discoverers want you to say 'pretty please.'
Wank that.
</flame>
do you have to use a condom?
Frankly, at this stage of development, possible cures for serious diseases are pretty much a dime a dozen. If you are in the field, you probably hear at least one a week. The vast majority fail to pan out for one reason or another.
Wold has spent 30 years working on this. Hardly a "knockoff."
A recovering cancer patient sneezed on several people at Memorial General's admitting desk yesterday, prompting Monsanto to sue for breach of intellectual property rights. Monsanto claims that the patient, who's name is being witheld, deliberately attempted to provide their medical virus to several incomming cancer patients who had not yet paid the licence fee.
In accordance with a ninth circuit court injunction upholding the sneeze as a DMCA "circumvention technology", the man is being held in seclusion pending a cure for the common cold.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Because a virus that kills its host so quickly isn't a successful virus.
like the fine people who put floride in our water for us??
What! What is it???....!!!
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
That would kill the virus as well..
Uncompressed air.