Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just what we need, tumors with puppet governments.
</KindergartenCopON>
It's not a tumor!
</KindergartenCopOFF>
Slashdot: Spam for Readers. Page Rank for * * Beatles-Beatles.
...the spread of **Beatles articles.
Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
<p> Just imagine a world without pagerank pirates like ** * Beatles Beatles *
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
"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...?
What, no comparisons to Microsoft yet?
Yes! One step closer to finding the cure for cancer. /me lights another Marlboro...
http://www.hollowdepth.com
"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
Here's the link to the original article for those who have access: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7069/fu ll/nature04186.html
There's also a commentary in the same issue:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7069/fu ll/438750b.html
Greetings,
Hrshgn
I've always thought the wiser thing would be for a President to proclaim that we shall cure cancer within the next decade. Rather than the tired old Moo... er, Mars thing.
Assuming validity to this story, it seems such a thing might be possible.
A nice side benefit is that the government money involved goes less into the military-industrial complex, and more into medical research. Yes, I know that there are still military applications to any such research... nevertheless it would be nice if the government's research money was targeted directly and explicitly at a benefit to humanity. A cure for cancer falls in that category.
From the rip of a http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169603 &cid=14134565>rip:
I'm recycling a comment from another AC in another Scuttlemonkey/**Beatles-Beatles post. This guy's getting worse than Roland Picklepail:
Am I the only person who has noticed the numerous stories that get posted by *--Beatles-Beatles? Am I also the only person who has noticed that the link used in is name is a constantly changing URL (depending on the story) with pointers to various scammy sites? Is it not obvious what he's doing? He's using the awesome PageRank of slashdot do promote his sites based on searches that have the word Beatles in them.
It's a small price to pay for free advertising. Find a story, summarize it in 5 minutes, post to slashdot, and get a pagerank boost that advertisers would pay hundreds (or maybe thousands) for. (Text links on high-ranking sites is big business - just ask oreilly).
Slashdot should at least put a ref=nofollow in the links to submitters (or better yet, only link the submitter's name to his/her user page).
In closing, a quick bit of WHOIS shows that all the sites linked by **B-B are registered to Carl Fogle. Carl, cut this crap out.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
SET KANSAS_MODE = TRUE
Obviously this mechanism for spreading cancer throughout the body is too wonderful to have evolved. It's clear evidence of intelligent design... By a complete bastard.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Make sure you sort to the top of the submission queue, by using a name that start with a character with a low ASCII index. Submit lots of articles. Finished. Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Cancer is a condition of abnormal cell division and growth, not some anaerobic chemical reaction. The cancerous cells have the same metabolic requirement for OXYGEN that normal cells do. OK, sure, they could rely on glycolysis and not use blood oxygen, but rapidly dividing cells use more energy than glycolysis can reasonably provide.
Take your "omg the evil drug companies invented disease so they could gouge us" conspiriacy theories and shove them where the sun don't shine.
Sick of WoW? Try the thinking man's MMORPG: EVE Online
Um London is the Reuters news source - if you read TFA, rather than the first word you would realise these were American researchers.
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Have you ever hear of the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Center? A ton of government money has been going into cancer research for decades. A problem is that cancer is not a single entity, it is hundreds of different diseases. Tremendous progress has been made, but it is unlikely we will ever make any single discovery that can be called "the cure for cancer".
Which "thing" are you referring to? The ability of bone marrow cells to bind to fibronectin? That's fairly essential, seeing that's how cells attach to connective tissue. Or maybe the ability of fibronectin to be soluble in the blood stream? Also fairly vital for things like blood clotting etc... (not to speak of the numerous roles fibronectin has in development)
Lots of things in biological systems are not built "logically". There are some fairly absurd mechanisms that exist merely because they have evolved from other systems that were originally doing something else, and because they "work", but they are not necessarily the simplest or best solution, even though they do usually find a "local maximum"... Sometimes they can leave the system open to attacks.
As for selection pressure *against* this functionality, I would suspect there is very little (practically none). Why?
Think about the meaning of selection pressure. It applies almost primarily to your ability to have offspring, and to how far you can support your offspring to procreate themselves. Given that people generally die of cancer later in life, and given that for the vast majority of mammal evolution this would occur at a point far exceeding the average life expectancy (leave alone the time where parents have influence on their children), I don't think there is any negative selection pressure.
Lol what an excellent link!
:)
Really funny (and I bet he would laugh too) and at times eerily zen-like
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
What is the reason this fragile glass sculpture lays shattered on the floor? The reason is that I hit it with a hammer.
That is a perfectly valid construct, and it is indeed a reason, without the need to get all phylosophical about the motivation or whatnot. "Reason" and "cause" can be synonyms.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
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.
Mars is a single object, it's big, we know where it is, what rules it follows and how to hit it.
It makes a difference.
KFG
In fact, any advance in the fight against cancer is a big deal. I applaud the researchers who discovered this. I'm going to make a donation. Nothing prepares you enough for the first time you see the oncologist.
Google "Nixon war on cancer" and see what you come up with. Sadly, it's an example of governmental hubris.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
You would need a carrier drug to target the calcium to tumours (something we are not all that successful at doing right now). Knowing this, obviously they can make money so I am sure they have already researched it and rejected it.
Which brings me to a question that someone else might be able to answer, is oxygen a poison to cancerous cells? If it is only a poison in high dosages like it is to normal cells then using oxygen is an extremely inefficient and dangerous method.
lol no this is not a metastatis
In evolution there has to be a reason. Something has to be beneficial for the species to evelve (please don't start any ID discussions). So the GP makes a good point. What is the evolutionary reason for this behaviour to evolve? The only effect I see is that it destroys the affected individual. What is the benefit here?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4502716.stm
Ummm, the cancer cells that develop this mutation become more numerous by being able to spread and become more numerous? You're thinking too many steps ahead. That this adaptation is ultimately self destructive doesn't matter. It's more like a virus that gets transferred from one species (where the disease state is more controlled and frequently leaves the host alive) to another where the may rapidly develop into a fatal condition. Or perhaps even better, a predator that evolves to become so efficient at predation that it drives to extinction the species it preys on. It doesn't matter that the incremented increases drive the species to that conclusion, it only matters that being a more successful predator makes the individual more likely to leave offspring in the short term.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem with research funding is that throwing more money at a goal won't really make the goal be achieved any faster. Research takes time, and having an unlimited bank account doesn't make it go any faster or better. Similarly, having more people doing research also doesn't really speed things up. Just an empirical observation based on experience.
However, if this is actually a breakthrough, I am thrilled. It seems that after a couple more decades of research, we may understand this well enough to treat it pharmaceutically. It will also take a couple of decades for the billion patents that were likely filed yesterday to expire, allowing real solutions to be developed.
Yes, I see the short term evolutionary advantage for the spreading cancer cell, but would that be enough to create such an elaborate mechanism?
In general you're probably right but the more sophisticated a mechanism becomes the more likely it seems to me that there has to be some evolutionary benefit attached.
Similarly, having more people doing research also doesn't really speed things up. Just an empirical observation based on experience.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I posted that I rather expect the cure for cancer, assuming there actually is one, will come from some entirely unexpected corner disconected from the massive cancer research projects.
Science is not an assembly line.
KFG
With the interception of these cancer 'envoys', we finally can 'kill the messenger' and not feel so bad about it.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
... 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?
Chances are that, in cancer cells, this behaviour is just a derivation of another process that serves a useful purpose in a healthy organism. Just like cell division is very useful and necessary but not in the cancer-like uncontrolled way. Fibronectin is involved in several processes such as cell adhesion, clotting and so on.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
FTA: "These nests provide attachment factors for the tumor cells to implant and nurture them. It causes them not only to bind but to proliferate. Once that all takes place we have a fully formed metastatic site or secondary tumor," said Lyden.
I think this is how Windows spreads also. Check out this mildly re-written version of the above:
"These proprietary APIs provide attachment factors for the 3rd party applications to implant and nurture them. It causes them not only to bind but to proliferate. Once that all takes place we have a fully formed legacy application or secondary reason not to get rid of Windows," said LaughingCoder.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
We are fighting a war: a war on cancer
And we are losing.
--
I'm surprised that so many researchers still view cancer as a sentient malicious being living within a biological system.
Cells have a language that they use to communicate. They communicate with the cells in the other tissues around them. They communicate with the blood cells as they pass by. They communicate with the various cells of the immune system. This communication is constant. Every cell is constantly emitting and absorbing a matrix of cytokines, lymphokines, and other chemokines. It is from the interpretation of all of these different levels that a cell adapts and responds to its environment.
Cancerous cells are simply responding to their environment. In many ways a cancerous cell is malfunctioning. In many ways the set of chemokines which it emits acknowledges that it's malfunctioning. In a body with a healthy immune system the immune response is properly recruited and the cancerous cells are put out of their misery. This is why babies can grow so quickly with so little chance for deformity. The cells are communicating properly and the body ensures that any malfunctioning cells are removed.
In a cancer, when a cell begins malfunctioning, the immune system is not notified of the problem. The surrounding cells, when exposed to the proper levels of the signaling molecules, may be programmed to imitate the same behavior. I believe that this is part of a larger process that's supposed to work to increase the intensity of the signal and attract the immune system. If the immune system is not properly recruited, though, then the originating cells divide and become more and more degenerate and the increased level, intensity, and garbled nature of the signal aggravates even more cells in the area. When sufficiently aggravated without any response to attenuate the signals from the malfunctioning cells then more and more proper cells will begin to show signs of chemical stress and become cancerous, necrotic, or apoptotic.
In some cases the original cancerous cell may not be technically malfunctioning. That cell may be responding appropriately to surrounding tissue which has become numb and nonfunctional. This can be seen in bone cancers where the osteoblast count is at extreme low levels. The remaining osteoblasts are tired, overworked, stressed, and more than a little frightened by the absence of their comrades. Those cells begin exhibiting chemical signs of that stress meant to recruit the repropagation of other osteoblasts. If the situation isn't remedied, however, it's very easy to think that the osteoblast is evilly trying to metastasize. In tissues of high cell censity (kidney, pancreas, stomach, intestine, brain) it's most likely that the cancer is a result of a malfunctioning immune system. In a tissue of low cell density (bone) it's most likely that the cancer is a result of a deficiency in the tissue itself--maybe a logical sign of natural aging.
At any given point in time any one of us has a number of cancerous cells in our body. They're not sentiently floating around looking for tissue to victimize--they're doing what they've been programmed to do: survive.
The real question has always been: Why isn't the immune system responding appropriately? In most cancers the immune system is responding improperly or flat-out ignoring the problem. The studies of immunologists on the pathways of intercell signaling is very important research but sorely underfunded because research and study rarely leads to quick quarterly profit. There are easily hundreds of different intercell signaling molecules all tailored for their own specific message. The field is so complex that it's very difficult to quantify progress in the eyes of the business managers who have no conceptual understanding of the task or the technology.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
There is biological premise for that. When a cancer forms to any significant extent it begins to recruit new vasculature. This process is known as angiogenesis and describes the legitimate formation of new vasculature as well as the formation initiated by a tumor.
Cancerous cells are cells which are malfunctioning. The lack of plentiful oxygen contributes to their state of distress and causes them to malfunction further. A tumor puts out a cocktail of cell signaling molecules which translates, in English, to "We need more air!" The bodies' natural response is to provide more vasculature. This is two fold: more vasculature allows the immune system greater access to the area to assess the problem and, if oxygen deprivation is truly the only problem, more vasculature solves it.
The prevailing question still is: why is the immune system not recognizing or not properly responding to the problem? I find it hard to believe that the systems of the body are into playing taunting games with each other.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
There are almost 6 Billion people in the world, surely there're enough people to research both?
Darn it...Now that you mention it, it does sound like a clever poem.
Heh.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
The above is actually an old chestnut of management wisdom that Rummy picked up from his days in private industry. Rumsfeld wasn't being stupid or crazy, he was just being unoriginal.
where there's fish, there's cats
My point exactly... I feel like many cures are found completely by accident.. someone whose wife or husband has cancer will be working on developing some new kind of paint thinner or something and discover that their spouse's cancer goes away... or something like that...
In embryology there is a process known as... "induction This has been widely studied in vertebrates, particularly amphibians. During induction, tissue becomes differentially determined in response to the concentration of a chemical signal from another region of the embryo. Induction involves intercellular interactions. Usually regulation will only occur if certain regions are present. These are the signaling centers or organizers. The ability to respond to the inductive signal is called competence. The range of choices open to competent tissue is a property of its state of determination. For example, once mesoderm is formed it is competent to become somite, kidney, mesenchyme, or blood cells. It is no longer competent to become one of the ectodermal derivatives."
In my own lame lay terms it maybe that cancer cells loose the chemical markers that tell them to play nice and fit in. Once a cancerous cell looses sight of its utilitarian goal it may enter a state wherein it attempts to develop into a multicelled structure but without the chemical messengers necessary to the task. The bone marrow cells may have characteristics that chemically sense areas that would be receptive to metastasis.
Just $.02, while maybe just 1/2 cent.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Of course, if we were to be truly objective, we have to face the possibility that there is NO CURE for certain cancers. We may find one way to block uncontrolled cell growth, only to find other mechanisms take over.
I'm not saying we should not do the research, but this may be a case where the journey is worth more than getting there.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
there has to be some evolutionary benefit attached
You seem to think things happen to make evolution happen. Evolution is a result, a phenomenon. Adaptations occur, and get preserved by selection, and that process we call evolution. It's not like cells are thinking "hey, if I mutate this way, I bet there is an evolutionary benefit, and I cause the evolution of a new, better species."
So no, there does NOT have to an evolutionary benefit for any biological process at the microscopic level.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
I had pretty much the same question as the GP. A two-phase attack -- envoy and then spread -- seems pretty complex to me. How would such complexity evolve since cancer is not contagious?
In evolution there has to be a reason.
Nope. Mutation is random.
Some mutations have survival value, and individuals manifesting those mutations will tend to become more prevalent over time. Other mutations are detrimentall, and will become less prevalent over time. Still others, probably even *most* mutations, have little effect one way or the other.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's actually a very profound observation, something along the lines of:
So there's things you know (We wanna build an airplane, around $10 mil each).
Things you think you know (It's likely going to cost $13 million)
things you know you don't know ( costs above expected overruns)
and things you don't know you don't know ( unexpected events beyond the expected unexpected events)
While it's easy to jump into the "What's the reason behind mosquitoes" sort of philosophical arguments, the reality is that cancer isn't a single nice, neat package. Even this article falls into the trap - the mechanism they describe is likely just one of many.
Think of cancer as a statistical event. Cellular mechanisms don't work 100% all the time. Most cancer cells are benign and never noticed. A few have very specific things go wrong with them that allow them to grow and spread and kill the host.
Think of it as evolution in miniature. The unsuccessful cancers are destroyed by the immune system, fail to grow, or fail to spread. If a particular cell begins replicating and stumbles upon the correct mutations to allow it to do all three, you have full blown cancer. This is also why chemotherapy stops working after awhile - the cancer cells that are resistant survive, allowing them to continue to grow and thrive.
It's a nasty business, but not a particularly mystical or mysterious one.
Actually, you're sort of right - guess why in certain cancers there is greater vascularization in tumors? And areas of tumors that don't have the extra blood vessels tend to be necrotic.
"Why'd the cancer cross the road?"
I for one welcome our new cancer spreading special bone marrow cell overlords.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
Exactly. Cancer is a bug, not a feature.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I beg to differ you little shit. I have leukemia, and 20 years ago the doctor would have told me "make youself comfortable, you have X years/months to live". 10 years ago they would ahve hit me up with a powerful chemo and then done a bone marrow transplant, a risky procedure at best. My odd of surviving that would not have been optimal though it would be possible. Now, with the release of a drug called gleevec, my prognosis is good. Once I adapt to the side effect (which are tough, but not as bad as traditional chemo), this pill could actually put me into remission. So you are absolutely dead wrong. Money for cancer research it working, and it is saving my life (even though I am now only 22).
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
...but very interesting, and the first thing I'd ask is, if metastatic cancers require this "system" to operate in order to be successful, then why are so many carcinomas malignant? Shouldn't we be seeing a lot more benign growths that require only a simple, surgical extraction? Perhaps this behavior serves a more mundane use and is often already active. Unfortunately that means drugs to inhibit it might produce some very unwelcome side effects.
Right, because finding out how cancer spreads is not important or anything... now if we found out that cancer somehow used a Microsoft product to spread its way through the body... THAT would be a story!
and you're a jackass....For those who actually have cancer and understand what that is like (such as myself, Leukemia), you have rendered yourself a blubbering idiot.
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
I don't get the big deal here. The guy is submitting legitimate articles, and the /. editors obviously see enough value in them to put them on the front page.
So he's getting something out of it, and he's got an alterior motive. So what? Is it really hurting the way you browse the site? You have to admit that this is a newsworthy story. It's not like he's submitting nonsense and then reaping rewards for it.
If you have that big a problem, don't click on his stories, and don't follow his links. Otherwise, quit freaking out every time he submits a story, because it's getting old.
I think that the problem of the immune system not properly detecting and eliminating the tumor has never been "solved" in the past billion years because it used to be very rare, and usually occur only when the organism was kind of old, and so had no effect on reproduction, hence there was no mechanism to select for individuals who had a better immune response. Nowadays, we've got soap, bandages, doctors. We live longer. Hence, cancer becomes a more significant issue.
Of course, there might be lots of people around with an immune system that does detect and destroy tumorous cells, but that doesn't get detected by medical specialists, because they rarely get cancer.
(This is of course just my opinion, feel free to criticize, if possibly constructively.)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
The article describes "envoys" that the primary site sends out to find/prepare new sites (metastasis), affirming that this preparation is necessary for secondary tumors to grow. The article also states that without the "landing pads" made possible by the "envoys", it is impossible for the secondary tumors to grow.
It seems logical to me that this kind of "prep work" is necessary for the initial tumor to grow, so if researchers can learn how to block envoys from "parent" tumors, then they might be able to develop a way to screen for "progenitor envoys".
Let's hope, anyway.
Then please reread my earlier comment about this guy:
Ok, let's have a look at his george-harrison.info website. Aha, maybe the links at the bottom of the page? Yes, I see: http://george-harrison.info/reciprocal-links.html [george-harrison.info].
Sooo, what may be on that page? Quoting:
Looking at the link list (just a small excerpt):
HTH!
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
This really makes me think. I always thought cancer were just defects in cells that caused them to multiply like crazy. But now it turns out that cancer is something like a living being, a parasite invading a host.
So, perhaps cancer IS caused by a virus (like the Human Papiloma virus)? Perhaps this unknown virus managed to implant its genetic code in humans and this was passed to future generations? You know, I'd really like to have someone sequence the genome of cancerous cells. Who knows what other surprises we might find?
Everytime a new discovery like this is found, it gives us more questions than answers.
"lol no this is not a virus."
Surely it should be "the method"
The clue is in the headline of the article :
"Scientists discover how cancer spreads"
not why
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
There have been no reported cases of cancer on Mars in any reputable medical journal. We need to go there and find out why!
In case anyone is wondering, that was the original title before the crack (smoking) /. editors finally corrected it. Everyone who modded me off-topic is just jealous that they didn't catch it first.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
This is old news... Nova ran a special on this back in 2001! But that's what you get for paying attention to mainstream media (msnbc, in this case), instead of PBS, NPR, and scientific journals.
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
embrace extend extinguish
As far as I can tell, the article and the Nova special are talking about different things. The former is about cell attractors, whereas the latter is about blood vessel growth. Important, but different, parts of the puzzle.
We have cured many types of cancer. When someone finds out that they have cancer, the first question is no longer "How long have I got?", it is now "Is it curable?".
I've always thought the wiser thing would be for a President to proclaim that we shall cure cancer within the next decade. Rather than the tired old Moo... er, Mars thing.
Been there. Done that. President Nixon launched a "War on Cancer" to find a cure within a decade.
It's possible that, evolutionarily speaking, cancer wasn't "naturally selected" out of human beings because 99.999% of them (for most of humanity's existence) died of something else before they could get cancer.
If cancer typically hit the majority of humans in their teens and twenties over the millenia, perhaps natural selection would have then "weeded" out the bad genes that lead to cancer and current humans would be cancer free for the most part.
Because of the very recent development of increased longevity, perhaps only NOW is the process of natural selection, with respect to cancer, playing out. But, historically, this kind of thing would take eons to occur. Because of modern medicine, maybe we're able to accelerate our own evolution?
food for thought, anyway.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Still no cure for cancer. But we're getting closer.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
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.
Perhaps natural selection would have then "weeded out" the genes resposible for poor immune reactions to cancerous tumors and would increase the accuracy in copying and checking the genes responsible for cell regulation.
My gut tells me that messing with fibronectin is probably a very bad thing.
Storm
Ah, yes, but what of the unknown knowns? Are there things that we don't know we know?
From one of my poems: 'Sometimes there are somethings that somepeople shouldn't know.'
Perhaps this isn't so. Perhaps in these situations it would suffice that those in question should simply not be aware of what they really do know.
If you can't just be yourself, then be more like me, ok?
I think the parent was being sarcastic to the GP's lack of respect reguarding the story and the critical nature of cancer research. Not dismisive of the importance of the find.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
I think what you meant to say was "(My|Our) research money."
This subconcious, false belief that the government has some magic pool of money from which we all benefit is what is killing this world.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
the cause of cancer was discovered about a decade ago.
Linkspammer aside, what seems interesting to me about this is the change it implies in how cancer should be viewed. Cancer cells aren't just bits of broken machinery going haywire, growing and breaking and growing somewhere else. They're parasitic colonial lifeforms actively seeking their own advancement, and treating the body as a host.
Less of a malfunction, more of an atavism?
Hey moron mods. Click the "* * Beatles-Beatles" link at the top of the page and tell me you didn't have the same reaction.
Next time take a minute and look at context. If you don't think my joke is funny move on or mark as overrated but don't mark me as offtopic when I am talking about the same thing as the parent and sibling posts.
What does cancer have to do with pageranking? nothing? Maybe we shold give this story to someone else, even if it's not theirs.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
"I guess I forgot if there are any unknown knowns" ;)
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
you crazy asshole.
I LOVE THAT POST. the ending stunk. but then your signature made up for it.
bravo goodshow attaboy
Alright, perhaps I was a bit hasty.
As well as being an ECM protein, there is a significant concentration of fibronectin in plasma (0.3 mg/ml). This is the same molecule that can be found in matrix, just in a different form (and it is possible to lay plasma fn down as a matrix).
;).
But I should have been more precise, fibronectin is not involved in the initial formation of blood clots, though it does play important roles in blood clots. What I should have said is that fibronectin has a role in wound healing as it allows cells to migrate into the clot, and promotes adhesion and spreadings of platelets, fibroblasts and a number of other cells vital for the healing process.
Then again, I didn't expect anyone on Slashdot to have even heard of fibronectin
I had cancer a few months ago and am now effectively "cured" in that I no longer have a cancerous tumour inside me. I must have missed the major headlines saying that cancer had been cured!
In mine and most cases where the patient can be cured, the main factor is time; can we remove the original tumour before it starts to metastase? Failing that, can we disrupt the metastase process if we can't get at the tumour (it's somewhere tricky like a lung or a bowel).
This research seems to be one step closer to disrupting the metastase process. In my case that would mean that I wouldn't need to go through unpleasant radiotherapy treatments "just in case" there is some metastasis, even though they haven't found any. I could just take whatever drug comes out of this research to disrupt any remaining metastasis sites and that would be that.
The biggest problem with cancer, and this is where the time factor is most significant, is not so much curing the disease; it's reversing all the damage it has done in the body even if you manage to destroy/remove the tumour(s). That however takes us into an entirely different branch of medical research; stem cell research and organ regrowth, and look how much fuss is being made about that at the moment!
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
I think this has been adequately answered elsewhere in the discussion but almost all but the nastiest cancers happen after breeding age, ie there is no selective genetic pressure which might weed out people who are predisposed to cancer, unless you consider the lack of grandparents to be an evolutionary disadvantage. You might as well ask about the evolutionary advantage of Down's Syndrome or Multiple Sclerosis; there is none, they just happen when normal processes go wrong.
If you assume that cancers do evolve, each individual human must be a "tabula rasa" as far as cancerous cells are concerned. That is to say that cancer would need to evolve independantly within each human being as there is no way that a successful cancer can reproduce outside of that human. More importantly, it can't pass on any successful traits to the next generation. You could formulate a theory about cancer being some sort of genetic superparasite which can pass it's own genes though human genes, but I think it is easier to accept that cancer is probably just a simple subversion of normal body functions, probably because we now live a lot longer.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
You're all reading me wrong so it must be my explanation skills. Apparently they're so bad I even get modded off-topic to my great surprise.
I understand that cancer has no evolutionary advantage but is the (unwanted) byproduct of mechanisms that do.
My point (or rather question) here is that for a cancer to have such skills in spreading, these particular skills (that I see as being too complex to evolve in the life span) must have some original evolutionary advantage in the healthy organism. I wonder where this advantage lies.
X.
I think I see what you mean.
It's not so much that these mechanisms have an evolutionary advantage, rather they are the basic mechanisms in cell manufacture and control within most living organisms. It's just that the DNA has been damaged in such a way that the cell still looks normal but key processes, such as the ability to self destroy, don't work any more. As somebody mentioned elsewhere in this topic, it seems that fibronectin is also used to hold cells together in the creation of specialised cell clusters such as organs and the like. Presumably this process would get triggered by a healthy cell during gestation to allow for organ growth but cancer cells can also trigger it.
Note IANAB(iologist) so the above explaination is probably a little simplistic. I have a slight obsession with cancer at the moment as I had it a few months ago (now cured, yipee!).
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
Yeah, that's what I meant. I'm certainly happy to see that there's a lot of cancer research going on. Inevitably all of us will end up being grateful of that sooner or later. I see more and more people beating cancer amongst my family and friends these days. I'm glad you're one of them!
X.