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Cancer Resistant Mouse Provides Possible Cure

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the one-of-many-recent-possibilities dept.

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."

32 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. Cancer resistant... by Chabil+Ha' · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
    1. Re:Cancer resistant... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      They need to stop this before the mice become resistant to poison and mouse traps.. maybe they'll even become resistant to being hit with a hammer and then what. Huh?

      It hits the fan, thats what!

    2. Re:Cancer resistant... by indifferent+children · · Score: 4, Funny

      Some damned fool went and invented a better mousetrap, so our scientists had to invent a better mouse.

      --
      Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
  2. I for one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    will skip the line you expected here and get right to the point: INVINCIBLE MICE ARMY?!?

  3. Nice, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will this cure cancer in rats? Because, EVERYTHING causes cancer in rats!

  4. Delicious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'll take a carton of cigarettes and a shot of mouse blood.

  5. Re:Blood type issues? by Ingolfke · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't have a specific answer to your question, but I do know that it all tastes good to me.

  6. Re:Beware. by EGSonikku · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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"
  7. Reference by btavshan · · Score: 5, Informative

    See PNAS, vol. 103, no 20, p7753-7758. VERY interesting work.

    1. Re:Reference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do you try to pronounce this PNAS as a word or always have to spell it out? In conversation, I mean.

  8. Re:Wireless? by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?
  9. Re:Cause of the cancer resistance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

  10. Another cure??? by Pedrito · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Another cure??? by Pedrito · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...but sometimes I just wonder if we've already passed up that miracle cure.

      It's possible that a cure is out there in some plant in the Amazon, or as some bacteria found at the bottom of oceans. But there is no "one" cure for cancer. Cancer works in various ways which means there are various ways to kill it. Pharmacology has come a long way in the past 30 years. These days, it's very targetted. You pick a way you want to attack the cancer, and then you create a drug that does it.

      For example, there's a protein called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Cancer causes the release of VEGF around the tumor that in turn, mediates the growth of new blood vessels around the tumor allowing it to get nourishment and grow. So there are several manners that you can try to prevent this. One manner is to try to prevent the creation and release of VEGF in the first place. Another is that you can "competitively inhibit" VEGF by creating a protein that "looks" like VEGF and binds where VEGF normally binds and causes blood vessel growth, except that your particular strain of protein doesn't actually trigger the growth. But by binding where VEGF normally does, you're inhibiting the VEGF from being able to bind and eventually it will be disposed of.

      There are other proteins involved in cancer and other drugs are involved with these proteins. So there are a variety of ways of attacking cancers. The most amazing work along these lines has taken place in the last decade and it's getting better all the time. I suspect it won't be long (a few decades maybe) before cancer is a thing of the past.

    2. Re:Another cure??? by macklin01 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Part of the problem may be the difference in lifetimes between mice and humans, as well as problems in detecting small tumors.

      Anti-angiogenic therapy leads to a hypoxic tumor microenvironment (the tissue surrounding the tumor), which can, in turn, lead a tumor to fragment into smaller tumors. (This has been predicted in mathematical/computer models and verified in some experiments and clinical evidence.)

      In a mouse, those small tumors may not have time to grow large enough to detect, whereas in a human, those fragments have more time to do so, leading to recurrence. Or the small tumors may preferentially grow away from the low-O2/low-glucose region to invade nearby tissues.

      Other, slow time-scale interactions may also not come into play for short mouse lifespans but may be important on human lifespans.

      Of course, the genetic differences are there, too. The problems with the mouse model have always been interesting. -- Paul

      --
      OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
  11. Good Idea/Bad Idea by kbonapart · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:Good Idea/Bad Idea by BoredWolf · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's all in the title of the article... The white blood cells "recognize specific patterns on the cancer cell surface", and flag/attack them as they would any other foreign body. Biology wasn't my strong-suit either, but I would venture a guess that by knowing what sort of mechanism would lead to the white blood cells identifying cancerous/precancerous cells as a risk, the response could be adapted to work similarly (if not identically) in humans. Cancer is not a by-product of evolution, it is a result of malfunctioning cells which replicate uncontrollably. This is generally not a product of 'evolution' as you and I would think of it, but by some sort of damage to the cell which caused it to malfunction. It isn't so much a "death trigger" as replicating without purpose; when you no longer need skin cells at a certain location, and some mutated cell keeps replicating malfunctioning cells, you've got cancer. If your immune system cannot recognize something as a threat, it cannot respond to it, which appears to be the current predicament with cancer in humans.

      --
      "Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
  12. Take heed, Slashdotters! by Guppy06 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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.

  13. Re:Beware. by Retric · · Score: 5, Funny

    "can I get a transplant donor soul?"

    Yes.

    --Prince of Lies.

  14. Lifetime cancer protection by markov_chain · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!
  15. Re:Beware. by drwho · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Scientists should be wary about trying to genetically modify humans with the knowledge gained from these experiments.


    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.

  16. Re:I for one... by From+A+Far+Away+Land · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  17. Cliche among oncologists by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  18. Re:I for one... by soxos · · Score: 5, Funny

    > 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

  19. Re:Not for humans by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A better question would be "Are there cancer resistant humans and we don't know about it?"

    I know that that there are no cancers on my mother's side of the family despite heavy smoking , coal mining and high-risk lifestyles. Perhaps there is cancer resistant strains of humans and we just don't know about it.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  20. Re:Beware. by Anonymous+Meoward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  21. Eh, probably not Earth-shaking by SB9876 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  22. Problem by soft_guy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your loop is leaking scared elephants.

    --
    Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
    1. Re:Problem by Walt+Dismal · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's the dreaded Elephant Buffer Overflow, the curse of IE users.

  23. Yes, you can... by danceswithtrees · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  24. A cancer-resistant mouse! by NereusRen · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  25. Re:Not for humans by maxwells_deamon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We may actually be doing the experiment and not looking at the results.

    The article states that if an immune mouse gives white blood cells to a mouse with cancer the second mouse gets better.

    If we assume the same mutation exists in humans, we just need to do a statistical analysis of humans who have had spontaneous permanent cancer remissions after receiving a blood donation.

    A few more tests and we could cure a lot of cancer.