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Cancer Resistant Mouse Provides Possible Cure
Evoluder writes to tell us that scientists at Wake Forest University have found a "cancer resistant mouse" and bred it to make a small army of cancer resistant mice. When transplanting blood from one of these mice to a normal non-resistant mouse they are able to provide "lifetime cancer protection". From the article: "The cancer-resistant mice all stem from a single mouse discovered in 1999. "The cancer resistance trait so far has been passed to more than 2,000 descendants in 14 generations," said Cui, associate professor of pathology. It also has been bred into three additional mouse strains. About 40 percent of each generation inherits the protection from cancer."
but mortally susceptible to the common cold.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
will skip the line you expected here and get right to the point: INVINCIBLE MICE ARMY?!?
Will this cure cancer in rats? Because, EVERYTHING causes cancer in rats!
I'll take a carton of cigarettes and a shot of mouse blood.
I don't have a specific answer to your question, but I do know that it all tastes good to me.
There's hundred of guys on the internet that will now never get cancer of the ass. So I'm told...
Er, gives us a soul? I wasn't aware that the 'soul' was part of our DNA sequence, care to enlighten us heathen atheists as to what scientiffic observations led you in this direction? Also, if my soul is damaged, can I get a transplant donor soul?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
See PNAS, vol. 103, no 20, p7753-7758. VERY interesting work.
It's even worse. Apparantly the cancer resistant gene was found on the 3rd button. Mac users are hosed.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
How good is this really?
(Assuming this is true, it is a wonderful step.)
So the mouse is a cylon?
I mean, a'doy. Dr Baltar already figured this out. It cured President Rosylin's cancer, after all.
Thats a brilliant idea.
Why dont you email them and suggest it?
Reading between the lines of your analysis, I think youre saying there could be a real future application for it.
Like I dunno...curing cancer maybe?
The media is quick to call things like this a cure. The fact remains that, with some exceptions, men are not mice. Back in the late 90s, angiogenesis inhibitors (a class of drugs that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels, needed by tumors to provide nourishment as they grow) were being tested with amazing success in mice, preventing the spread of almost every form of cancer. It was hailed as the coming cure.
Some angiogenesis inhibitors have proven to be very helpful in treating cancer, but they are not a cure. They aren't nearly as effective in humans as they were in mice, it appears.
I'm always skeptical (and you should be too), when you hear about something that isn't even in clinical trials, as a possible cure for some disease people get. People simply don't respond the same as mice.
That said, this does look promising as an avenue, but I wouldn't go out and take up smoking just yet.
Okay, let's think about this for a second.
A cancerous cell is one that doesn't know when to quit. It is outside the normal cell cycle, and not listening to every cell's built in death trigger. Forvige my lack of specific biology terminalogy.
So these mice are "cancer-resistant"? When exposed to carcenigous, do they ignore them? When exposed to massive ammounts of UV light, do they tan but not burn? Do they burn but not get skin cancer? If you clogged thier lungs with cig smoke, would they develop a cough but not cancer?
How the frak does this work? Are the little mice cells just really tuned into thier death trigger? When a cell mutates enough that it doesn't listen to it's death trigger, it is a cancer. Are these mice just impervious to cell mutation?
If so, wouldn't that make them an evolutionary dead end? Cancer, while bad, is a by-product of evolution. If cells weren't allowed to ever mutate again, would that spell the end of mice evolution? And if we impart that "cancer-immunity" to we humans, would that spell the end of evolution?
By all means, someone correct what I have wrong. Biology was never my strong suit. (Nor is spelling)
There are no gods but ourselves.
"The cancer resistance trait so far has been passed to more than 2,000 descendants in 14 generations"
If you cure cancer, you get laid.
"can I get a transplant donor soul?"
Yes.
--Prince of Lies.
Sad thing is that it still isn't transferrable to humans. From what I've read, it also works for pigs, rats and mice, but not humans.. Oh well, give or take another 20 years, I've got time...
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
they are able to provide "lifetime cancer protection"
:)
I see, so the protection lasts right until they die... from cancer. I think Aleve can do this just as well
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
All that money spent in research, and all we come up is with better mice! Plus I don't think they care too much about having cancer.
Life is about being a Phoenix!
Richard Gere is all smiles and breathing a sigh of relief.
Thinking of a "cancer gene" is misleading. Imagine a net of rubber bands all knotted togethor. Changing one gene will "stretch a rubber band" differently possibly affect all the other aspects of the organism, often unpredictably.
This cancer gene could be the one that also gives humans a soul. We can't tell with a mouse, of course, because they only speak in pips and squeaks, but scientists should know all the risks involved with creating such a possible genetic enhancement.
You're a moron, Mr. Rifkin. Seriously, though, this is the type of comment that lies outside of answering, outside of science, and beyond reason. You can't win an argument with someone like this, and it's not even worth trying. It's a religious matter. For much of human history, such thoughts set the policies of governments. Then, we discovered reason and science. But the pendulum seems to swinging back the other way again.
The old warfrin poison trick still works, don't worry. Plus we could just breed an army of cancer resistant snakes to take care of the mice.
Oh...
Oh You POS
They say that if you turn up with cancer you'd be well advised to be a mouse, since the treatments work so much better.
Telomerase structure has been identified.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4698264.stm
> The old warfrin poison trick still works, don't worry. Plus we could just breed
> an army of cancer resistant snakes to take care of the mice.
> Oh...
must... resist... can't...
cancer-resistant mongooses for the snakes
cancer-resistant gorillas to rid us of the mongooses
cancer-resistant tigers to attack the gorillas
cancer-resistant elephants to take care of the tigers
and cancer-resistant mice to scare the elephants
lather, rinse, repeat
Well as terrified as I am about the "cancer gene" messing with the "soul gene", I'm willing to take the chance. Oh and last I checked, neurobiology has made some headway in cracking this whole "soul mystery" thing. Turns out that human individuality might actually be created by something called a "long interspersed nuclear element". A lot less handwaving than a "soul gene". LA Times has a rather extensive article on it and although the LINE is similar to a gene it's considered a precursor...
Assuming that this article isn't completely incorrect, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that we'll have trouble fucking it up. It exists in every mammal [including mice] and has existed for well over 600 Million years. Fun read on a fascinating topic.
That's kinda cool.
So then we could transplant that gene and
1) Give plants souls
2) Give animals souls
3) Give bacteria souls
We already have a clearly soulless population of humans (CEO's and Lawyers) so we could isolate the difference between their genes and the rest of the populace to isolate this cancer-causing soul making gene.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This cancer gene could be the one that also gives humans a soul.
Hmm, lessee.. no cancer in my lifetime in exchange for something I've never had any use for. Man, hard choice.
Ch-ching!
Next week, maybe I'll get to trade group sex for herpes.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
"... able to provide "lifetime cancer protection"."
The article fails to mention that 'lifetime' can be greatly affected by the neighboring reptile obesity study.
C'mon, man - everybody knows whities ain't got the soul gene.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
As exciting as this sounds, it's probably not going to lead to a pancea for cancer in humans. We've cured cancer in mice several times over since the 70s. The problem is that mice are a short-lived species that has very little innate resistance to cancer. After all evolution is not going to have an organism waste lots of energy repairing DNA damage and having pools of immune cells constantly checking for mutant cells if the organism is just going to get eaten by a cat in an average of a few months after birth.
By contrast, humans are a very long-lived animal species. Our bodies already have a large number of cancer-prevention mechanisms that simply aren't present in mice. Take for example telomeres. The telomere ends of chromosomes shorten with each cell replication other than gamete formation. All your cells have what is known as the 'Hayflick limit' where the telomeres get too short, the chromosomes become unstable and the cell dies. Although this mechanism is probably one of the contributors to human aging, it also does a very good job of eliminating many tumors. Most of your tumors hit the Hayflick limit and simply die off before they can present a threat to you. Virtually all human cancers either mutate so as to find a way to reactivate the telomerase that re-lengthens the telomeres or manages to find a way to preserve their telomere ends through chromosomal recombination. Mouse cells, by way of contrast, have huge telomeres which never get short enough to act as this sort of cancer-prevention mechanism.
As a result human tumors are much 'tougher' than mouse tumors. The average mouse tumor wouldn't stand a chance in a human. Any tumor that manages to thrive in a human has had to jump a host of hurdles and checkpoints that no mouse tumor does in order to simply survive.
The problem is that many of these cancer cures in mice already exist in humans naturally. Some of these cures (such as this one, most likely) are simply reactivation of vestigial anti-cancer systems in the mice that have atrophied for the above-mentioned reasons. Others are cancer treatments that attack weaknesses in mouse tumors that are simply irrelevant in human ones. I suspect that this super mouse is simply being more human with regards to cancer and that the end result is that we'll rediscover something our bodies already do.
Whether a soul exists or not is debatable, but I think we can all agree that if we have a soul, it should transcend the possesion of a single gene. Otherwise, its not much of a soul. I know you are not suggesting this, but if a soul can depend on a single gene, then can't it also depend on a single hair cut, or a particular level of intelligence, or a particular skin color. One of the compelling things about the idea of a soul is that it would can mean that human beings are similar in a way that doesn't depend on any of these things. If a Creator did endow us with a soul, then I don't think he would give us a single gene to switch it off anymore than a plane engineer would put a "press to crash now" button right next to your volume control on the airline seat :-). That being said, I agree with the idea making any changes to the human germline is of course potentially very dangerous, for many different reasons, but I don't think they were talking about doing this in this article.
They're Pinky and The Brain
Yes, Pinky and The Brain
One is a genius
The other's insane.
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced
They're dinky
They're Pinky and The Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Telomerase is huge in oncology. Basically, there are two steps involved in generating cancer:
1) Transformation, in which the cell begins to replicate outside of normal controls. You can get a tumour this way, but without step 2, the tumour doesn't get very far before the cells start to grow quiescent - they lose vitality and stop dividing.
The reason they slow down is that their telomeres have degraded. Telomeres are long stretches of "junk" DNA at the end of each chromosome. Every cycle of DNA replication erodes the end of each chromosome (due to the way replication works at the molecular level). Telomeres absorb this loss without causing erosion of active genes.
A human zygote cell is only capable of ~80-90 cell divisions before these telomeres have fully eroded and active genes are affected. Fortunately, 2^90 is plenty of cells for an adult with a typical lifespan.
2) Activation of telomerase. The purpose of telomerase seems to be to refresh telomeres in the genes of sperm/egg cells to start the cycle fresh for a new human. In "successful" cancer, telomerase permits the cancerous cells to reproduce indefinitely by maintaining telomeres.
*wistful sigh* Ah, the PhD I never did. Then again, I can afford to feed my family in my current career...
unfortunately, it has been found that it is a special chemical in the tail that provides the resistance.
In other news, Scientist have teamed up with fashion designer Ralph Loren to test market special jeans and skirts with button-fly tail holes in the back.
Your loop is leaking scared elephants.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
There are two different ways to do this.
The first is by expression profiling- looking at difference in gene expression. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_chip This will actually give you a readout of how the two cells are different in terms of how they use different genes to express their differences.
The other is positional cloning. You basically breed a resistant mouse with a non-resistant mouse to get an F1 intercross. If you are dealing with inbred mice, these are genetically identical but each chromosome is different- one from mom and one from dad. You breed this generation with eachother to get an F2 intercross and then phenotype the offspring (are they resistant to cancer?) and then genotype them (what are their genetic differences?). Genes undergo semi-random reassortment through cross-over events and all offspring in the F2 incross have a random sprinkling of genes from mom and dad. You then do linkage analysis to find out which genetic differences are most closely linked to the phenotype you are looking for.
Fantastic! I am very excited about this development. Will there be an ergonomic model released to prevent me from getting RSI, too? Perhaps a cancer-resistant trackball is in order.
... oh. Nevermind.
You're right on a lot of details, but you seem to misunderstand the relationship between "Hayflick's Limit" and the longevity of a species.
w ww.senescence.info/cells.html+%22mouse+cells+divid e+roughly+15+times%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1[Goo gle Cache]
Read around the higlighted area of this page:
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:9GiRpofmvSgJ:
...how do they get all those mice to smoke tiny cigarettes?
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