Slashdot Mirror
The Cure for Cancer Might be: HIV
RGautier writes "Wired News has published that Scientists have successfully modified the AIDS-causing HIV in such a way that it can attack metasticized melanoma (cancer cells). The impact of genetic research on cancer research is in and of itself amazing. To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance! Research will continue, obviously, but they are already reporting success on living creatures." Just think: between HIV and carrots we'll be all set.
The bad news is you have cancer. The good news is you have HIV!
If you're gotten rid of 80% of the virus, you might not want to market it as "derived from HIV". Really.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
...Smoking cures cancer, too!
I think I'd go with the carrots. I dunno, maybe I'm just weird.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
The microscopic version of Alien Vs. Predator
The cure for HIV might be... Cancer?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
You assume it isn't already. Remember what White Bloodcells do? Along with anti-biotics and vacines? All this is doing is adding in another weapon to the arsenal.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
"I prescribe disease-riddled hookers. Take one after every meal."
The coolest voice ever.
And the cure for HIV is Heart Disease!
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
I saw this on Google News this morning and wondered why Slashdot hadn't picked up on it already. As soon as I read the headline and the article, I began to wonder... How safe is this to do this research?
I'm not talking about the safety of recipients once this goes into the real-world (although that can be alarming), but about the research itself.
I'm pretty far removed from science in any practical setting, but what are the procedures for this kind of research? I've seen too many movies like 28 Days Later to not imagine some accident or oversight to cause some sort of mutant airborne HIV.
Also, does HIV even infect mice? I know there's a human/ape HIV and a feline HIV but I had not hear of mice HIV. Think of some sewer rat biting you...
That's just my mid-day alarmist self. Note I'm not against the research, just wondering about it...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
So when this hits the market, will HIV be cheaper in Canada than the US?
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
I knew this girl in college that did amazing things with candles and vegetables, including carrots. I know for a fact she won't die of cancer. She OD'd in '86.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
I guess as long as they take care of the immunodeficency part, that might not be so bad. Wouldn't want to live in a bubble now would we.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template =Aids&slug=New+HIV+strain+found+in+NY&id=68437&cal lid=1
implies that HIV is becoming stronger at a time when we want to spread it by calling it a cure. I guess if you die early of the new more virulent HIV then you don't have to worry about cancer.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Do we really want to turn our bodies into a battlefield for germ warfare?
;)
I ask myself that same question everytime I eat out... the answer is yes... yes I do... taco-hell is just too good to pass up, and the other germs I picked up from KFC and the chinese food place down the street will battle it out...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Totally offtopic, but your joke made me think of another I heard somewhere.
A guy goes to the doctor about a problem he's having. After a thorough examination, the doctor says to the patient, "I have good news and I have bad news."
"Well doc, let me hear the good news first.", says the patient.
To which the doctor responds, "Well, the good news is, we're going to name a disease after you!"
Do we really want to turn our bodies into a battlefield for germ warfare?
Yes. You better believe it.
After seeing my mother die from cancer I would give anything to make sure no one else would ever have to go through what me and my sister did.
In short, hell yeah. Bring it on.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but don't we use viruses as vectors all the time? Like in vaccines?
COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?
Gene therapy use lentivirus-based (HIV) vectors for quite some time now; it's nothing new really; a marketing team found the 'Cure Cancer with HIV!' twist interesting I guess.
When pseudotyped with the right envelope, these virus can infect efficiently any type of cell. They can also transduce non-dividing cells, which is usefull. They lack almost every gene of HIV; they retain certain structures which allow packaging of the genome in the virus and the viral promoter, but that's about it. Viruses are packaged in special cell lines containing the viral components on plasmids most of the time, and preparations are tested for recombinants. Its the best technology out there, but its nothing new, really.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" seems like a good fit in this instance. Then again, your mileage may vary.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
Huh? And the flu shot you take is not a virus eh?
I think the "slight" risk of contracting an incurable, terminal disease is worth the chance to be rid of an incurable, terminal disease. Really, what have you got to loose?
Are you for real? You think somebody is going to invent a cure for cancer, and the FDA would dare ban it? If you thought the black market for viagra was bad, it would be nothing on this.
If you have inoperable brain cancer and given the option to die in about a month or a 1% chance at the treatment mutating into HIV...
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Genetically modified cells and viruses often mutate. scientists aren't certain, but they suspect that modification produces a less stable genetic code. But we are getting better at producing more robust modifications.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Episode 238: The Mansion Family
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
On the other hand, HIV mutates very rapidly, so attempts to control the cure, say, by having it die off when there are no more defective genes to rewrite might well fail (as any viruses that mutate in a way to work around the die-off mechanism would reproduce rapidly).
At least HIV mutate a lot, As Far As I Remmember. Also the cold virus (grippe?) mutate a lot this why you have to vaccinate every year AFAIR.
mutability of influenza
some propaganda but also speaks of HIV mutability. I did not have time to search for more HIV article but google is your friend.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
chemotherapy - is just poison. it works because the cancer cells absorb the poison much quicker than normal cells.
radiation therapy - again, radiation by itself is bad.
most over the counter acne treatments - are just some form or acid that kills the bacteria on the skin
As for reengineering a virus to take on something else, while facinating, its hardly a new idea. If you are interested in this sort of thing and haven't read Orson Scott Card's Xenocide (part of the Ender Series), you might check it out.
Wired News has published that Scientists have successfully modified the AIDS-causing HIV in such a way that it can attack metasticized melanoma (cancer cells).
So "scientists" is capitalized now?
I guess that's fair, but not everyone believes in science so it might upset some people.
Direct away from face when opening.
The researchers programmed the altered virus package to attack a protein on the cancer cell surface called p-glycoprotein, which causes problems in cancer patients by shuttling cancer drugs away from the cell. In other words, p-glycoprotein causes resistance to cancer medication. Scientists could customize the system to target any protein on the surface of a cell, Chen said. He and his colleagues have seen success with about a dozen different molecules, including brain and other blood cells, he said.
Except for the last sentence, it makes it seem as though this is only a way to pave the way for more conventional treatments. The last sentence doesn't make sense to me, given the context. I can understand how the proteins on the surface of a cell could qualify as "molecules", but then the structure of the sentence makes it seem like they're calling brain and blood cells molecules:
He and his colleagues have seen success with about a dozen different molecules, including brain and other blood cells, he said.
I'm still waiting for a virus that attacks the actual cancer cells. I remember hearing something about it a while back, but then it seemed to die off. Anyone been following it?
What, like sexually transmitted cancer?
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
Oh, great. If the future of medicine means that cures will be spread via sexual contact, I'm a dead man for sure!
And the cure for Heart Disease is exercise, which means that we're all doomed.
At what cost to our bodies? Yes, there are germs in us all the time, having a common cold knocks you down for a few days, a stomache virus, a week, what would cancer and (modified) HIV duking it out do to us? Already some patients opt not to hace chemo and other treatments because of the toll it takes on them. They would rather live a better quality of life for 6 months than be sick from a threatment and live 12 months.
hack a day
Does the next step involve gorillas?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Fetuses are, for the most part, tumors...
Pregnancy, the only STD with a 100% mortality rate!
The summary of the article (and many of the comments) would have you believe this is a potential "cure for cancer".
Melanoma is a subset of the set of all cancers - specifically, it is a form of skin cancer - more specifically, it is a cancer formed from the skin cells that give skin its pigmentation.
Melanoma is NOT *all cancers* - thus even if this modified virus will kill 100% of all melanomas and have 0% harmful side-effects this does NOT make it a "cure for cancer" - merely a "cure for a type of cancer".
The will need to generalize this virus to attack ALL cancerous cells, and NOT to attack any other cells.
Now, if you can work out how a virus can tell the difference between a cancerous cell and a normal but rapidly reproducing cell, you have a Nobel prize awaiting.
www.eFax.com are spammers
80% of the virus has been completely removed and it is just now a carrier. Besides it has got a sindbis cloak that affect only insects and birds, so I believe that the person vaccinated wouldn't contract HIV. Ofcourse there are chances of mutations but when the virus is so weak, its like 0.001%.
The FDA would have to be very politicaly sensitive and short sighted to make such a call. It's not as though the FDA doesn't understand disease, after all, yogurt contains active bacterial cultures, but they are good for you, so I don't see how a virus, much less one that has to be sexualy transmitted and has had 80% of its genetic material removed (TFA), would be too big a hurdle.
As long as they arent foolish enough to market it as modified HIV.
What you're talking about is Class A Experimental Therapy. It's heavy stuff and ranks up there with "hell if I know, maybe this'll do something" as far as the wealth of medical knowledge associated with it.
As drugs and techniques prove themselves they move down the ladder until they're used to treat the general public.
Of course, patients are only give the option of highly experimental methods once the tried and true stuff has failed.
The only people exposed to this will be the ones who allready have a death sentence from their cancers.
Sometimes cancer forces people into rough decisions. A friend of mine chose to accecpt a bone marrow transplant from an HIV positive doner because it was her only chance to beat her leukemia.
She's doing fine now, but she's on AZT and all kinds of other antivirals now to stave off AIDS.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Now where's that "+0 Creepy" moderation button?
:S.
It's 2am, and I did not need those images before going to sleep
And the cure for Heart Disease is exercise, which means that we're all doomed.
Oh really? Don't geeks have Dance Dance Revolution?
Using a virus as a vector refers to inserting a payload into the viral sequence (the desired DNA or RNA), which then gets inserted into the cell's genetic sequence as the virus inserts itself.
So basically I think there's quite a confusion here. I mean, it sounds like we're using one enemy to fight another, but if we can figure out how to get HIV to fight cancer, this new HIV won't go out there and suddenly turn regular HIV into good HIV that kills cancer. In fact, I don't know if it's such a good idea to use one enemy to fight another besides the fact that it sounds ironic. I would've thought that HIV would be one of the worst candidates with its fast mutational rate and ability to attack T-cells making it extremely dangerous. Obviously though, there must be some properties of HIV that make it a good vector in this case.
Working with HIV is actually a lot less dangerous than a lot of other infectious agents. HIV is fairly hard to contract, compared to airborne or contact-transmitted diseases. For example, it dies pretty quickly when exposed to plain old air. It's only HIV's incurability and eventual fatality that makes it so hazardous.
Memory tells me that nurses dealing with high-risk patients are prescribed AZT in order to prevent infection. Can anyone confirm my memory?
That seems pretty unlikely, because AZT is pretty damn toxic. You wouldn't want to take it just as a precaution. It is true that health care workers who've been exposed (e.g. needle prick from an HIV patient) go on a short-term drug cocktail intended to weaken the virus enough for their immune systems to handle it before it gains a foothold.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
A high dose of AZT following a possible HIV infection has been shown to dramaticly decrease the risk of infection. I work with children with cancer and/or HIV on a volunteer basis and we keep a fair bit of the stuff around for just that reason.
That said, HIV isn't terribly dangerous to work with. Admittedly it's hella scary, but given that the bug isn't airborn and that we can ameliorate any infection with a huge dose of AZT those working with patients have little to fear.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Good news, we have a cure for your cancer.
Bad news, Bruno here is going to administer it.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Not exactly HIV, but some European scientists, particularly in the eastern block have been promoting the use of "phages", or general viruses for all kinds of things like killing bacteria and cancer. This idea was somewhat popular before the distillation of antibiotics in the 1930s, then retreated to the backwaters. Its been reviving as more bacteria develop resistance to all of the antibiotics.
Multi-drug-resistant HIV strain raises alarm
The coincidence that an engineered HIV against cancer comes around just when another HIV mutation appears on the wild... Where is my tinfoil hat?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Using one bad thing against another bad thing doesn't always work out too well.
Check your own....
Generaly the virus used is the Herpes Simplex A virus due to the ease of genetic packaging.
That said, no virus can be engineered to just attack cancer cells. Cancer cells are identical to non-cancerous cells in nearly all respects. The difference isn't in what they "look like" but what they do. Cancer cells do not (generaly) preform the task that their non-cancerous counterparts preform and instead divide rapidly.
So the way you target cancer is targeting dividing cells. Since cancer cells divide more rapidly than non-cancerous cells they die off in higher numbers. Lather, rise, repeat. Eventualy you're out of cancer cells.
The problem is that radiation and chemo make the patient very sick, and the dehydration effects tend to leave them weakened and unable to continue treatment. Chemo and Radiation thus become a balance between killing the cancer and killing the patient.
A virus could be different because unlike the injestion of poison (Chemo) or exposure to Radiation, the body does not generaly react to viral infection with vomiting and other nasty side affects.
The result is that you can get more cancer killing power per unit of patient killing power. This in turn translates to a higher cure rate for cancers.
This is why stem cells are so interesting for curing cancers. Got a brain tumor? Great.... we'll zap the shit out of it and toss in some stem cells... in a few days you'll have regenerated the brain tissue and you'll be good as new. That's science fiction today, but it's well within the realm of possibility in a few years.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Due out next month is a study that shows amazing results curing AIDS by implanting tumors into HIV positive patiences...
The reason that the adenoviral therapy killed Jesse Gelsinger is that they a) used a form of the virus that causes an immune response b) miscalculated the dose that they gave him and c) injected it directly into his hetatic portal vein (right into his liver).
This is a big problem with adenovectors - even in the best cases, patients will get at least a little sick from them. There are next generation forms that are less toxic, but these are still in development.
The real advance here was that they were able to combine the minimal "cell killing" aspect of HIV with another virus, Sindbis, to create a gene therapy that is relatively benign. They then modified that to target this to specifically kill a certain type of tumor. Previous attempts at HIV-based gene therapies proved to be too toxic.
Of course this was all in mice, which don't get AIDS from HIV. Whether it would in people is another story.
But white bloodcells and HIV have been fighting each other for so long can we really expect them to put aside their diffrences and work together for a common goal?
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
This research, while initially scary, is relatively safe due to the safeguards in place.
What you need to fear and what the general population doesn't understand is that chickens overseas are the perfect breeding ground for the next epidemic. At least one case exists where two people caught the flu bug from an infected person... who got it from a chicken.
Can you imagine what wouldve happend had that inital carrier been infected with, say, influenza? A nice, ripe virus that mutates every year and at the drop of a hat... now being fed genes that can expand it's payload a millionfold.
What do you think a flu vaccine would cost then? Assuming, of course, that the 20% mortality rate would be realistic...
Anyways- this research doesn't scare me. They aren't talking about mixing different diseases yet that have radically different vectors (think Clancy). But should they try to pull this stunt with common flu, chicken pox, small pox, HIV, bird flu, and rabies... and let them stew... then we're in trouble. Byebye world population...
Unfortunately a fellow geek has a case. Check out his weblog here.
Basically make sure you get all suspicious looking moles checked by your doctor before it's too late. Melanoma is only life threatening when it spreads beyond the initial site.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Wow, the modding on this stupid post of mine is exciting! +1 Funny and -1 Overrated are running neck and neck! GO +1 FUNNY GO!
Yes, Mondays are slow here.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
Things will be reasonably quiet until a few outcast terrorist HIV strands decide to hijack an errant blood clot and crash it into the aortic valve.
Following that, security will start "screening" the blood so finely that the backlog of blood waiting to enter the heart causes our blood pressure to skyrocket, causing us to all die early of heart attacks.
But they'll tell us it's in our best interests, and we'll go along with it anyway.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
At least, that's what the initial results of the studies show.
.
The human reovirus has shown dramatic promise in early oncolytic trials. Some great pictures can be seen here
The virus itself is non-pathogenic, lives in the bowels and lungs, and it's believed that most adult humans have been exposed to it during their lifetimes. Contrast this with HIV...
I've been watching this technology for a couple of years now it's slow going to get through clinical trials, but there's good evidence that reovirus may be able to treat 2/3 of all cancer out there , with little or no adverse side effects. Where it is not 100% effective, and radiation therapy is also prescribed, reovirus has been shown to be a good radiosensitizer.
Aside from reovirus, we're hearing more and more stories like this every year. I have a strong feeling that we'll have a cure for 90% of all cancer within the decade.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
It's not "heavy doses of radiation", it's radiotherapy. And no one takes "heavy doses of toxic chemicals"; they get chemotherapy. From now on "genetically altered HIV virii" will be known as Happy Fun Gene Therapy.
Genetically modified cells and viruses often mutate. scientists aren't certain, but they suspect that modification produces a less stable genetic code.
In the case of HIV, the virus is ALREADY extremely mutation-prone. If I remember correctly, the reverse transcriptase enzyme (the one that makes the initial-infection copy) averages more than one error per copy.
The virus compensates for this by having TWO copies of its genome - not so much for error correction as to have a significant chance of having a working version of each enzyme when it has infected a cell. (This also lets it form hybrids when two different versions infect the same cell.)
The result is that it actually evolves resistance to the antibodies the body throws at it during the course of the infection. And also that the infection is slow - but eventually overwhelms the immune system with a mob attack of divergent versions of the virus. A typical late-stage patient may have three or more viable variant populations, each capable of infecting other people.
If they ARE using pieces of the AIDS virus in their construct, I certainly hope one of the changes they made is replacing this error-prone enzyme with a more accurate one from another virus.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...is that the cure for cancer is sexually transmitted!*
Sure as hell beats chemo!
*Of coarse I didn't RTFA.
That's bullshit.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
-"Beneficial Effects of Nicotine" (Jarvik, British Journal of Addiction, 1991)
Not listed here is an obscure type of stroke that occurs with less frequency in smokers.
I started smoking out of sheer desperation with ulcerative colitis about ten years ago. The ulcerative colitis went away, but then I was left with a disgusting two pack per day habit for two years that probably did more damage to my health. I should have tried chewing that gross nicotine gum instead. (Crohn's disease OTOH has a high incidence among smokers so it isn't exactly a total win.)
Well, that may be true for the dozens of pharmaceutical companies that made polio-reducing drugs, but Lederle, the company which marketed the (oral) polio vaccine made KILLING by selling 3 or 4 doses to all 6 billion people on the planet!
Same thing for an HIV cure/vaccine. Dozens of companies would no longer have a source of income, but the ONE company that creates (and patents) the vaccine will guarentee to sell 50 billion units over the next 40 years (assuming, like most vaccines, that it takes a few doses and booster shots to achieve the desired effect).
Plus, as a medical student, I happen to know for a FACT that people in my school are working on HIV vaccines. "They" aren't preventing this type of research.
This genes that cause immunosuppression in unmodified HIV have been removed in this case and replaced with something else that sepcifically targets the cancer cells themselves irrespective of your natural immune reponse.
When they prefect the "targeting" bit with cell receptor proteins, I'm wondering what the next step will be. Maybe have the vector modify the genes in the cancer cell to stop producing the homones that cause unrestricted tumor growth? Or perhaps hijack the cancer cell to produce something like the chemicals used in a chemotherapy regimin within your own body; perhaps in smaller, less toxic doses that naturally taper down as the cancer cell count abates? Who knows?
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
While I share your admiration, working with HIV is actually not all that dangerous to work with in a lab. HIV is, I believe (and I'm sure someone will correct me), a Level 2 Pathogen since it cannot live outside its host and requires direct exchange of bodyfluids to be transmitted. It's deadly, but not particularly virulent and has a long incubation period. HIV needs some extra procedures for handling and washing up, but thats it.
Contrast with everyone's favorite Level 4 pathogen Ebola Zaire. Ebola Zaire can be caught through casual contact with an infected person or something they have touched (Ebola Reston is actually airborn, but only affects monkeys). It has a very short inclubation period and kills 90% of its victims, in about 10 days. This one is very virulent. Ebola Zaire needs an airtight, negative presure room and a person in a space suit to work with it.
I do like the creativiity of understanding the mechanism of one "enemy" to use against another....Sun Tzu would be proud...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Can you explain the polio vaccine? How about smallpox?
People who have cancer serious enough to require this step are going to die, soon and painfully, from their cancer. In that position I know what my attitude would be: "Cure me or kill me. It's a win-win from my point of view." (paraphrasing House, M.D.)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
What a headline that would be.
If this HIV-derived therapy will make cancer die more easily from chemo and cause you to have to have less chemo (which, from the article, is how it sounds like it works), then really you're just shortening the war.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Botox® is the commercial name for Clostridium Botulinum toxin -- a very possibly lethal one, too, if taken in appropriate doses.
Just in case the layperson didn't know what the active ingredient is, it's got a self-explaining "*TOX" in its name. Now, that doesn't sound very reassuring, right?
However, its name hasn't prevented it from becoming one of the most popular drugs in the US at the moment, with people paying outrageous money for a very simple injection - of a poison. There are even (mentally ill|desperate) people resorting to homemade products and ending up in intensive care units, if not dead. All this to be given poison and iron out a few wrinkles?
I guess this shows that when there's both a scientific (and marketing?) interest, doctors and media are more than able to convince their patients that a "poison" or dangerous substance is for their good (looks.)
No, we're not all doomed - if all slashdot users were to disappear I think human reproductive rates would continue essentially unchanged.
Zombies are a major health risk. Their predilection for eating brains makes them an ideal vector for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, AKA Mad Cow Disease, thanks to the bizarre bits of protein known as prions.
Poor old woman, I think she'll die.
Now, if we could only engineer a virus that causes good spelling, punctuation, and grammar...
Didn't they basically rubberstamp a drug with an 80% success rate against leukemia a while back? They're not evil, just beurocratic.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Isn't that what are bodies are already doing as we speak? There is a constant battle going on that you are not aware of. If this new HIV variant is otherwise inert, I don't see any problem using it to attack cancer cells. Although it would kinda suck to find that the HIV stuck around even after its job was done. Eventually everone would have it.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
"Sir, I've got bad news. You've got cancer and Alzheimer's."
--"Well at least I don't have cancer!"
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
They are taking a form of the HIV virus and wrapping it inside a virus wrapper of a virus that is carried by BIRDS AND INSECTS! Imagine if they made a mistake...you could potentially have a version of the AIDS virus that could be transmitted by insects or worse yet...spreadable by birds...undercooked poultry could have a whole new problem!
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're
overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese
needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous
type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around,
the gorillas simply freeze to death.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
eh... wouldn't the average reproduction rate (or x/1000) increase?
Recent market research shows the phenominal popularity of words that connect with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. Furthermore, they also show the connection with immortality or avoidance of death by characters in those phenomina.
As such, the best possible name is Darth Voldemort's Precioussss One Ring Remedy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Why is the body good at dealing with things like colds, but can't seem to handle things like common bacterial STDs? Or, is it actually good at dealing with them, but occasionally runs into a strain it can't handle and which then causes symptoms?
It was someone she knew personaly.... an older sister I think (imagine being her parrents... I don't know how they dealt with it).
As a cancer survivor myself, I know where you're coming from. Though... I can see why they wouldn't want a leukemia patient giving blood/marrow!
I'm trying to think of a cancer that isn't in the marrow by default but can show up there easily short of matastization and I'm coming up blank. What did you have?
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Hardly. We've been using one strong enemy to fight another strong enemy for years. That's what chemotherapy and radiation therapy do. You try to kill the cancer without killing the patient.
A lot of our prescription medicines are actually poisons if they were in slightly larger doses.
I'm on three antibiotics right now and they are working on the infection, but, damn, I feel as bad as I've ever felt simply from the side effects.
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/n m/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm1192.html
Lentiviral vector retargeting to P-glycoprotein on metastatic melanoma through intravenous injection
Kouki Morizono1, 2, Yiming Xie1, 2, Gene-Errol Ringpis1, 2, Mai Johnson3, Hoorig Nassanian1, Benhur Lee1, 4, Lily Wu3 & Irvin S Y Chen1, 2, 5
1 Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
2 UCLA AIDS Institute, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
3 Department of Urology, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
4 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
5 Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Irvin S Y Chen syuchen@mednet.ucla.edu
Targeted gene transduction to specific tissues and organs through intravenous injection would be the ultimate preferred method of gene delivery. Here, we report successful targeting in a living animal through intravenous injection of a lentiviral vector pseudotyped with a modified chimeric Sindbis virus envelope (termed m168). m168 pseudotypes have high titer and high targeting specificity and, unlike other retroviral pseudotypes, have low nonspecific infectivity in liver and spleen. A mouse cancer model of metastatic melanoma was used to test intravenous targeting with m168. Human P-glycoprotein was ectopically expressed on the surface of melanoma cells and targeted by the m168 pseudotyped lentiviral vector conjugated with antibody specific for P-glycoprotein. m168 pseudotypes successfully targeted metastatic melanoma cells growing in the lung after systemic administration by tail vein injection. Further development of this targeting technology should result in applications not only for cancers but also for genetic, infectious and immune diseases.
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
And if you'd bother to RTFA you'd see that the current approach focuses on using the Sindbis virus for delivery. Sindbis itself is not a full cure - it attacks cancer cells but is by no means guaranteed to be sufficient to destroy a tumour. That is why researchers are now looking at using it for delivering other "payloads" that are more lethal to the cancer cells. Many of these would toxic to normal substancs in the body, but using Sindbis allows focused delivery, potentially massively reducing the damage to the body.
I do agree that the article is badly done, but Wired isn't really known for its rigor.
"I had HIV therapy, want me to cure YOUR cancer?"
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
You could've saved yourself a few bucks... Stepmania http://www.stepmania.com./
Patent #6,846,670: Genetically engineered herpes virus for the treatment of cardiovascular disease
Courtesy of Patently Silly
To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance!
Ever heard of phages?
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?