Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed

sporkme writes "A scientist was frustrated when the compound she was working with (called PPAR-gamma) destroyed her sample of cancer cells. Further research revealed that the substance was surprisingly well suited as a cancer treatment. Lab test results on mice resulted in the destruction of colon tumors without making the mice sick." Quoting: "'I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died,' Schaefer said. A colleague overheard her complaining. 'The co-author on my paper said, "Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?" I said "Oh," and took a closer look.' ... [They found that the compound killed] 'pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen.'" Update: 02/15 17:27 GMT by KD : As reader CorporalKlinger pointed out, PPAR-gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compound; and this news is not particularly new.

Comments

Tag Article Thusly:

[Gabrill]

Best Headline ever!

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[Phisbut]

I saw this quote somewhere :

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny ..."

It applies quite well here.

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[kzinti]

Isaac Asimov

Moo

[Chacham]

Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed

Um, no. The "Scientist Annoyed" came first. Indeed, had she not been annoyed she it may not have been brought to her attention that she suceeded.

A scientist was frustrated

And stop saying scientist. She is a researcher. The articles calls her a researcher. I'll bet she will even call herself a researcher. And, she is relevant because she was researching.

Re:Moo

[jimstapleton]

uhh, you know that a researcher is a scientist right? Last I checked, scientists researched things to figure out how they worked... and researchers did the same damn thing. The Ph.D. if you think that is a requirement, is not.

Re:Moo

[SatanicPuppy]

I would consider myself a scientist, because I am interested in and conversant with science and the scientific method...In my case mainly physics, with a solid grounding in inorganic chemistry and biology.

I am not, however, a researcher specializing in one aspect of scientific inquiry.

It's becoming an important distinction these days because so many "scientists" who are no better qualified than I am, are none-the-less using their status as "scientist" to question the results put out by scientists with in-depth knowledge backed by significant practical experience in the study of their specialty (e.g. a researcher).

Re:Moo

[Heem]

at least they did not say Scientologist.

Re:Moo

[mikael]

The seniority system goes something like this:

research director
scientist
research assistant/researcher

The research director can approve projects for research.
The scientist can propose projects for research - also supervise the project
The research assistant/research carries out the work required to complete the project

Re:Moo

[91degrees]

Hey. Allow them some artistic licence. It's amusing that her first reaction to something that in retrospect is so useful was annoyance, and arranging the headline this way illustrates this a lot better than a strictly accurate one would.

Re:Moo

[Kadin2048]

Not true; what about theoreticians? They'd probably be pretty offended to be left out of "scientists," although they don't do a whole lot of "research" at least in the traditional sense. (Some do, though, but with theoretical stuff you have to have a fairly loose definition of 'research,' since a whole lot of it resembles 'preparing for publication.')

"Research scientist" is probably a better term for the woman in TFA; "scientist" alone is so vague as to be almost unusable. It's just 'someone doing science,' and could be pretty much anyone from a grad student to a Nobel laureate; it doesn't say anything about what type or kind of science they're engaged in, or what their goals are.

Re:Moo

[pionzypher]

What would you define as a scientist if Katherine Schaefer(G-cache) isn't one?

How would she be considered irrelevant? She's the one who stumbled on this after all.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Last I checked, scientists researched things to figure out how they worked.

Guess you never watched The Adventures of Superman, or the Simpsons.

To them, Scientists invent things, and than try to figure out why it worked. :)

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...last time I checked scientists aren't engineers

Re:Moo

[soft_guy]

Right. So you are trying to promote "researcher" as a more elite term than "scientist" where in the general publics' mind it going to be like "Oh, he's not a scientist - he is merely a researcher."

Re:Moo

[Intron]

So let's just settle it. We will call scientists who don't know what they're doing "researchers" and scientists who do know what they are doing "engineers".

Re:Moo

[GuyverDH]

First, I am not claiming that there are not good doctors still out there. You may be one of them.

I am claiming that there are too many doctors that are too focused on their specialty that they ignore anything else.

I walked into a big city doctor's office with multiple fractures in my hand. After the doctor has multiple x-rays taken, reviewed by him, and several others, he proclaims that I have a bad sprain.

I then go to another doctor (small town, generalist family doctor), he takes one x-ray, with my hand moved to a slightly different position, and finds the fractures, I'd say there's something definitely wrong with today's ideas of specialists.
There's not enough generalists to go around.

Re:Moo

[Zugok]

Scientist is a discipline of thinking, researcher is role. I would think the correct title would be scientific researcher.

Debate and flame.

Re:Moo

[Mister Whirly]

Ah yes, but the negative attitude is caused by the souls of dead space aliens who were brought to Earth, 75 million years ago, by an evil galactic ruler named Xenu in an attempt to solve galactic overpopulation. The cost for ridding yourself of these "body thetans" is $440 per hour, according to a recent price-list.

Re:Moo

[markbt73]

She IS a scientist. I'm a scientist. If you know how science works, and you test hypotheses to eliminate the ones that don't work, you're a scientist. Track down a short in an electrical system, and you've just conducted a scientific inquiry. Now you're a scientist too.

The title "scientist" carries with it no inherent authority; this is as it should be. It is the people who shout "Science is a religion" who attempt to give weight to the title of "scientist." And to say that someone "is not a scientist" and discount her work because of it, or to say "this is true because scientists say so," is to fall into the logical trap of an appeal to authority. Appeals to authority are necessary to prop up religions, but in the realm of science they are considered a fallacy.

If anything, we need to use the term "scientist" MORE freely, because it drives home the point that science is democratic, available to all, "open-source" if you will. To make arbitrary statements about who is or is not a "real scientist" is to place science on a pedestal and reinforce the idea that it's "hard," and lend credence to the fallacy of an appeal to authority.

Homeresque

[commisaro]

"To pull a Homer": To succeed despite idiocy

Now that is a true nerd

[drinkypoo]

You can tell she is a true nerd because instead of saying "holy shit I cured cancer" she said "god damn it, now I have to start over."

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[Kjella]

Well, 99% of the time that'd be true. We know of plenty things that kills cancer, because it kills cells altogether and you can probably think of a dozen off the top of your head. The discovery isn't "damn, my cancer cells died" it's "wtf, the other cells are still alive".

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[drinkypoo]

Well, sure, just like dishwashing detergent kills HIV. It just also happens to kill the host if you take it intravenously. I just don't bother to involve the obvious and mundane in my comments if I can avoid it, because, well, it's obvious and mundane. This is news for nerds, right? I'm a nerd and I produce comments meant for other nerds of similar proclivity.

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[Chris Burke]

Well, sure, just like dishwashing detergent kills HIV.

YES! Finally the answer to my prayers!

It just also happens to kill the host if you take it intravenously.

Shit! I need to read faster! Call 911 for me...

You have to wonder

[antifoidulus]

if the creator of Viagra had a similar epiphany

Re:You have to wonder

[caffeinemessiah]

Actually Viagra was invented to treat angina, at which it was a spectacular failure. The better-known use of Viagra was actually a side-effect that appeared in (if I remember) 80% of test subjects. So even Viagra was a sort of accident.

Re:You have to wonder

[vorpal22]

Even more strange, but along the same lines, is the new and coming drug, Bremelanotide. It was created with the intention of being an artificial tanning agent, at which it succeeded, but a large number of the test subjects, both male and female, reported highly increased sexual arousal during the tests.

It's fairly far along in clinical trials and seems very promising, making it the first recognized effective pharmaceutical aphrodisiac.

Re:You have to wonder

[false_cause]

They missed one 'gina but hit millions of others.

Re:You have to wonder

[dr_dank]

It was created with the intention of being an artificial tanning agent, at which it succeeded, but a large number of the test subjects, both male and female, reported highly increased sexual arousal during the tests.

It's a cruel joke when you look like an overgrown carrot and have a raging boner.

Re:You have to wonder

[Atrox666]

The inventor of LSD also had an epiphany like that ..then things started to melt.

Re:You have to wonder

[ignavus]

Especially if you are a woman.

Alexander Fleming said it best

[Hoi Polloi]

"Damn it! Who let the bacteria colonies get moldy? All of my staphylococcus samples died and now I have to start all over again."

Re:Alexander Fleming said it best

[Harmonious Botch]

Actually, Flemming's contribution was not that he saw something. Several other scientists - even back in the 1800s - had observed that one form of microbe killed off another. Flemming was apparently the first one to realize what this meant, and to follow through on it. He is more a parallel of the researcher's colleague than of the researcher in TFA.

A science teacher once told me

[Trails]

"Most important discoveries are not accompanied with a 'Eureka!', rather with a 'Hmmm, that's odd....'"

Typical science

[jimstapleton]

for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries.

And how many problems could have been solved by now, if instead of someone saying "Hey, this isn't doing what I wanted it to do!" instead they said "Wow, not doing what I wanted it to do, but this effect is pretty darn useful too!"

Re:Typical science

[roman_mir]

what, they tried using a large microwave parabolic antenna to squeeze lemonade and invented a microwave? To celebrate they mixed some alcohol with orange juice, wanted to warm it up in the microwave and discovered napalm?

So what you are saying is that if life hands you a lemon, use napalm?

Re:Typical science

[greginnj]

And this is exactly why there needs to be more "research for the sake of research" regardless of whether there is any potential direct commercial value from it.

I disagree; "research for the sake of research" (aka pure research) is overrated as a source of progress. Look at all the Eureka stories we've been discussing, from TFA to the older ones -- most of them are cases of applied research leading to new uses, via error or serendipity. Even Archimedes (the original Eureka moment) was trying to detect fraud, not come up with a new law of hydrostatics.

What we NEED, I would argue, is more researchers who have in-the-trenches practical experience, even (preferably!) in fields other than their own, so they're prepared to recognize those new uses. A little more Heinlein, a little less Asimov. A failed result in one research program is a wild success in a completely different practical application.

The history of Post-Its is illustrative -- Spencer Silver invented a very poor adhesive for 3M in 1968; Arthur Fry figured out that it could be used for re-usable bookmarks in 1974. How much more money would 3M have made during those intervening years if Silver was a better lateral thinker?

A second part to the story, not shown in the Wikipedia article, claims that Fry initially ran into opposition from a marketing director, who didn't see any market for the semi-sticky notes. Fry, clearly a man who had what it takes, distributed pilot batches to the secretaries at 3M, with a note telling them to contact the marketing director for refills...

Silver was the guy doing 'research'. The concept of 'adhesive-on-paper-substrate' (e.g, masking tape) existed already for decades. The closest Fry came to innovation was the idea of using a poor, rather than a strong, adhesive (Silver's ) on a paper substrate -- but he had the practical experience both to see an application, and to get it to the light of day.

Re:Typical science

[Atraxen]

I'm really wary of this either/or approach. We need both! To use an analogy - an army with either only front line troops or logistics/occupation forces will hold no new ground. The pure research folks push forward the front, and the integrated science and engineering folks make the connections that solidify the progress made to date. There's space enough for all of us (being a basic scientist myself who also crosses the line into looking for applicability).

Amazingly not a dupe.

[Grendel Drago]

How odd; I was all ready to yell "DUPE!", but this isn't yet another DCA story. So, for this one, we have that it kills human tumors in vitro, and mouse tumors in vivo. We don't know if it's safe to give to humans. (Maybe we do; I haven't pulled the research paper yet.) Ah, well. Here's a picture of the molecule if anyone wants it.

"Oh, you wanted to *cure cancer*!"

[Anonymous Coward]

"I misheard you. Sure, I've been able to do that for years. Here you go."

Re:"Oh, you wanted to *cure cancer*!"

[QuestionMark Greater]

"All this time I've been trying to cure plaster."

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Volante3192]

She wasn't even looking for a cure for cancer, but rather a cure for an intestinal disease. She just used cancerous cells in the trials because they're quicker to grow and more resistant to experiment.

Terrible article, facts wrong

[rhombic]

Reuter's science writer should get the credentials revoked. Gawd, I wish I never RTFA'd the article.

"She was testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator. It would never normally have been thought of as a cancer drug, or in fact a drug of any kind."

PPARg modulators are huge drugs, some of the most highly perscribed therapeutics for type II diabetes.

"Most of the drugs like Taxol affect the ability of tubulin to forms into microtubules. This doesn't do that -- it causes the tubulin itself to disappear. We do not know why."

So you dosed in enormous doses of a compound, and it killed cells. Every type of "cancer" cells they tested died. They haven't tested primary cell lines (non-cancerous cells). Nor have they tested any tox in mice. They've got no mechanism of action. WTF??? I can kill cancer cells in the lab with large doses of damn near anything. High concentration table salt will kill cancer cells. Doesn't make NaCl an anti cancer agent. Crap. Spit. I hate write ups like this.

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[Retric]

RTFA again "It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research."

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[xtracto]

You should read TFA, no, not the one linked there but the one published by the researcher. it is available here. Of course you can only enter if you have a subscription OR your university has access to it. Mine has, and I took the time to take a look to the article :

"PPAR Y inhibitors reduce tubulin protein levels by a PPAR, PPAR and proteasome-independent mechanism, resulting in cell cycle arrest, apoptosis and reduced metastasis of colorectal carcinoma cells"

Measurement of metastasis in vivo

Male severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice, 6 weeks of age, were maintained in a specific pathogen-free environment. Experiments were performed according to the guidelines of Yokohama City University. At day 0, 2 106 HT-29 cells were injected into the spleen. After inoculation, the mice were randomized into 2 treatment groups (each with n = 6) and 1 control group (n = 6). Starting at day 1 and daily thereafter, T0070907 (1 or 5 mg/kg/day) or control (1% DMSO vehicle) was administered orally. These concentrations were chosen based on initial pilot experiments to detect morbidity based on T0070907 alone. At 1 or 5 mg/kg/day, no increased morbidity (based on grooming, activity and food intake) was noted in mice with or without injected tumor cells. Four weeks later, the number and size of metastatic lesions in the liver were determined. Tumor volume was calculated as previously described. and in the conclussion:

hese results demonstrate that treating CRC cell lines with high doses of PPAR inhibitors leads to disruption of microtubule function, alterations in cell morphology, cell migration, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. In addition, definitive antitumor effects are seen in vivo, after oral administration in a CRC mouse model. So yeah, they tested in mice and yeah it looks promising. Of course it might not be as "newsworthy" as media wants to make it look. Hundreds of similar articles can be obtained via scoups.com any day :)

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[kalirion]

The solution is quite simple. Develop a retro-virus which turns humans into mice, cure the cancer, and then work on turning the healthy mice human again.

PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compound

[CorporalKlinger]

It might be wise for whomever posted this to read the article more completely before publishing. PPAR-gamma is a receptor found within/on cells, NOT a separate "magic compound." This is old news, anyway - PPAR-gamma's effects with respect to cancer have been well understood for months now.

Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=g ene&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Graphics&list_uids=5468

Notice how it says "implicated in cancer"? That information has been there for quite some time. Time for people to stop posting this antiquated junk as "new news."

So are a fair percentage of "last words"....

[StressGuy]

that and "hey y'all, watch this!"

From TFA

[guruevi]

As the compound is already patented, her team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug.

FTW. I found a cure for cancer, sorry patented. And for AIDS too, sorry patented. I found a cure for all sickness and death, sorry patented.

Further investigation

[rbarreira]

Further investigation later revealed that the substance she had been using was in fact sulfuric acid...

It's from Asimov, I believe.

[Grendel Drago]

It's an Isaac Asimov saying, as far as I know (though I haven't seen a primary source). "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discovery, is not 'Eureka' (I found it!), but 'That's funny...'"

Patents

[paladinwannabe2]

Thanks to patents, it might be- apparently the compound that kills these cells is already patented. Whoever held the patents is now sitting on a potential goldmine- and they didn't even have to invest in it through research and development.

The focus is to narrow!

[Buddy_DoQ]

This happens to me quite often, I will dig into a project trying to solve some major issue or another (Wi-Fi's down again!) and hours later I've solved it. The problem is I've already forgotten the original issue and found three others that are really quite trivial. Sometimes I look up and notice, sometimes I just keep working away, creating new issues and solutions with complete disregard for the original major issue. It's like my focus becomes so narrow, that I can't see the bigger picture without someone else stepping in.

This is where a good project manager should step in. "You do realize you've been painting the same tiny bit of trim for the past three hours, right?"

Re:Like other famous finds in history

[ReidMaynard]

Top Ten Accidental Discoveries

stuff is patented: Sorry, can't cure cancer today!

[denis-The-menace]

"Schaefer's team plans more safety tests in mice. As the compound is already patented, her team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug."

Another plus for having a "Great" patent system.
You have cancer? Go to China or India.
After a few years of people doing this,
China and India will be as rich as the USA was 5 years ago.
(Today, the USA is actually poorer!)

We need a new meme

[paiute]

For the love of RB Woodward's wine-guzzling ghost, I am sick of stories about compound X and how it is the next big thing and how it kills cancer cells stone dead in a Petri dish.

Every other compound you can order from Aldrich will kill cancer cells in vitro. So will a ball peen hammer. Drano, playground sand, double-acting baking powder. Pledge will kill them and leave a lemony-fresh scent.

When this compound gets to stage III clinical trials and does not leave a trail of bodies and does show some efficacy, then you can post the story.

Until then, Netcraft confirms it. These cancer cells are dying.
In the Soviet Union, cancer cells kill new drugs.
etc

Re:We need a new meme

[paiute]

Why don't you actually read the article? They tested the modulator in mice and found that it killed cancer cells in them with no ill effects. So the important part of the article is not that it kills cancer cells. It's that it kills cancer cells without major damage to other cells.

Way to go, captain obvious!

Read it. Why don't you read a thousand or so J Med Chem articles and browse PubMed for a decade or so and get back to me. Then you might know that a mouse is a Petri dish with whiskers. Killing cancer cells, even if it were true that you could put all the other types of primate-specific cells in the dish with them and they were not harmed, does not tell you how the chemical will interfere with the huge number of subtle intra- and extra-cellular messenger-receptor processes that keep your system humming.

And it's Dr. captain obvious to you.

Re:We need a new meme

[radtea]

For the love of RB Woodward's wine-guzzling ghost, I am sick of stories about compound X and how it is the next big thing and how it kills cancer cells stone dead in a Petri dish.

Furthermore, most cancers in mice can be cured with the biochemical equivalent of a dirty look.

Humans are exceptionally long-lived for mammals. The average mammal lives about a billion of its own heartbeats. Humans live two billion. this massively delayed senescence is due in part to effective tumour-supressor genes. From an evolutionary perspective, this may have to do with grandparents/elders being the primary inter-generational transmitters of culture, knowledge and tradition.

The upshot is that cancers that can survive in humans have already bypassed internal defences that would drop-kick most mouse cancers out of the stadium. So we see lots and lots of compounds that cure cancer in mice but have almost no effect in humans, even though they are non-toxic.

Using mouse models is still reasonable for preliminary testing and understanding of pathways, but the popular press treating mouse results as more than mildly interesting is not generally justified.

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Archangel Michael]

"how would you feel if a program was made that automatically created perfect code by letting your manager put in all his wishes"

That would be fantastic! It would prove that mutually exclusive wishes can be programmed in. "I want it red" followed by "I don't like red" followed by "I wanted it red", followed by "I told you not red".

Now if a program could code that, I would pay top dollar for it. Seriously.

Don't Be Daft

[Petersko]

"for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries."

Oh please. You make it sound like the researcher was walking down the street one day with a dish of cancer and somebody bumped into her with the right chemicals. Like it was the scientific equivalent of "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"

The decades of previous work, including her education and work experience, worked steadily towards her being a cancer researcher who was following a logical chain that brought cancer cells and compound together for the discovery. If any of it was blind luck it was perhaps a tiny little sliver at the end. Really not even that was luck. After all, even though the results were unexpected, clearly she was on the track to something. No luck required.

I think it's insulting to her dismiss the roles that logic and deductive reasoning played in arranging these circumstances.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[QuestionMark Greater]

You have to agree that some of science's interesting advancements have come from unintended experimental results. That's what science is, right? Testing hypothesis. Scientists aren't sure what is going to happen with their experiments. If they did, then there wouldn't be much value in them. And sometimes those results still have value even though they prove to be inconsistent with the original hypothesis.

The article makes it very clear that the results of Dr. Schaefer's tests were unintended:

1) She was experimenting on drugs to treat inflammation. Not cancer at all.
2) Heck, the experiment wasn't even carried out as planned. It was based on a miscalculated quantity of the compound.
3) She may not have furthered her investigation of the compound had she not mentioned her disappointment, that the cancer cells died, in passing to a colleague.
4) It appears that the mechanism of how the compound kills the cancer cells is now understood, but not why.

I think the comment of "typical science" is condescending to the community and the efforts involved with scientific advancements. But I think the analogy of "you put your peanut butter in my chocolate" isn't too far off the mark in this case.

And as many people have stated earlier, isn't too far off the mark in many scientific discoveries.

It sounds like the offense is more in reponse to the insuation that typical scientific progress is due to complete chance. Which I agree is not true.

The seed of this discovery did indeed occur by chance. But I think it is safe to assume the continued research of this compound as a cancer treatment will not continue by randomly mixing it with chocolate and peanut butter. This is where the expertise and experience of Dr. Schaefer and her colleagues will come in handy.

Who knows? As they continue researching this, they may stumble up a breakthrough for inflamed colon's afterall. Or a sugary treat more delectable peanut butter cups.

Funding cut

[plopez]

Watch her grants get cut since she is reporting a result she didn't write into the grant application.

Patents

[brian0918]

From the article: "As the compound is already patented, her team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug."

So is the public at large now generally accepting the beliefs that not only are biological compounds patentable, but that slightly changing them results in something sufficiently different to also be patentable?

I had a similar problem.

[91degrees]

I tried making a perpetual motion machine, but it just kept getting faster and faster. I mean what use is a device that creates free energy? And it's just damn irritating when the fundamental laws of physics stop applying.

Re:I had a similar problem.

[Volante3192]

In this forum we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Just Like Penicillin

[Doc Ruby]

Penicillin, the panacea of the last generation of medical science, was discovered accidentally by Alexander Fleming. Now a cancer cure, our era's "holy grail", has perhaps been found in a similar accident.

It seems that the "error" part of the scientific method's "trial and error" process is even more important than the planned "trial" part.

Maybe we should have more scientific research conducted like jazz, which is sometimes described as "gracefully exploiting errors".

Scientist Vs Researcher

[TobascoKid]

Seeing as the move to get people to call crackers crackers and not hackers never worked, I really doubt trying to get people call researchers researchers is every going to take off, especially as all researchers are, by definition, scientists anyway.

Anyway, why will changing the name stop ill-qualified challenges? One researcher in one branch of science could still challenge another researcher in another branch.

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[Bloke down the pub]

all researchers are, by definition, scientists anyway.

Great news - I'm researching ancient Greek, but I always wanted to be a scientist really.

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[Maximum Prophet]

This had bothered me since 8th grade English class when I was told that we were going to do research, and I envisioned white lab coats and studying things that had never been done/seen before. What a letdown it was when the teacher told us we were going to spend our time in the library studying what other people had done. Let's put the "re" back into research. What you are doing is true research, what scientists do is original search. (ok, they have to do a lot of research first to see what's already been done before they start to do the original stuff)

Re:stuff is patented: Sorry, can't cure cancer tod

[drinkypoo]

Another plus for having a "Great" patent system. You have cancer? Go to China or India. After a few years of people doing this, China and India will be as rich as the USA was 5 years ago.

Amen! By the same token, I think that if you're an individual valuable to business or scientific progress living in the US, and you don't like to see what the US is doing with its power, you have a responsibility to either enter politics, or leave the country.

Otherwise you're just lending your power to the country with whose actions you disagree, and I find that more than a bit hypocritical.

Scientists have often wanted to be apolitical, but even refusing to take a specific political stance is itself a political statement. It's simply impossible. Be part of the solution, or... you know the rest.

Very True. Discovery of Teflon is another example.

[g2devi]

"Dr. Plunkett was under contract with the DuPont Company and was doing research on methods of creating non-toxic refrigerants that would have very specialized uses; however, upon beginning his original experiment he realized that he had a problem . When he went to open the tank of gaseous tetrafluoroethylene, no gas came out of the cylinder; instead the only thing that came from this was a great curiosity . What perplexed Plunkett was that the weight of the tank indicated that there should be a given amount of the fluorocarbon present in the tank, and that it simply hadn't leaked out. This puzzled Plunkett and caused him to investigate what was actually still in the "empty" tank; however, it was not until he sawed the tank open that he realized what had taken place. Inside the tank he found a white, waxy powder and concluded that these individual gas molecules had bonded together to form this incredible solid, teflon, that had some very promising chemical properties."

Source: http://users.wfu.edu/starbt5/Serendipity%20Project /website/Serendipity.htm

Re:As good as it sounds...

[LurkerXXX]

Actually PPAR-gamma, as well as other related compounds have been used in a number of clinical trials for other diseases such as Alzheimer's. Some of the risker clinical trials (Phase I/II) have already been done, so the safety of the compounds in humans is already known. That takes off a good bit of time and expense in drug development when you don't have to test a new drug to make sure it doesn't kill people.

Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[spun]

Jimmy: Uhh, Mr. McClure, I have a crazy friend who thinks it's wrong to call yourself a scientist if you don't have a sciencey type degree. Is he crazy?
Troy: Nooooo, just ignorant. You see, your crazy friend never heard of "The Scientific Method." Just ask this scientician.
Scientician: Uhhhh...
Troy: He'll tell you that anyone who makes observations, creates theories based on them, tests the predicitons of those theories, and modifies the theories based on the tests is a scientist. Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If that scientician ever got the chance, he'd study you and everyone you care about.

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[spun]

Look at my uid. I've been here since before the karma cap. I neither need karma nor does being modded down hurt me in any way. Thanks for playing, though. Here's a copy of our home game, "Snide comments from the peanut gallery." Enjoy!

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[Cervantes]

Look at my uid. I've been here since before the karma cap. I neither need karma nor does being modded down hurt me in any way. Thanks for playing, though. Here's a copy of our home game, "Snide comments from the peanut gallery." Enjoy!

pwned.

Sucker.

spun(1352) owns teh intarwebs for 5 minutes.

You forgot...

[eheldreth]

"Hey, hold my beer!"

Re:As good as it sounds...

[LurkerXXX]

er, sorry, make that PPAR-gamma activating drugs have been tested. Didn't mean to leave that part of the sentence out. PPAR-gamma is already present in the cells, you just need to crank up it's activity.

Mouse Cancer

[trongey]

I can't believe they keep pouring so damn much money into research for curing mouse cancer. I mean, who cares if mice have cancer? They only live a couple of years anyway.
Why don't they use some of this money to find cures for human diseases or world hunger, or something?

Re:Mouse Cancer

[Bastian]

This might have been meant as a joke, but there's a healthy dose of truth to it. There's enough physiological difference between mice and humans that you can't trust research on them to be applicable to humans. This is why animal testing has to be followed up with extensive human trials before a drug can be released to the market.

For example, many animal trials (mice in particular) didn't show cigarette smoke to be nearly as much of a cancer risk as it is for humans. This research data was in turn used by Big Tobacco in their defense back when they were still trying to pretend that smoking isn't so bad.

Similarly, penicillin's release to the market was delayed because it had a tendency to kill lab animals.

Alright - I Concede I Didn't RTFA Well Enough

[Petersko]

As others have pointed out, she wasn't doing cancer research. However, I would point out that whatever she WAS doing, she was working with cancerous cells.

Regardless, I maintain it was much less luck than determined methodology that brought this forward. A fortunate event happened at the tip of decades of buildup.

She was lucky

[WrongDecision]

Agreed. She was lucky. "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity" -somebody intelligent said that, damned if I know who.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[pclminion]

So you're saying I shouldn't find out about things on Slashdot because I could just look in one of a billion scientific journals? Oddly enough, I think most Slashdot readers aren't hardcore scientists and don't spend their time reading scientific journals (seeing as WE CAN'T without paying subscriptions). So if we don't read it here, where SHOULD we read about it? I haven't seen this in the mainstream news.

Quit being an elitist asshole.

Good night, and good luck.

[tut21]

To preempt typically thoughtless comments from self-appointed experts, every story on Slashdot should end with the phrase "this news is not particularly new."

Re:BREAKING NEWS

[Dunbal]

There's a connection between the dead bimbo, PPAR molecule thingy, Barbados, cancer cells, unknown father of a baby, and mice.

      A Bahamian mouse claims that Hugh Hefner is the father of its baby after a "meeting" at a Playboy photoshoot. The mouse is dying of cancer, and wants Hugh to pay for treatment with the PPAR thingy? Can I get that job at the Inquirer now?

The headline is accurate, too

[iamacat]

The scientist is still annoyed, because the compound is already patented, and thus will not be profitable as a cancer drug. Therefore, they will work on making another, possibly more toxic or less effective, formula rather than pushing for a human trial.

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[StikyPad]

Therefore, they will work on making another, possibly more toxic or less effective, formula rather than pushing for a human trial.

Or possibly less toxic or more effective. The argument is not that they have to keep working -- they should do that anyway -- but rather that unused patents should be revoked.

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[nanoakron]

Where the fuck do you get your cynicism from?

Yeah, that's right - all cancer researchers are only out for a quick buck and fuck every possible cure that gets in their way.

Yeah, cancer researchers are holding back the true cures until we pay them enough.

Yeah, cancer research laboratories don't employ people suffering from cancer themselves. It's only the lay public that suffer from cancer, not scientists and stuff.

You fucking retard.

How 'Unwanted side effects' labeling begins

[Provocateur]

Caution: Unwanted side effects may occur. Such as tanning. Consult your doctor or pharmacist.
 

Not sure how to feel

[tacokill]

I don't know whether to laugh at your comment or cry. On one hand, I laugh because we "accidentally" discover things all the time and this is a good thing. Then I realize we were trying to make an artifical tanning agent --- and I cry.

Seriously, is ALL pharmaceutical research on tanning, boners, and other non-life threatening shit? How about we tackle the stuff the KILLS PEOPLE first, huh? (Nah, there's too much money in the other stuff...)

Truly, a sad statement on affairs, if I've ever seen one.

Re:Not sure how to feel

[mlyle]

The tanning agents are being researched because they have the possibility of preventing a heck of a lot of cases of skin cancer-- by protecting people against the sun BEFORE damage occurs. Also, people might go outside to tan themselves less with an alternative.

(But even if you're going to the beach, there's a benefit and prevented skin damage by taking this first, other than your boner showing through your swim trunks).

So, it's not quite so silly, eh?

In defence of bloggers

[LeDopore]

So, does that mean you think the professional journalists are doing a fine job?

At the very least, their incentives are to scare and sensationalize. Don't criticize something until you have something better to replace it with.

Re:Very True. Discovery of Teflon is another examp

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Heard a variant of that from a teaching fellow. In that version it wasn't quite so straightforward:

F4C2 is horribly toxic. They had a big tank of this compressed gas and had set up the wall of glassware (with great care) for some experiment. They hooked it up, opened the valve, and nothing came out. (Yet the weight, as above, indicated that the tank WAS still full.)

The concern was that the valve was clogged, and that the tank still contained the poisonous gas under high pressure. So any attempt to open it - or even closely examine the valve - could lead to the sudden release of the gas and the death of all in the room and many in the building. Yet how could they dispose of it? And what HAD happened, anyhow?

(This was like a blown fuse in an electrical lab: The initial trouble is just a symptom of something underlying, which needs to be investigated, if only to prevent a recurrence.)

Eventually, after much deliberation, one of the experimenters took his life in his hands and cut open the tank, discovering the white powder.

They immediately realized it had polymerized (probably due to a contaminant) and were hot on the trail of a new and very interestin/useful plastic - starting with a large sample which told them what useful properties it would have and knowing exactly what the monomer in question was.

= = = =

Discovery of nylon was a similar accident: A solution was left on a window sill and turned cloudy when exposed to light. Fortunately the chemist decided to examine it to figure out what had happened rather than just dumping it - and thus were born synthetic fabrics.

blind luck plus ability to recognize.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries." ...You make it sound like the researcher was walking down the street one day with a dish of cancer and somebody bumped into her with the right chemicals. ...

The decades of previous work, including her education and work experience, worked steadily towards her being a cancer researcher who was following a logical chain that brought cancer cells and compound together for the discovery.

But sometimes you DO have a "blind luck" event - which someone with the right education can recognize and develop.

An example (which I heard from Emmett Leith, one of the inventors of practical holography) was the discovery (not invention) of the neodymium/glass laser.

Laser researcher (in the "rod of synthetic ruby" days) was home for vacation and took a flash picture using a strobe-light flash on a camera. He happened to notice a red blink from an ashtray. So he fired the flash at it:

  Flash ... Blink!
  Flash ... Blink!
  Flash ... Blink!

Asking for and receiving the oddball ashtray, he took it in to the lab, along with the flash camera, called everybody together, and ran the demo:

  Flash ... Blink!

After everybody else had seen and confirmed the phenomenon they smashed the glass and spectroanalyzed the fragments, discovering the neodymium impurity (which had provided the gain - interacting with the total internal reflection of the ashtray surfaces which provided the resonant cavity).

Then they were successful at making lasers out of rods of neodymium-doped glass - much cheaper than synthetic ruby.

He gets his cynicism from the world around us

[JudgeFurious]

Yeah that's right - all cancer researchers are only out for the good of the human race and even if they have to starve themselves and live in personal poverty it's cool because they're doing something more important than pleasing the shareholders of the drug company they volunteer their time to.

Yeah, cancer researchers will do anything they can to get a drug to the people who need it. They usually give it away at cost to save peoples lives right?

Yeah, cancer researchers only employ people who have a vested interest in finding a cure for cancer before they die because they all have cancer and it's not just a job to even a small handful of them. In fact many of them go out of their way to get cancer just so they can heighten the sense of urgency around the lab.

Shithead.