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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.
Best Headline ever!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
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.
Have you read my journal today?
"To pull a Homer": To succeed despite idiocy
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."
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
if the creator of Viagra had a similar epiphany
Monstar L
"Damn it! Who let the bacteria colonies get moldy? All of my staphylococcus samples died and now I have to start all over again."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"Most important discoveries are not accompanied with a 'Eureka!', rather with a 'Hmmm, that's odd....'"
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"I misheard you. Sure, I've been able to do that for years. Here you go."
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.
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.
g ene&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Graphics&list_uids=5468
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=
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."
that and "hey y'all, watch this!"
A goal is a dream with a deadline
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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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...'"
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
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
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"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.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
RTFA again "It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research."
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?
You can't handle the truth.
"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.
Watch her grants get cut since she is reporting a result she didn't write into the grant application.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
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".
--
make install -not war
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.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
"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
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
"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."
t /website/Serendipity.htm
Source: http://users.wfu.edu/starbt5/Serendipity%20Projec
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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?
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Agreed. She was lucky. "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity" -somebody intelligent said that, damned if I know who.
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.
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.
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).
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
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?