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DNA Cancer Codes Cracked By International Effort
Enigma23 writes "As reported on news.com.au, scientists from the International Cancer Genome Consortium of 12 institutes around the world will today release the first DNA profiles of some of the most prevalent types of tumors. While the story asserts that 'A new era of cancer treatment has dawned,' I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Any word on a patch?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Oh wait. FAH didn't contribute? Nevermind. ):
Be careful what you wish for. If you live in Paris, then yeah, having X-Ray vision is a great thing. However, if you live in Kentucky and happen to work for a purveyor of Fried Chicken, let's just say that ignorance is not only bliss, but a requirement.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
> I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are
> still very much in their infancy at the current time
Those are not the only applications for this knowledge.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There isn't really a whole lot in the article about this. It would be nice if they told us how this could help, or how they hope it might help.
Can they identify these tumors with a simple blood test now or do they still have to do an invasive biopsy?
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
They sequenced the tumor genomes. The hard work of "cracking the code" e.g. associating DNA mutations with cancer phenotypes is just beginning. But congrats to Sean Grimmond and his team on the press release and publicity. Any publicity for science like this is good.
I was diagnosed with stage 5 cancer at age 17. I'm still alive at age 33.
There's not a day that goes by when I don't look at my disfigured face and wonder what thing would have been like if I'd caught it sooner- according to one doc, I'd have been dead because my body wouldn't have fought it off. Who knows.
But anything that gets a genetic component and allows them to focus better on killing off the cells that have tormented me for over a dozen years I'll be more than grateful. There isn't a trip to the doctor that doesn't send shiver of fear down my spine, whether or not I'll be able to continue to provide for my family- whether or not that cough that started was due to pollen or something else... whether or not that pain in the side is a kidney stone or something more sinister.
Cancer is a killer. Even the survivors die a little every day.
Just make sure she's not involved and one of us won't have to become a Legend.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
http://www.qcmg.org/cancer.html It gives a background of what they are trying to do, seems interesting.
From TFA: "Scientists from research institutes in Australia, Canada, Japan, China and the UK will today release the first DNA profiles of some of the most prevalent types of tumours."
Note that the USA isn't in the list. Are the US folks are too busy patenting their discoveries so they can monetize them?
Or is the USA falling behind because of the asinine science related policies of previous administration?
Or is there another reason?
I've been following this for awhile. Looks like I get to update my "hit list" of gene targets to investigate. And that's what this will ultimately be...a list of interesting genes to look at for further investigation. No cures right away, it will take time to absorb this data into the collective intelligence of the medical research community and years to turn it into new treatments.
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
ICGC is the main public access point to this data.
Am I the only one to read this post and go WTF? I had to check your other posts to see if you're just some random bot, but it appears your other posts make sense, so I'm back to WTF?
I think he meant to post in this thread:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/04/14/188253
This kind of thing of thing gives me a little hope that if I can just hold on 40 more years or so, they'll keep inventing better and better stuff that could keep me alive for several more (former) lifetimes.
Honestly, dying right before that stuff really gets going would be quite a shame.
The war on cancer and the war on drugs are pretty similar in certain ways. Both date back to Richard Nixon, ca. 1970. Both are vast, expensive projects of the federal government. Both have entrenched political/financial constituencies that want the federal money to keep flowing. Both have taken much, much longer and accomplished much, much less than Nixon and his contemporaries anticipated.
When it comes to cancer, the hype about prevention, early detection, and treatment has vastly overrun the actual medical gains. We were told for decades that eating lots of fiber would prevent colon cancer, but the first carefully designed study on this topic shows that it doesn't. We were told that PSA tests would save lives by allowing early treatment of prostate cancer; actually, the first good double-blind study showed that it saved no lives at all (while making many men incontinent and/or impotent). We were told that extending screening for breast cancer to younger women would produce better outcomes, but actually it turns out that it doesn't. In general, modern imaging techniques pick out tons of abnormalities than patients then demand to have treated, whether or not they would ever have caused a problem. People thought that personal genomics would allow individuals to get better prevention and treatment, but it turns out that there really don't seem to be any common mutations that predispose large numbers of people to a high risk of a particular cancer.
What we really need is more fundamental research on the biology of cancer. These half-assed attempts to find a quick answer have turned out to be mostly fruitless. It's like trying to send men to the moon without knowing Newton's laws of motion. We don't understand basic things like whether many cancers are caused by chromosomal abnormalities or whether the chromosomal abnormalities are caused by the cancers. While we're waiting for the fundamental biology knowledge to get figured out, we could concentrate on convincing people not to smoke tobacco.
Find free books.
World: please stop calling DNA sequences "codes" that can be "cracked". There is no encryption going on here and, if you really want to use that metaphor than what they're doing is not cracking (decrypting) the code, but determining its sequence. Sequencing 4 cancer genomes is an enormous achievement that will provide countless biological insights, but nothing was "cracked". I'm a biologist, but aren't there cryptographers out there that are annoyed by this terminology???
Let me follow-up with a car analogy: Imagine you found the blueprints for a car that had a slight problem (say occasional aberrant acceleration, for example). Sequencing cancer genomes is akin to *finding* these blueprints. But it gets worse, the blueprints are in a different language and have no idea what 70% of the parts in the plans actually DO. Yes - the blueprint is helpful. Very helpful. In fact there's not much you can do without it. But it doesn't immediately help you FIX the problem. The only feature of DNA that is truly a *code* that was had to be *cracked* was the triplet code for amino acids and that was cracked by Khorana, Holley and Nirenberg in the '60s.
Yup.. Apparently I commented on the wrong thread indeed.. (blast ye Ajax - or my recklessness)..
So my -1 off topic is commended for my comment.
Oh well, I'll survive ;)
Don't you think a 'random bot' would post AC ?
I'm going for the browser - or more likely - an issue with the entity between the chair and keyboard.. (never happened to you eh ?)
--Ivan
"I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Hence the phrase "era of cancer treatment has dawned" instead of "era of cancer treatment has nooned [or twilighted]". Putting the cart in front of the horse perhaps?
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
"...I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Yup, and it'll likely stay that way if big pharma has their way with things. Why ruin a multi-billion dollar drug and treatment industry just to save a few thousand lives, right?
Greedy fucking bastards.
Why would you want to see women's bones? Me, I'd rather see the outer layer.
If you keep on cracking enough DNA codes, eventually you'll run into one that decrypts to "Bruce Schneier".
Well, that's not entirely true. There's also some weird stuff going on with methylation that still needs to be cracked. That's a part of the "code" if there were to be one. Also, you could say there's a histone code, with it's own methylation. I'm sure there's other mysteries in there as well.
But, as the parent says, sequencing is sequencing --- not code cracking.
Also, can I make a plea to the world that we stop saying scientists "map" a genome when they really sequenced it. Mapping is a completely different thing. They may have done some mapping when they sequenced it, but likely you really mean "sequenced" when you say "mapped". You can't throw these jargon terms around like they're synonyms, because they aren't.
And I'm not nit-picking here (nor is the parent poster). To put it in terms here that everybody can understand, it's like when my wife refers to the tower case of my PC as the "hard drive" of the computer.
Also on the issue of sequencing cancer "genomes" I think we'll find it to be a big a waste of money, as the HapMap project was, in a couple years. Maybe they'll find a few drug targets, but I predict the more cancer "genomes" that are sequenced, the more we'll find that anything is possible in cancers. What we really need to find is the driver genes that start the cellular changes leading to cancer, and lead to progression of the cancer. I'm not sure sequencing a genome that's a total mess because it's *already* a cancer cell is going to make it immediately apparent what those driver changes were. Not doubting it can be done, but it is a big effort, and I'm not sure it's the best way to do it. I think more likely you will end up with a lot of sequence data that's really difficult for most people to interpret, and contributes not that much to cancer biology. Good to know what the deal is with the cell lines they've been using all these years as models, but beyond that, who knows. (Heck, maybe I'm wrong and we'll find a bunch of previously unknown viral sequence integrated in the genomes.)
Now, I'm not trashing personalized medicine, where you sequence a patient's tumor line, and then use that to determine a treatment tuned to the cancer cell line they have. I think that's exactly how things need to go. But I am trashing this idea of creating a catalog of *all* cancer "genomes" (for the reason I mentioned above) as the goal of a "genome project". Try sequencing some new and useful genomes instead.
Overall, I don't like "gold-rush" biology, and there seems the be a lot of that going on. Be the first one in, and leave a big mess of data for the next guy to deal with.
Blame whoever came up with the term "codon" :)
You're right - that's probably where it started! That said, codon refers to the only (that I can think of) true code in biology. The other potential codes just mentioned (DNA methylation, histone mods, etc) are really more biochemical features that interact with proteins to regulate gene expression. The triplet code (code) is basically universal. TAA means STOP to every organism on the planet from worms to fish to bacteria to man. Histone mods and DNA methylation matter, but they're much more specific to particular cells/organisms.
My cock was so tiny before the tumor started growing down there. Now just as my dick was finally getting larger, they tell me they're going to cure me? Life is just not fair.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Even if this doesn't lead to any sort of treatment(which seems highly doubtful), it still has applications to cancer treatment and prevention. One thing that comes to mind might be to collect cells from a patient's body in various places and do a genome sequencing of these cells. Take that information and compare it to common cancer mutations and you've got a way to assess the risk of how likely someone is to develop cancer. Genetics is epic.
Reverse engineering of DNA is one of the biggest challenges of humanity. That may open far more possibilities than just a few illness cures. For the moment, this reverse engineering is very coarse grain and focus mainly to identify most visible bugs like tumors.
Fundamental research like that will probably also produce unexpected discoveries and a better understanding of medicine. I hope a complete revolution of allopathic medicine.
What about a DNA simulator that would allow to test and debug DNA changes. That would be cool.
The word encoded does not mean it is "encrypted." Just as software is "coded", "DNA" is coded too. So the process of determining what gene is encoded how and has what meaning for an organism is really "cracking the code".
Who can now be cured - whilst the poor and stuff it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"and has what meaning for an organism..."
right. This is the part they're not doing.
So you think you get some applause because you found out the mapping to the tumors and how to grow, ....here you go /claps...
no stop trying to stall and make all the pharmaceuticals more money and give us the cure already.....I bet if we had a higher rate of cancer, they would go just a little faster....yet when there is enough of us to go around, they take their time and think they can make some extra money on the side while making us wait.
Anyone trying to mod me down, will get cancer....and make the pharmaceutical companies more money.
...nobody cares for it to not happen in the first place. At all.
While we still live in toxic shit, wear toxic shit, breathe toxic shit, eat toxic shit, and put toxic shit on our skins, as if that were the most normal thing in the world to do.
And big pharma plus all the doctors make a nice profit off of it.
Sorry, but we as a species, deserver cancer for that extreme horrible ignorance of ours.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
While the story asserts that 'A new era of cancer treatment has dawned,' I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time.
I'm pretty sure that 'infancy' and 'dawn' are analogies for the same concept... Now if they had said "cancer is history," you might have a point.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
For some cancers, such as Wilms' Tumor, there is a so-called "Stage V (Roman Numeral 5)" which stands for bilateral renal involvement at the time of initial discovery. This means that both kidneys have the disease at the time of first diagnosis and leads to an even poorer prognosis.
There is no uniform Cancer Staging criterion or guideline. Different tumors involving different body parts and organs have different definitions of the staging. Blood and brain tumors metastasize and behave differently and most of the staging is based upon the clinical findings by different medical clinicians over the last two point five centuries, often based on a geographic expedition mentality: first to define plants their flag.
md5sum txt2; % my sig
7ce9f1ff1a2043234696c023380008a2 txt2
md5sum txt3; % text submitted plug sig
ad8e4cfe560483f36c223e2f025e8c84 txt3
p.s. I also agree with your point of view about life: both for post-cancer and for those who've not had cancer. And the Sword of Damocles now exists as a movie cliche often stated by my mother-in-law (brain tumor, no longer a survivor) "You could get hit by a bus any day. No point in worrying about cancer or anything else. Live!"
Hey, scientists! The Internet's Enigma23 is skeptical of your results! Back to the drawing board, nerds!