Slashdot Mirror
Fighting Cancer with Math
zoloback writes "A group of scientists have developed a mathematical method to fight certain forms of cancer. The study has taken the team several years, but the first trial on a human has been successful. You can read the actual paper. It looks like a huge advancement in science, because there's a possibility to extrapolate the method to other types of cancer" From the article: "The researchers have evidence to show that all tumors grow in the same way, irrespective of the tissue or species in which they develop. In a previous paper, these researchers reported that tumor growth, rather than being exponential as commonly believed, is a much slower "linear" process similar to the growth of certain crystals and other natural phenomena."
But she blinded me with science!
I'm Dancin Santa, bitch!
Reading articles like this makes me wish I had paid better attention in math class.
If this works the way they say it does, then all I can say is that someone has just won a nobel prize.
I fail to see the link between the math, the treatment and the cure.. could someone explain it to me?
1 pack/day + lungs = bad
no smoking + lungs = good
duh. fuzz those scientifics.
Cheers to this. From my perspective, we can't spend enough time researching cures for cancer...just my selfish perspective, I guess, but I've lost far too many family members to it already...
Maybe with this new treatment, "Move Along, Nothing to see here" will actually have some relevance.
Im very Impressed Im sure. But its not really fighting cancer with math, just creating a good model on how to repond with the treatments we have.
Go Away! Not for Sale
I've been recovering from a broken finger the past month or so. I've studied the stemcell research describing the process. And what would otherwise be vague itching, swelling and aching instead resolves to actual awareness of incremental growth in the new tissue. I've modified the splint in feedback with the changing critical anatomical areas, and already have much more mobility than the literature describes. Before it's even completely healed. As we do more research on these self-organizing cellular growth systems, we'll be able to work with these tissues, facilitating their growth for maximum recovery with minimum risk and downtime. Theraputic stemcells are just the mannered cousins of tumorcells - we might very well live to see a day when they're all domesticated for our health, and even recreation.
--
make install -not war
make an acid remark...but then I decided to RTFA. And I'm thrilled. I just lost an uncle and my grandparents to cancer, and I cannot help but pray that this works.
Kind of like how we've designed the Internet to route around damage, Nature also routes around damage.
Every time we seem to be making progress against some virus or bacteria, it mutates and foils our efforts. Cancer has been one of those diseases which we have been unable to make very much progress against directly at all. If this new mathematical treatment can seriously pose a threat to cancer, how much are we tempting Nature to change the formula.
Sure, it seems like cancers are growing in a mathematical fashion. What happens when it grows randomly? How can we treat it then?
"Nurse quick I need 20cc's of the quadratic equation STAT!!!"
Remind me of the joke on how mathematicians fight fire...
A physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician are staying in a hotel in separate rooms. A fire breaks out in the physicist's bathroom. The physicist wakes up, sees the fire, does some calculations on his calculator, fills a cup of water, and throws it at the base of the fire putting it out while getting the rest of the bathroom hardly wet at all, and then goes back to sleep.
A fire breaks out in the engineer's bathroom later that night. The engineer wakes up, sees the fire, runs into the hallway and brings the firehose into the bathroom and lets the stream go full blast. After a minute or so, the fire is out, and the bathroom is soaking wet with water dripping everywhere, but the fire is out and the engineer goes back to bed.
A fire breaks out in the mathematician's room. The mathematician wakes up and sees the fire, does some lengthy calculations on paper, lights a match and drops it in a glass of water, says "It can be done", and goes back to bed.
so, what, i show a tumor some multivariate calculus proofs and watch it shrivel? big deal, that would make my whole body shrivel.
- emilio
neurostyle dot net - it's all in your head
I'm sorry, but my faith does not allow for medical/mathematical intervention. You must allow my child to die to fulfill god's glorious plan.
You can stuff all your "evolution" and "math" voodoo. Fucking heathens!
What's next, a 'Grow Your Own Cancer' kit like those crystal ones? I hope it works better than the crystal ones do...
1. Confuse the tumours with complex calculus.
2. When they're not expecting it, nab 'em!
Umm... yeah. That's how radiation therapy works. It isn't because of the fact that cancer cells, as their DNA is often times in an exposed, vulnerable state to to rapid division, is more succeptible to damage from the radiaton (or chemotherapy) dose than most non-carcinomic cells are.
Where that girl cures her mosquito bites by turning them into numbers.
we have a mathematical model isolating the immortal aspect of cancer cells.
Direct from the government of Michigan, USA: Learn how Nature uses math to grow cancer!
Be safe! Ask an adult to help you, kids.
"The patient responded well to the treatment immediately and has since made a total recovery and has returned to work."
I find it really sad to consider that a person almost died and that the "positive outcome" is that he returned to work.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
My personal wager is we'll find stem cells are responsible for cancer. Stem cells can be turned into or grown into any other cells.
Consider that along with unchecked growth, wasting with blood-fed tumors, etc.
Also, "Plague Time" makes a good case for bacteria and many diseases, including cancer.
I'll suggest you read it if you aren't familiar with it.
Now fighting cancer is easy as pi!
Anonymous Coward
From the article:
"By using a mathematical formula formula designed to strengthen the immune system, a team of scientists in Spain have succeeded in curing a patient who was in the last stage of terminal liver cancer."
A cure for cancer? By using math? Astounding! Unfortunately, the paper is rather short, and only speaks about the linear growth aspect.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
http://www.hypography.com/article.cfm?id=34220
;) turns out the only math the used was in calculating how tumours grow, and how they prevent immune responses, so they figured out an immune system response they can trigger that will cause the cells that cause tumours to grow to become a 'target' of the patients immune system. no math equasion used to 'cure' it at all, just a little deductive reasoning and science...
http://physics.about.com/b/a/088887.htm
the blog entry that they linked to was kinda vauge on details
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
who would have thought that cancer could be solved using math?!! /sarcasm
honstly is this really news?
The paper was published in 2003 and was cited twice in total - by themselves (I just checked Web of Science).
If there would be a real advancement behind this, many people would use it. Sad but true, but they sound like quacks.
Since mathematics describes the natural sciences, there are many ways to apply mathematics to achieve medical benefits. The important thing is to make sure that the treatment is basically in harmony with natural law, rather than trying to work against nature.
For example, there are chemical substances that have been shown to cause cancer. For many of these chemical agents, the contribution to a risk of cancer is proportional to the log of the molar concentration.
But if you are familiar with advanced mathematics, you will know that the natural logarithm takes on both positive and negative values. If you carefully dilute a toxin to a superlow concentration, you can make the log concentration negative, and thus use it in a natural, safe, and effective treatment.
The paper says "mass grows and looks for space to avoid the mechanical response of both the host tissue and the immune response" and the article says that they increased the immune system.
Chemotherapy reduces the immune system to nothing, no wonder you go to a doctor and die!
We all have lowered immune systems because of the lack of vitamins in our food and all this processed crap.
It's the cancer centers and the damn chemical companies that make $$$ zillions on research that are holding all this info back while people die.
When the hell are people going to wake up?
No math can proofe that you can "extrapolate the method to other types of cancer". This can only done by good old empirical research. Sure enough is math the importend part in developing the model, but a model is not a cure.
Cfx
You have 2 nucular Moderator Points! Use 'em or loose 'em!
....there was a quote: "Mathematics is the language of nature."
So in that sense, cancer is beginning to lose the argument. I like that.
Cancer's response? : "I for one, welcome our mathematically well versed Overlords!"
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Yes, but just think of the possibilities! If we find the inverse of that formula, we can make things bigger! Just think, you could increase your penis size tenfold!
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
So, the say isn't exponential (x^n) it is linear, um 1 + 2 + ... + n eh? So, this is what you do. You get something that builds a small little machine that is controlled by a super computer. It directs the machine that is inserted into the body. Well this machine is like microsized with pinchers or something capable of directly destroying the cancer on a small scale. You direct the little micro machnes to the cancer and start zapping em. This is a pretty good start until it is better understood what causes cancer. Um, ... I think ... :)
....
And, I don't know why it is called annoymous since all computers log IP addresses
From the article:
"create a treatment based on neutrofiles that strengthened the patient's immune system. The patient responded well to the treatment immediately and has since made a total recovery and has returned to work."
So it wasn't just math. Biology also helped.
I fight cancer with math, too. I have for all my life. For instance, I fight ovarian cancer by having a 0% chance of developing it based on my gender, race, and age.
From what I read in the article, they were just able to simulate something resembling real tumours using a linear growth model. But then the article itself says in the discussion that no one has ever observed non-linear exponential growth in real tumors anyways so people (with the possible exception of other modelers) have obviously taken this into account. Not clear to me whether any of the results from their model are novel nor are their assertions about the nutrient dependence of tumor growth convincing without some real experiments.
As a computational biologist, I'm not knocking the usefulness of these types of mathematical approaches - and what they seem to have is a nice and maybe even a correct tumorigensis model, but let's keep it real - this is far from a cure for cancer...
It is not a serious research at all.
Gender is a culturally defined construct. Therefore your gender has nothing to do with your contracting aviary cancer.
But in the US they would say "Nurse, quick I need 21/32nds of an ounce of..."
This stuff's been done for years - just google "gompertz cancer" and you'll see what I mean. I was part of a team that developed a mathematical model for the growth (and cure - using a modified virus, but that's a whole different story) of multiple myeloma in immunodeficient mice. Perhaps they've applied a new model (I only glanced at the paper), but this certainly isn't the first time and it certainly won't be the last time research along these lines has taken place. A lot of very smart people have spent decades working on such research.
Of course it's great to see an advancement in science, particularly applied math, but those calling for the Nobel should take a deep breath and relax - cancer isn't going away anytime soon.
if scientists purged their "common beliefs" before starting research, they wouldn't have waste 50+ years ASSUMING that it was exponential growth. i defintely didn't read the article :) but my point is sound.
maybe later they'll find our that the moon isn't really a dairy product as widely believed.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
This has to be the coolest thing I've read on Slashdot in months. I will eat spanish food for a week in their honor and will buy twenty Euros and hang it on my cubicle wall.
This is my sig.
When those pimply infectious things pop up, do we try to go after them, or do we try to get the source - the infection? If you do the second, you are more likely to be disease-free sooner rather than later. Cancer, IMO is the same thing. Tumors are just the infected pimples popping up. Until we can find the source, controlling, not necesserily cutting out (as that does a lot of damage to the immune system), the tumors should be the biggest priority. Cutting out a tumor does not remove cancer.
-Palal
This claim that these guys have cured cancer is completely bogus. Slashdotters don't know shit about medicine. They are so gullible. They'll believe anything any claim that math and computers alone can solve the most difficult problems. Real life is a little more complicated than that.
There is a follow-up article criticizing the original article: abstract
And a response by the original authors: abstract
In any event, it's a little premature to celebrate. Their follow-up work in mice (abstract) used implanted tumours. It is already known that tumours have the capacity to evade immune response, and we should not be surprised that implanting a foreign tumour mass into a host and stimulating the immune system will provoke a favourable response. The situation is more complicated when trying to raise the immune system to attack a tumour comprised of one's own cells. It seems to me that, at this point, they are trying to prove their particular growth model, not developing a de facto cure.
That their devised strategy worked on a single human subject is cause for optimism, and nothing more. That work has not been published (that I could find), so there is no way to properly assess the result. At this point, they are more than likely drumming up press to ensure continued funding for their research... not that there's anything wrong with that ;).
Whew, that's a releif. I can go back to smoking 'backy in my asbestos pipe, get rid of the hands free of my cell phone, and start eating PVC again. Hurrah for science!
Link
And some detail on how it works...
I'm too much of a damn pessimist to believe it's true after reading something similar to this just about every week followed by "could lead to treatments"... Here's hoping I'm wrong.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
This is the kind of scientific thinking that more people need to do rather than hearing something from one source and then quoting it religiously... Those links should be in the article itself
Studies have shown that prolonged exposure to math can cause cancer!
Credit where credit's due - there is a reason, after all, that they don't have Nobel prizes for pure mathematics or navel gazing. :p
Tumor growth rates are a hotly debated topic. This paper contains some interesting ideas. But the headline incorrectly suggests that "fighting cancer with math" is something new. Biologists have been using mathematics, including differential equations and fractals for as long as they have been around (in fact, a lot of math comes from biological problems).
On quick reading, this paper seems to argue primarily that it is not nutrients, but cell diffusion, that limits cancer growth rates. That hypothesis is supported by observing similarities between the growth behavior and shapes created by processes in that class and real tumors. Interesting, but only weak evidence. They'll need to refine their hypothesis and test it more directly experimentally.
At the risk of trolling beyond my bounds...
It irks me to hear a good joke all the way to the end, only to find someone botched the punchline. Thank you fellow mathematician for enlightening us to the real deal.
Just so this isn't a pure fluff-post, here's a link to the abstract of the original paper from clinical studies in mice, published in Physical Review Letters, June 7, 2004. Mind you this has only been tested in one human case study and they make no claims to generalize this to other forms of cancer.
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsSer
I will most likely download the full report tomorrow from the university.
Studies also show that cancer cures smoking... Maybe this works on mathematics too?
Math is a base for every solid science. So we are already now "cured by math" (but also enjoying all advantages of civilisation because of scientific method - based on math).
/.) that science and scientific method is somehow mystified. This mystification is than part of news headlines - and content of news is similar to religious messages. Don't forget, science is simple collection of recepies which works (and help us to better understood world we are living in).
However, there is a trend in the last time (also on
The item was also on the Spanish news last night, and they showed two (isolated) cases in which a therapy based on this model was successfully applied to patients in a terminal stadium of liver cancer. That *is* impressive, even though two patients is not a proof.
Actually, unregulated mitosis is just one of the mutations that contributes to cancer. Some of the others include: genetic instability, resistance to apoptosis signaling (i.e. no cell suicide,) ability to recruit vasculature, ability to migrate (i.e. reduce cell-cell bonding and increased motility,) ability to survive in novel body environments. These are loosely related to the "stages" of cancer.
Each of these mutations is selected for by very stringent competition for nutrients both among cancer cells themselves and the body's normal cells. There is a very real type of evolution occuring, and as the cancer cells begin to ignore the signals coming from nearby cells and their behavior represents their own individual interests rather than the interests of the body as a whole--they have in a very literal sense become an independent organism. It is not exactly analogous to a speciation event, but it is related.
A literature search for "evolution" and "cancer" would return a number of papers that borrow models from evolutionary biology to model cancer.
The excitement over this paper, or "treatment" is perhaps a bit premature. Scaling treatment is a common and quite popular approach in many growth phenomena, and has been investigated to death in the context of crystal growth (MBE, molecular beam epitaxy), but ironically, the equation that bears the name "MBE equation" does not actually describe MBE growth correctly (in my view). Therefore, saying that equation (2) in the original paper describes the physical process of "surface diffusion" in the case of MBE or surface cancer cells is highly suspect. The growth of the cancer cells might be well approximated by the growth MBE equation (2), but this is mere curve fitting, and a closer look at the underlying physical mechanisms is more important than getting good fits.
Biba Bru!!!
Parent is correct, if this was a real advancement it would have been heavily cited.
And does anyone care or want to know?
You seem to suggest that math hardly played any role in this discovery. Yet from your own article (they were identical, did you read them?) I quote.
"Demonstrated in mice, the finding is a direct result of applying a new universal model of tumor growth developed over the last ten years in a collaboration between scientists at the Spanish Research Council and medical research centers in Spain. The researchers have evidence to show that all tumors grow in the same way, irrespective of the tissue or species in which they develop (Bru et al., Biophysical Journal, November 2003)."
A mathematical model was developed that allowed the researchers to undestand how the cancer grew, based on previous scientific findings. Using this model they were able to understand exactly what to do to get rid of the cancer in the patient. Math and Science go hand in hand. Science can not proceed without mathematical reasoning.
Cham
Being spanish, I feel extra proud of the media attention is getting this case study. Hopefully, the spanish politicians will now consider to promote more spanish science.
Although the author has said this should be taken as a definitive treatment, it opens the doors to further research and clinical trials. Don't expect a full treatment procedure before two years, but this was a pretty good start.
The original article published by Dr. Brú in 1998 is freely available from the journal of Biophysics. For those of who enjoy maths.
It seems like the major breakthrough is in the tumor's interactions with the cells surrounding it. The math showed that although cells will divide exponentially in the lab, in the body there is competition with other cells. This competition slows the growth of the tumors. The rate at which the tumor actually grows depends on the interactions at the boundary normal and tumorous cells. Some possible influences on the interaction are
1) the ability for the non-tumorous cells to resist the microacidic environment reduce cell death surrounding the tumor. Less dead cells = less space for the tumor to expand into. The note that neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) are resistant to acidic environments. If these cells can be recruited (I think thats what they did) then the tumor can be somewhat encapsulated.
2) the ability of the tumor to break down proteins in the extracellular matrix. This is basically all the junk that helps hold cells together. Digesting these proteins again gives more space for expansion. When normal cells lose some of these bonds they can also become succeptable to removal by the immune system. I suppose there are drugs that target the enzymes that degrade the matrix proteins.
Math shows growth patterns and describes which system(s) are in play and how best to treat.
Well thats my best guess after skimming the paper.
Do all of you just read the titel of the story and then attempt posting some relating pun/joke to score mod points? Please RTFA and post something refreshing.
...bored that cancer to death with maths?
.sigh
By the time you get through their formulae you'll develop a tumor.
... that using mathematical models is not a new concept in medicine. Mathematical models is part of the foundation for just about any other branch of science.
Although that's funny (and I laughed), allow me to point out that the medical practice typically uses cubic centimeters and not ounces in the United States. Science and Medicine have largely switched to the metric system. It's just Industry and the common public that hasn't.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Let P be a spherical patient.
There is no Nobel Prize for economics either, never has been. And there never will be. Nobel is long since dead and his will cannot be re-written posthumously.
You're joking, right? We already have a set of tiny machines that seek out rogue cells -- it's called the immune system. And this is exactly what they've done, given the patient's immune system the tools it needs to identify the cancer.
Wakes up, sees the fire, and performs a linear transposition, moving the fire into the physicist's bedroom and reducing the problem to a previously solved joke.
Tell me that first comment after the article isn't from a Slashdotter.
Actual US Medical-Emergency Dialogue:
Nurse: 'Sup?
Doctor: Quick! I need 20cc of quadratic equation!
Nurse: 'Stat?
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I am sorry for this slightly off-topic post, but it concerns a topic which I have been wanting to touch on for quite some time now; I just hope my posting of this message shall reach to some of those among you who know a thing or two about this (before it is too late and swims amidst the pool of other low-rated posts).
Anyway, I have seen discussed the matter of distributed computing projects in the field of proccessing power for curing cancer, such as IBM Grid and Folding@Home. I wanted to know whether or not these projects actually have contributed to the advancement of science, and also which is the one most worth installing.
I thank you in advance.
The article was a poor write up by someone who was probably interviewed over the phone. "Neutrofiles" are probably meant to be Neutrophils, the white blood cells that are part of the innate immune system. It sounds like the scientists used some sort of external growth media to select successful immune cells and reinjected them into the patient? Not sure about the therapy, the article contains no detail.
It reminds me of some random journalists who wrote an article about loch (lake) biology for the Guardian once who did a telephone interview, and embarrassingly wrote "fighter plankton" throughout the article instead of phytoplankton.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
The news article quoted described this as some sort of cure.
But the abstract only talks about a new way of describing cancer growth. It's not obvious to me that if you know how something grows, that you can treat it.
On the other hand I am about to read the full scientific paper and see if that gives any clues. If anyone knows of a paper describing the treatment, I'd be interested.
Actually, this is not completely true. Cancer cells are equally susceptible to DNA damage (they have the same amount of DNA as other cells), but they use it more, so it is often more deadly, if you can get apoptosis (cell-suicide) to initiate. However, one of the major methods used by cancer cells to evade ... pretty much anything we can throw at them, is to turn off apoptosis. If they don't curl up and die, despite everything we throw at them, then there's not much we can currently do to kill them.
Someone finds something out like this about every five to ten years. For instance, it was known back in the early 1900s that cancer was basically the same and grows in the same manner no matter where it appears in the body. Go back and study the research of Joseph Beard (do a google).
The problem is that more people make a living from treating cancer than actually die from it. There is an insane amount of money changing hands over cancer, so no matter what new, improved, and more successful treatments pop up over the years, they rarely see light of day. Why? Because there is an industry entrenched around radiation/chemo and all the oncologist read about these new treatments...and go right on treating patients the same way. Regardless of results, that's how they have paid for the big houses, made their Porsche payments, and sent their kids to college all of these years.
Yes, some of this is the FDA's fault. But if cancer was cured tomorrow, fifteen years from now, there would still be oncologists treating cancer with radiation/chemo, if they could get away with it.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Do stem cells cause cancer? Asks the cover of the latest (Dec. 27) issue of Forbes Magazine,
Dirks and a handful of other mavericks argue that this indiscriminate approach is wrongheaded. They believe a single type of cell may be cancer's main growth engine:mutant stem cells that, though barely present, spawn other cells that then spark growth. "This has profound implications," says researcher Thomas Look of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "The major cells you see under a microscope may not be the ones you need to kill in order to cure the disease." He adds that the theory "is definitely still very controversial" in some quarters.
Figure out a way to isolate these mutant cells and target only them, Dirks says, and maybe cancer can be stopped outright--and the kids he treats might stop dying so soon after he operates.
These mutant stem cells already have been found in breast cancer, two types of leukemia and multiple myeloma. This fall Dirks and six scientists at the University of Toronto proved the existence of the cells in human brain tumors, pinpointing a small group of cells believed to be the driver of the tumors' growth. "In every brain tumor we have looked at, in both adults and kids, we are able to find these cells," Dirks says.
-=-=-=-=-=
From the web:
In 1902, Beard had called attention to the role of "totipotent germ cells" in the development of cancer. In embryology, the word "totipotent" means that a cell is capable of giving rise to all types of differentiated cells found in that organism. This anticipated the contemporary attention to totipotent stem cells, although human embryonic stem cells (ESC) were not isolated until 1998 (16). Human ESCs are described as totipotent and in fact they release hCG (17,18). The relationship between Beard's totipotent germ cells and contemporary totipotent stem cells deserves further study.
-=-=-=-=-=
Also from the web:
This is significant because to isolate the stem cells, scientists peel away the trophoblast
Ron Paul
A triple load:
Richard Feynman has been over this ground. He once read some medical article that concluded that iron was responsible for fevers. You see he took his sick wife's temperature, plotted the fever curve, then looked in a chemistry book for a reaction that matched that curve. Some iron reaction matched the best, therefore he triumphantly concluded that iron caused fevers.
Same thing, different decade. We have gotten not a whit wiser in fifty years.
Do some research on the relationship between cancer and stem cells. Very interesting stuff. Here is some information from Forbes Magazine:
Do stem cells cause cancer? Asks the cover of the latest (Dec. 27) issue of Forbes Magazine,
Dirks and a handful of other mavericks argue that this indiscriminate approach is wrongheaded. They believe a single type of cell may be cancer's main growth engine:mutant stem cells that, though barely present, spawn other cells that then spark growth. "This has profound implications," says researcher Thomas Look of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "The major cells you see under a microscope may not be the ones you need to kill in order to cure the disease." He adds that the theory "is definitely still very controversial" in some quarters.
Figure out a way to isolate these mutant cells and target only them, Dirks says, and maybe cancer can be stopped outright--and the kids he treats might stop dying so soon after he operates.
These mutant stem cells already have been found in breast cancer, two types of leukemia and multiple myeloma. This fall Dirks and six scientists at the University of Toronto proved the existence of the cells in human brain tumors, pinpointing a small group of cells believed to be the driver of the tumors' growth. "In every brain tumor we have looked at, in both adults and kids, we are able to find these cells," Dirks says.
-=-=-=-=-=
From the web:
In 1902, Beard had called attention to the role of "totipotent germ cells" in the development of cancer. In embryology, the word "totipotent" means that a cell is capable of giving rise to all types of differentiated cells found in that organism. This anticipated the contemporary attention to totipotent stem cells, although human embryonic stem cells (ESC) were not isolated until 1998 (16). Human ESCs are described as totipotent and in fact they release hCG (17,18). The relationship between Beard's totipotent germ cells and contemporary totipotent stem cells deserves further study.
-=-=-=-=-=
Also from the web:
This is significant because to isolate the stem cells, scientists peel away the trophoblast
Ron Paul
Fascinating. In summary, this article shows that tumor cells of widely different genetic backgrounds share a common behavior. When tumors grow in vitro, this behavior is completely compatible with MBE universality dynamics. Further, there is sufficiently abundant and clear biological and clinical evidence to suggest that this is also the case in vivo, although further work is needed to confirm this. In any case, a universal tumor growth dynamics is observed for any type of tumor in vivo, independently of any other characteristic of tumoral cell lines. This dynamics is always governed by processes of cell surface diffusion. However, more work is needed to fully determine the whole dynamical behavior of tumor growth. The fractality of the contour of all the studied cell colonies and tumors has been demonstrated. Scaling techniques show that in vitro and in vivo cell proliferation would obey the same dynamics, independent of cell line or any other characteristic. These universal dynamics are compatible with a linear growth regime, a result in contrast with the currently accepted exponential or Gompertzian models of tumor growth. The main mechanism responsible for tumor progression, as for any cell proliferation process, is cell diffusion on the tumor border. These results incorporate the new concept that the major conditioner of tumor growth is space competition between tumor and the host, which is more important than nutrient competition or angiogenesis, etc. The latter must be considered, in some cases, as necessary or as a coadjuvant condition of tumor growth, but their effects mainly consist of modifying the growth rate--perhaps simply allowing it or not. These results invalidate the current concept of cell proliferation and offer a unified view of tumor development. The dynamics involved provide coherent explanations where the traditional model cannot. Despite the importance of characteristics common to the dynamics of the in vivo growth of different tumors, more work is needed to completely characterize them. It should not be forgotten that, independent of interpretations, this article shows for the first time that different tumors have common characteristics such as the distribution of cell proliferation and their characteristic forms (that would imply common basic growth processes), determined via the critical exponents of local and global roughness. As a result, some important features of cancer can be better explained. Moreover, some clinical strategies may need to be revised.
Another French joke with engineers from different schools building a bridge...
An engineer from Ecole Polytechnique builds a bridge. The bridge collapses, but he knows why.
An engineer from Ecole Centrale builds a bridge. The bridge does not collapse and he knows why.
An engineer from Ecole Des Arts et Métiers builds a bridge. The bridge does not collapse, but he doesn't know why.
You can easily adapt this joke by chosing engineers from different universities or with different backgrounds (pure theory, applied theory, pure practice).
cancer is a rare event, and by the time it is detected, hundreds, if not thousands of cell divisions have occured. hence, I don't think anyone has the slightest idea what the initial steps on the path from normal to tumorigenic were, since you can't possibly capture this (except in people heterozygous for tumor suppresor genes, like wilms patients)
Farmers wanted to increase production of milk.
The job was given to a biologist, who after 5 years and 3 million dollars was able to produce cows who gave 5% more milk.
It wasn't enought, so they gave the job to some chemists who after 10 years and 10 million dollars created a cow who produced 15% more milk.
It still wasn't good enough, so they went to a matematician.
The guy calls them next day and says that he can easily force cows to give 50% more milk! So the farmers are running there like crazy and ask the matematician how can it be done?
So the guy goes to a black board, takes a piece of chalk, draws a circle and says: -Assume this circle is a cow...
You can't handle the truth.
Cancer, like it or not is a disease and I'm happy to see they've finally applied a mathematical system to it in order to improve treatments.
There's a line in Angels in America where Roy Cohn says that to beat something you have to know it. Well, this approach may open the door to all sorts of new things. Its nice to see medicine becoming a science instead of a black art.
I only wish it had been discovered 25 years ago. But it offers a glimmer of hope.
I thought at first that they just, you know, threatened to make the cancerous growth do math. I know I'd want to curl up and die if someone were forcing me to do calculus again...
...but in President Commander Coo-Coo Bananas' US, where emphasis in schools is shifting from science and math to ridiculous concepts like 'intelligent design' and a steady diet of Bible stories, I think the vast majority of fantastic, groundbreaking medical research is going to come from countries where the education system isn't being run by a bunch of Christofascists trying to ensure that fundamentalist principles are forced upon every child in the land.
Congratulations, America. The edge that made you the envy of the world and the leader in science and technology is quickly falling away as math, biology and physics courses are gutted by school systems and replaced with ancient Hebrew, faith healing and courses in speaking in tongues.
'If John has three fish, and Jesus doubles the amount of fish given to the Canaanites, and the Pharisees extract a 20% tax, in silver coins, on the people, then how many disciples will betray our Lord and Saviour?'
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
The article says
"The scientists used a mathematical formula to create a treatment based on neutrofiles that strengthened the patient's immune system."
This is the closest thing this article provides to an explanation of whatever it is trying to talk about. What is a neutrofile?
The paper is about the growth rate of tumors, not curing them. Can someone explain to me what this supposed mathematical cure for cancer is, or at least provide a link to something with an actual discussion?
Jonathan
No, but we would have if you asshats in the rest of the world hadn't screwed everything up and made it PRACTICAL. Jeez. We had a nice convoluted system going once...
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
The paper says that's where the radiation folks are making a big mistake. They blast the tumor with radiation based on its size, and try to kill all the cells. The paper says that's wrongheaded -- only the tumor cells at the surface are proliferating and those are the ones you need to target.
Killing 98% of all the cells leaves lots left over at the surface to continue growth.
I'm reminded of an old medical story using math successfully. I guess you heard about the constipated mathematician. He worked it out with a pencil.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
1. Doctors frequently biopsy the center of the tumor so they are sure to get the right spot. However, the center of the tumor is the most similar to healthy tissue and may lead to misdiagnosis. Ask your doctor if s/he checked the edge of the tumor, that is where the most malignant tissue lies.
2. Chemo doesn't work well on large tumors. It only takes off the outer layer of cells.
I think I'll wait a bit before I belive this...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
is too much homework bad for you if it can cure cancer?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
A mathematician doing an experiment? Never! (And yes, I am one.) The mathematician sees the fire, notices a glass of water on his nightstand, proclaims, "A solution exists!" and goes back to bed.
I am also a mathematican and I can tell you this isn't what would happen. The mathematican would see the small fire, blow on it to make sure it was a good raging flame then point to the physicist's room and say, "It has been reduced to a previously solved problem" and go back to sleep.
I've always thought that complex math problems were giving me brain cancer. You know, the old smoke escaping through my ears kind of thing. Can't be good for you.
JA
I'm sorry, but my faith does not allow for medical/mathematical intervention. You must allow my child to die to fulfill god's glorious plan.
Shouldn't be a problem if you're Catholic. Remember: it is perfectly acceptable for Catholics to prevent pregnancy with mathematics, though sinful to use physics or chemistry.
Comment from the author below. Doesn't sound like a quack to me. Apparently this is the first Human trial of the treatment, it worked, but the author isn't jumping to any premature conclusions.....
"Today, the Complutense University (whose switchboards have apparantly been innundated with phone calls from people wanting to find out more about this news item) has published a communication on its website with a brief communication from Prof. Antonio Bru. The full article is here. Below is a translation of Professor Bru's brief note which appears at the end of the article:
Given the expectation generated by the news of the publication of the article Regulation of neutrophilia by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor: a new cancer therapy that reversed a case of terminal hepatocarcinoma in the Journal of Clinical Research, I would like to make the following points:
1) The proposed treatment is still at an experimental stage and needs much wider experimentation before it can be validated.
2) For this reason, at this moment there is no treatment protocol which enables it to be applied as a general treatment.
3) Given that it is impossible for the Complutense University of Madrid to answer all the phone calls received, and bearing in mind how they can disrupt normal teaching and research activity, please send any enquiries to the following email address: bru@mat.ucm.es
Dr. Antonio Brú, Departamento de Matemática Aplicada
Facultad de Ciencias Matemáticas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid"
This sort of methodology would make the fight against cancer a much more efficient. Establishing a predicatable correlation among the variables that allow a tumor to grow, including previously unconsidered factors such as barometric pressure inside the mass and blood vessel proliferation, will allow scientists to turn them into (in terms of a mathematical model) negative variables, eradicating the mass by attacking the factors that determine or signal its growth. It is much easier to control these variables than it is to take stabs at the tumor by trying to kill the affected cells via radio or chemical therapy, so this is quite the breakthrough.
Ahhh I can see it now... a new Star Trek Episode.
Dr. Crusher: Jean-Luc, Wesley has a tumor.
Capt. Picard: A tumor? Wesley? Well Doctor, I suppose you have to operate.
*Flash of Light, Q appears*
Q: Bonjour Mon Capitain!
Capt. Picard: Q! Is this your doing? Are you the one that gave Wesley canceh?
Q: Cancer! You humans are sooo arrogant! Why, haven't you ever thought of what cancer could be? It could be a new life form - look at the way it GROWS!
Capt. Picard: You have a point Q... Dr. Crusher, we can't operate. We have to let the boy die. Ask Geordi and Data to figure out a way to communicate with this new life form.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
So maybe they sound like quacks today, but a decade from now they may be heros. I'm inclined to keep an open mind, they're not saying this is a sure thing, only that the one human trial was successful and more research needs to be done before they can say if it's a breakthrough or not. Frankly I hope it works out, I watched an uncle die from cancer, no one should have to experience that. (Either the cancer or watching a loved one waste away in front of your eyes.)
I can cure headaches using mathematics. First, I count out the correct number of pain killer tablets...
Back in the 80's when I was a summer student, all the clinicians and oncologists seem to know empirically that this was the case - that most of the growth was occurring at the tumor surface and that the center of the tumours were necrotic. This was a major problem not only in delivering drugs to the core but it also made the interior cells relatively immune to the chemotherapies and radiotherapies which mostly (back them) relied on the fact that tumour cells were dividing for their effectiveness.
The MBE model seems to fit what cancer biologists already believe - or did back then since I haven't kept up for many years, so I really don't see the practical import since their suggested therapy doesn't seem that different from what is being or has been tried...
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The link to the page is, for those who speak spanish:
http://www.dsalud.com/numero65_1.htm
For those who don't I will try to summarize what I consider the outstanding points presented:
What they found in vitro is that the dynamic of grow in all tumors is the same. There is a dominan mechanisms for all types of cell lineages. The main mathematical characteristics of the dynamic are:
Most of the duplications of tumors occur on the periphery, and the peripherical cell have therefore much higher mutations rates. Where traditional models expected 32 cell divisions to result from the division of the cells from the tumor for a given growth, 800 divisions were actually occuring at the periphery. This also explains why metastasis cell are so much more aggressive since they consist entirely of peripherical cells.
One of the main questions they had was why the new cell would migrate to the hollow areas where competition for nutrients is fiercest among tumor cells, and where the PH is highest as a byproduct of cancer cells' metabolic activity. They would have expected them to migrate towards the high peaks. The results of the study suggests that pressure from the surrounding normal tissue inhibits the growth of the cancerous cells. They therefore migrate to these zones of less pressure. Also, contrary to traditional views, the tumor destroys the surrounding tissue before invading it (through the high acidity resulting from the metabolic activity of the cancerous cells and the secretion of other compounds), instead of invading it before killing it as was commonly believed.
As for treatment, they discovered that the body's natural defences agains this growth mechanism are the neutrophiles, one of the 5 types of white blood cells. These neutrophiles can withstand the high acidity surrounding the tumors and they can be in intimate contact with the cancerous cells. In test on lab rats, they created a neutrophilia (high concentration of netrophiles) in the tumor area by stimulating their prod
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
This is why cancer will never be cured: http://ianmac7.blogspot.com/
http://www.cancersalve.com/
Good News For Gulf War Vets With Skin Cancers
If there is such a thing.
Many of the biologicals tested during the first bush war in the mideast cause drastic and bad skin cancers (Cutaneous Manifestations Of Infective Bioterror Agents--CDC). The doctors eyes are bugging out and smoke is coming out they ears. Our country has been attacked by the bush family who is fronting for a foreign power in Americas Government. Our prize soldiery, the best of the best, have been debilitated and destroyed. As well as our population at large. Visit www.beyondtreason.com
There is massive evidence that all this bush nastiness has slowly infected the population here, and the stats support it. Ask any derm doctor -- they know, they see it daily, and visit www.luxefaire.com/real/index.html...it is not pretty but it is real. This was put on me in Florida a month or so after the anthrax attax, around 11/2001-- I was sold a mattress intentionally infected with a bio terrorism agent... once infected, the growth became a skin cancer extraordinaire, it would not go away...surgery spread it...it just got worse and worse and was highly reactive to certain directed energy weapons deployed by various methods. Finally massive surgery removed the majority of it, and once the skin graft healed the VA wanted me to undergo 6 weeks of radiation....I opted for alternative treatment of bloodroot paste which I had studied.
The bloodroot pastes WORK!!! No recurrence now, even though the new cancer had already begun to spread across my skin graft. The bloodroot paste killed it all, and removed all cancerous tissue, laying down new skin in the process. I am sure people like the bush crime family have done their best to keep this stuff covered up. Bloodroot paste is also known as Indian Mud, and Black Salve.
It is aggressive, painful, and a somewhat lengthy process, but much much better than the alternative.
Visit http://www.cancersalves.com./ Get the book. Pass it on.
Light Happens.
All we need to do then is to introduce a mechanism which will cause a divide by zero error and the tumor will crash without further intervention...
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
also MKRN1 (google it) is actually another hopeful cancer cure in the making - if i remember correctly it removes the telemorase (an enzyme) that coats the telomers (ageing tags) of cancer cells - allowing them to die off like normal cells.... (cancer cells are often called immortal - the telemorase allows them to divide w/o ageing the way normal cells do) I believe that only cancer cells have the telemorase enzyme (i may be wrong) so the MKRN1 should only affect cancer cells....
:) and have spoken to the Molecular PHD and the DNA techs at the lab I work at and they said (mind you we do not have access to the raw study data) that it is entirely feasable and we have learned about telomers and telomerase in the last few years.....
... sorry
I've been to school to be a lab tech (yes I did graduate
Cancer cells have several phases G-1,S,G-2,M,G-o - depending on the type of cancer, various treatment protocals are meant to attack the cells at certain phases - the math may have to do with determining the the cancer cells most vulnerable phase and administering treatment to coincide precisely with the phase the cells are in (but I'm just guessing here because the article did not go in depth on how it works...)
if this is hard to follow or makes little sense - i appologise - I'm really too tired to spell check or punctuate properly (long day at work)
CLM