Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Find Potential Cure for Cancer
MECC writes "Researchers at Johns Hopkins University may have found a way to kill cancer cells without radiation or toxic chemicals. The group is taking the step of patenting the idea, as this new approach using sugars may hold real potential for the fight against cancer. This is not the first approach to use sugars, the article states, but is (by the researchers' estimation) the most successful. From the article: 'Sampathkumar and his colleagues built upon 20-year-old findings that a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate can slow the spread of cancer cells. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that butyrate, which is formed naturally at high levels in the digestive system by symbiotic bacteria that feed on fibre, can restore healthy cell functioning ... The researchers focused on a sugar called N-acetyl-D-mannosamine, or ManNAc, for short, and created a hybrid molecule by linking ManNAc with butyrate. The hybrid easily penetrates a cell's surface, then is split apart by enzymes inside the cell. Once inside the cell, ManNAc is processed into another sugar known as sialic acid that plays key roles in cancer biology, while butyrate orchestrates the expression of genes responsible for halting the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.'"
In other news: Many other researchers are currently working on projects that might some day lead to better cancer treatment methods.
- Any monies derived from it can be fed back into further research
- Megacorp can't steal the idea and patent it for themselves
Universities have budgets to manage and need to behave in a business like way just like everyone else but they are not Big Business.init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Anyone else feels sour when reading the line :
.. an .. Idea ?
.. Like if the patent system wasn't abused enough. Sigh.
"The group is taking the step of patenting the idea"
Patenting
What the hell
...but the chances of the healthcare industry letting this fly if it is real are slim to none. Think about it. Chemotherapy is a multi-BILLION dollar a year buisness. WHy do you think there have been no major cures in the past...what, 30-40 years?
Because the money isn't in the cure. The money is in the treatment.
Living With a Nerd
Maybe someday you'll have a family member with cancer, and you'll look on the bright side and see this for the positive thing it is rather than using it as an excuse to regurgitate some anti-corporation blabber.
You do realize that if they didn't charge for their services, they wouldn't make money to do further research? Sure if a cure for cancer was found today, for the next 5-10 years it would be an expensive treatment. The reason is because the 100's of millions, if not billions, of dollars it took to come up with the treatment need to be recooperated. People have been looking for a cure for years and every $100,000,000 failed attempt at finding a treatment is a write-off until a solution is found. When that starts to happen, prices always drop and treatment becomes more common.
The logic contained in that "as" apparently dictates that curing cancer is more important for making money than for everyone's health. Apparently without any explanation needed, or question expected. Also unquestioned is the vast amount of money spent by the public (you and your family, for generations) subsidizing all the research these "inventors" used to produce their new idea.
There's a lot of discussion on Slashdot of justifications for piracy of media content. Fighting the arbitrary assignment of all value from medical inventions to the last people to use their predecessors to cross a commercial threshold seems not only more obviously moral, but more relevant to basic survival. And a stronger study in the arbitrary contrasts between the "robber" and the "robbed".
--
make install -not war
For what its worth... There is the practice of defensive patenting. I certainly can't say for sure that is what they are doing, but imagine what would happen if they didn't patent it and some pharm lab did. You really can't cry prior art to save it because it would still lead to an extensive and expensive court battle that would drag on for ages and keep the technology down. Since, like you said, that is ultimately what a pharm company is likely to do anyways since they don't want a cure it would be an automatic win for their cause anyways. If the pharm company can patent it, or tie it up in legal stuff for a decade, they win regardless.
I am MUCH more trusting of these university research guys than some corporate pharm lab research guys as far as doing the right thing with the patent. Hopefully it won't be misplaced, but lets not jump to conclusions.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Yeah, those fucking corporations and their cancer profiteering. The way they sell all those cancer drugs makes me sick. Of course, most of those drugs are intended to eliminate the cancer outright so the patient won't need to take some kind of drug for the rest of their life, but still! How dare they!
Grow up. The company that comes up with a truly effective, broadly acting cure for cancer is going to make more money than God, even if they provide it at a low cost. And because every company hopes to be first, everybody has an incentive to throw a hat in the ring. And of course, once you make that huge investment, even if you can't be first, you still go to market, meaning that there's at least some competition to bring prices down.
Pharmaeceutical companies do plenty of seriously messed up stuff in order to make money, but disease profiteering isn't one of them. If there was the slightest shred of proof to show that they're purposefully avoiding developing a cure so they can instead sell palliatives, don't you think patients advocate groups would be screaming for blood from the rooftops?
Nice to know they're spending their time filing for patents instead of, well, trying to use it to cure cancer.
Why can't they do both? Seriously do you think the scientists have stopped working and are now spending every second they have filing the patents or are lawyers hired to do this?
Also what is wrong with people benefiting from their potentially groundbreaking work?
Oh, I forgot, on communist slashdot people should work 168 hours a week for free, live in a van down by the river and starve to death before taking any money for their work.
Except for you, and the rest of the slashdot crowd who deserve far more money for their skills and hard work, but everyone else should not benefit at all, that is tantamount to stealing from humanity!
The Iraq war has cost $355,000,000,000 so far. That's 3550 potential cancer cures at your example rate, in the span of 4 years.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
"The Johns Hopkins researchers cautioned that their double-punch molecule, described in the December issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, has not yet been tested on animals or humans."
Relevant information: not yet tested on whole living systems. They pissed off some cancer cells in a Petri dish. Big deal. You know what kills cancer cells in Petri dishes? A sledgehammer. Cyanide. Dynamite. Driving over the Petri dish with a Buick. None of these therapies are likely to be useful, however.
Wait, you cry. Laetrile released cyanide in vivo, and that was an (alleged) therapy.
Yeah, systemic poison-giving is already at hand. It is called chemotherapy, and it sucks. It can work, but it is never pretty.
Infusing the patient with sialic acid, which will enevitably infiltrate by this method into every cell, cancerous or not, is twiddling with every biological pathway with which sialic acid interacts. Butyric acid (the essence of sour butter)? Rub it on. Hasn't harmed anyone yet - whats the LD50 for old butter?
Maybe there is promise here, and maybe there is just breathless scientific prose in a self-serving PR release.
My guess is that once whole animals come into the picture, these researchers, as many many before, will find out that biochemistry farts in your Petri dish's general direction.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Go find some interview with a journalist who had been or still is fighting with this illness. They all say they've become more cautions when choosing such news for headlines in their newspapers or tv news.
If the claims are true, the vegetarians and those ethnic groups that have lots of fiber in their diet should have lower cancer rates. Some epidemiological (sp?) study should be able to figure out the patterns. Should study groups with highly off the norm dietary habits. Results would be intersting.
insert your favourite big agro conspiracy theory that has depressed the natural and less refined food consumption in America
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You're comparing a budget plan based on Jesus coming back within the next 2 years with one for curing diseases which Jesus would be able to cure (that is, based on Jesus not coming back within the next 2 years).
Your comparison is obviously invalid.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This approach may turn out to be useful, but it's important to keep in mind that "cancer" isn't a single disease, it's hundreds of different ones (albeit related); as a result, there is unlikely ever to be "the cure for cancer". Also, note that the researchers have only shown that the treatment kills cancer cells, but it still remains to be shown that it doesn't cause other problems, something that's a real possibility given its mechanism of action.
My mother died last year from cancer. The type of cancer she had is not very frequent so there's not much money to make. The chemo-therapie and other therapy forms were not specifically developed for this type and do not work very effective and so she died.
I also travel frequently to developing countries and people I have known there died from malaria, no vaccination or anything because the people mostly affected are poor. And so there is not much research.
No, sir, no "anti-corporation blabber". It's just a plain fact that corporations (and by that patents) will help you only if there is enough money to be made. That is no blabber but pure clean capitalistic economy.
It is nothing else. It doesn't matter how many people are affected (malaria and AIDS) or how severe the problem is (cancer vs obesity), it's just about profit. So do not start with family member or the children examples. Business means revenue over humans.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
It's easy to decide the solution to the world's ills is to give away other people's stuff, isn't it?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I'm not saying I have an answer. But since - as far as I am concerned - medicine is about the well-being of people and business is about profit, they are not a match made in heaven.
But we have that combination and now we have to see how we get along with that, "family member" and "the children" examples don't help much.
I could make up a one like: "Imagine you are poor and one of your family members has XY and medical care would be a human right and free." It doesn't help with concrete problems either.
cheers
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Anyone who has seriously studied cancer, would hardly frame this kind of thing in terms of the prospect of "curing" cancer.
The idea in the article sounds interesting, but it is clearly being framed in a way to provoke an audience to become outraged at the idea of "patenting the cure for cancer."
Shirley there are researchers here on slashdot who have worked in cancer, who are rolling their eyes about now, in fact, I have an extended family member who is a PI on a long standing cancer research project and I can't wait to hear their take. I suspect this is old news among people in the cancer research community, but I'll have to wait for the school year to start before I can ask. I won't even forward an article with the title "Cancer Cure Patented", come on!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Or at least find a simple, inexpensive treatment that allowed them to redner it cured for all intents and purposes?
How would that effect our attitude towards things that cause cancer or are seen as highly carcinogenic? Would smoking become the equivilent of poor oral hygiene (probably not considering the other problems)?
It's often interesting to wonder how or if our priorities or attitudes would change if suddenly what was a major problem for decades becomes considered an easily curable condition.