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Scientists Unlock Reasons Cancer Spreads
* * Beatles-Beatles writes "Instead of a cell just breaking off from a tumor and traveling through the bloodstream to another organ where it forms a secondary tumour, or metastasis, researchers in the United States have shown that the cancer sends out envoys to prepare the new site."
"Fibronectin, which acts like a glue to attract and trap the bone marrow cells to create a landing pad or nest for the cancer cells."
Maybe they can sythesize something which is able to bond to Fibronectin? If they flooded the bloodstream with it, it could use up all the landing pads and effectively block the cancer from attaching anywhere.
Kinda like a Denial of Service on a molecular level...?
"Stem cells from bone marrow can also, quite remarkably, give rise to non-marrow cells"
Do bone marrow cells exhibit pluripotent characteristics that lend them to the use metastasis puts them to?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Is calcium used in any cancer treatment regimen in the US? No.
Er, yes. My mother-in-law was given a high dosage course of calcium to treat a small benign tumour. It was quite successful and she is now clear.
Well, yeah. Mainly because the relatively safe tetraethyl lead added to leaded petrol has been replaced with benzine, which is almost spectacularly carcinogenic. Even thinking about the stuff can give you a brain tumour.
... How is the location selected? The article said that marrow cells are sent to a location. By some chemicals generated by the tumor cells. How does a chemical select a precise location in the body? I am confused.
Could it be that a certain combination of chemicals sends the bone marrow cells into a specific location? The body must use the same technique to send them to places needed for new organs I guess. So the cancer cells just hijack that technique to use it themselves? If that is so, could they be manipulated to set the address to a non-existing place? Like a loopback address perhaps?
And this begs the question: what is the evolutionnary benefit of cancer? If cancer is propagated not just because cancer cells are detached from the original location and travel to another location (randomly?), but rather cancer cells inducing the propagation of cancer through a communication mechanism (not random?)... what competitive / evolutionnary advantages does this spreading of cancer bring?
Oh the irony: speaking about the "offtopic" mod war got you modded as "offtopic".
It's like pointing out the truth and being modded a liar for doing so.
vb
In the era of Digg.com
Digg is great for articles, but the comments are generally awful. Slashdot has some editorial problems, but there are a ton of smart people who post comments here, which I find very valuable.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Then there are the unknown knowns,
The things we don't know
We know,
But that direct and constrain our thinking anyway.
There are unknown known knowns,
The things we don't know
Even though we know
We know them.
These are things we think we know,
But we're way off base.
There are known known unknowns,
The things we know
We do not know,
Without realizing
We actually know them.
These are questions we keep asking
When the answers
Are staring us in the face.
There are also unknown unknown knowns,
The things we don't know
We know,
But that we don't actually know.
These are unconscious constraints
That need to be changed.
There are known unknown unknowns,
The things we don't know
We don't know,
When we actually know them.
These are the questions
We could answer
If only we thought to ask.
The unknown known unknowns,
The known unknown knowns,
The known known knowns,
And the unknown unknown unknowns
I will leave to another slashdotter.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
holy crap dude, if all you said is really true, you're pretty smart. Also, if that is the case, and from the tone of your post, I'm assuming that you're involved with immunology. So you have a problem selling this type of research to potential investors and business partners? Maybe I have an idea: I have no idea of the technical aspects of the following, IANAD-HNEFC (I am not a doctor - heh, not even freakin close).
What if you sell it by saying that research into this field will not only prove beneficial to killing cancer but will also prove beneficial to killing HIV, because HIV is a disease that kills the immune system (lol, wow, only a business person would believe in that connection). Use the words "killing" and use AIDS instead of HIV. Repeat these words with a loud megaphone directly into the ears of the business and marketting people. Killing Cancer and AIDS sells. Studying immunology in order to find out why cancerous cells that are communicating with the immune system are being ignored does not sell.
Anyway, best of luck to you, and I didn't meant to sound too trivial in the above, just trying to explain that marketing is not about what's right, it's about what's louder.
Dan
Don't apologize. My wife contracted AML in 1996. She went thru three remissions, chemo, marrow ... you name it. Finally, she went into her last remission in 1999. But now, the post-chemo is what's killing her. She lost her thyroid (survivable if you catch it in time, but nobody did ... she lost 100 lbs and damn near died, completely dehydrated), and now she's developed epilepsy. She can't drive, she can't work ... it's all she can do to walk, slowly.
I am in awe of all cancer victims who just don't roll over and quit. I've been blessed with being very close to someone who didn't and doesn't. Me, I probably woulda quit long ago.
Keep the faith. I hope gleevec does the trick for you, and that you have a long, comfortable life. But above all, live in peace. Know that you're one in a million.