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Using Enzymes To Counter Cancer Growth
sylvester22 writes to mention a Mercury News article about a possible breakthrough in cancer research from a research group in Oakland. Dr. Julie Saba and her team at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute are working with 'lyase,' an intestinal enzyme that apparently can inhibit cancer growth. The problem is that this enzyme is almost never found after a growth has become active. From the article: "Using cells in a tissue culture Saba said she and her team 'have been able to turn-on the enzyme after cancer cell growth had occurred.' The researchers found that re-introducing the enzyme made chemotherapy more effective in tissue cultures. 'Although we're beginning our studies in colon cancer, we believe our research findings will have a direct impact on investigations for other cancers, including pediatric cancers,' said Saba."
From TFA:
Queen of the Lyase?? How cool is that? Seems to me like Dr. Saba should have been on this list.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Sorry, people, I'm all in favor of scientific advances, and I know that this is the way to get funding, but who still takes these titles seriously? Cancer would've been cured 40 years ago if we would've believed the newspaper messages that promised us these breakthroughs. Point is, it doesn't work this way, everyone knows it, so stop pretending! Also, just think about all the people that have cancer or people close to them that have cancer. Why give them false hope every time?
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
That's really terrible. Kids shouldn't have to go through that kind of shit.
not for the breakthrough.. for the fourth reply of course.. something better than nothing
the world is spherical
Lyase is a huge class of enzymes that's already known to fix or prevent DNA mutations (e.g. photolyase). The news is on sphingosine phosphate lyase (SPL). Inaccurate summary.
Unfortunately, there are many, many enzymes and proteins that are downregulated or mutated in cancer cells and most of them have been known for ages (p53http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53, rb... tumor suppresors). The problem is that turning a gene on is not that easy in vivo. If everything that worked in cell culture worked in human patients there wouldn't be any more uncurable diseases.
It's nice that this works fine in the lab, but the problem is that cancer is not some disease, where you suffer from externally applied poisons (like the waste products of bacteria or fungi that infected you). And while it shares some similarities with a viral infection (your cells going bonkers), you can't attack the virus for there is none. You are actually attacking the body's own cells.
Unfortunately, pretty much everything that affects cancer cells also affect the rest of the body. Simply because they ARE in fact body cells. Body cells gone banana, but still cells of the body.
So it's nice that we found (yet again, I have to add) something that affects cancer cells, the key question with all cancer research is, though, how does it affect the body surrounding them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Man, I get so sick when i read about the cure against the cancer. People don't understand that blood cancer, for example is not the same than lever cancer even if both are cancers? The cause are different, the evolution is different, the metastasis is different and the way it propagates is unrelated. There is not a cure for Cancer. There may be a cure for some kind of cancer in specific, but never in general. It's like saying that founding a cure againdt typhus will help you against salmonella infection just because both are provoced by bacteries.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Here are some sources from 2 Journals one by Dr. Saba and others http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/46/17 384 and this one that seems to support the view on Lyase increasing sensitivity to Cisplatin chemotherapy for Lung Cancer http://mcr.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/3 /5/287
One of these days, the stem cell theory and the enzyme theory are going to run into each other.
Yes, it is an oversimplification, but the tissue -- which does contains stem cells -- that starts out as cancer is trying to do its normal bodily repair functions, and after it has done its job, the body turns this repair job off with enzymes. But if the body is stressed out, not working right, or impaired for some reason, and one of the two functions - the repairing process or the stopping it part -- malfunction, you get cancer.
Because what is going on is supposed to be going on, just way out of whack, the body's immune system doesn't see cancer as a threat and can't stop it. However, what will stop it is exactly what is supposed to stop it, enzymes.
I have studied this for many years and I'm convinced that the people attacking cancer from the stem cell side or the enzyme side (or both) are the ones that are going to "cure" cancer. In fact, there are some people that have already had extremely good results with enzymes, but it is a true battle to make even small changes in main-stream cancer treatments.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
[And for those that study enzymems, they will find that a poor diet causes the body's enzymes to get real stressed out. Digestion is hard on the body, which is why calorie restriction improves lifespan. But when a steady diet of junk food is eaten, the body works so hard trying to digest it, important enzymes that help repair the body decrease. The pieces of the puzzle are all there, it is just a matter of getting the big picture. -- Transporter_ii]
From the Lancet:
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
See also:
Scientists estimate that most cancers are associated with factors related to how we live, called lifestyle factors [note: these things effect enzymes -- Transporter_ii]. Evidence reviewed by the American Cancer Society suggests that about one-third of the 550,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States each year is due to dietary factors (for example, excess calories, high fat, and low fibre). Another third is due to cigarette smoking. Other lifestyle factors which increase the risk for cancer include drinking heavily, lack of regular physical exercise, promiscuous sexual behavior,
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
And here I am still in my undergrad. I want to get into research, dammit! I mean, just yesterday, that discovery about human genetics rendered my Mendelian genetics class obsolete. At this rate by the time I have my honours degree we'll be bioengineering whole organs and knocking down genetic diseases like flies.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Recovering from yet another surgery for skin cancer, I was thinking a while back how nice it would be to have some sort of salve that, when applied to skin cancer, would stop the growth and allow the skin to heal itself. This would certainly beat the hell out of having chunks of tissue removed every few years. I'm starting to look like 'The Monster' but my grand kids still love me.
Perhaps this enzyme research, combined with others, will eventually lead to good things for all who suffer from cancers but I'm sure I am too old to benefit.
As a cancer victim myself (non-hodgekins lymphoma) I welcome any news that promises a potential cure for any type of cancer. The cure for one type of cancer can be modified for other types as well. I'm currently undergoing chemotherapy, and then a Bone Marrow Transplant, and I have to say, it SUCKS SHIT to have to go through it. If this had been discovered 5 yrs ago, I probably wouldn't have had a need for harmful chemotherapy drugs.
If slashdot was a technical crowd that likes highly detailed information, I would recommend that whenever a post is related to a publication in a peer reviewed scientific journal, there should be a link to it and the title should be stated. In this case, the Queen of Lyase recently published a paper called Sphingosine-1-phosphate lyase potentiates apoptosis via p53- and p38-dependent pathways and is down-regulated in colon cancer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, or PNAS for short. It deals with cancer epigenetics, which will be one of the most important emerging areas of oncological research. Scientists once thought that cancer was caused by a critical mass of mutations, but now many of them realize that errant epigentic marks such as histone acetylation and cytosine methylation can be equal contributors to cancer. Epigentic marks do this by turning off tumor suppressor genes or activating oncogenes. Several histone deacetylase inhibitors are currently in human clinical trials. Having some nice primary source material is great for us technical folks.
One thing I didn't think about until later on today is the bovine leukemia virus, since you specifically mentioned dairy:
The California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) has done actual tests on this and found evidence of BLV DNA in blood cells from 9 of 22 humans tested, and 50% of 100 tested had antibodies for the BLV virus. http://www.cabreastcancer.org/
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Thanks, will look into BLV, however, even if this is how she got the leukemia, anything that can be done about BLV now?
-avi
-avi