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New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells
cranky_chemist sends this report from NPR:
"Cancer simply may be here to stay. Researchers at Kiel University, the Catholic University of Croatia and other institutions discovered that hydra — tiny, coral-like polyps that emerged hundreds of millions of years ago — form tumors similar to those found in humans. Which suggests that our cells' ability to develop cancer is "an intrinsic property" that has evolved at least since then — way, way, way before we rallied our forces to try to tackle it, said Thomas Bosch, an evolutionary biologist at Kiel University who led the study, published in Nature Communications in June (abstract) To get ahead of cancer, he said, "you have to interfere with fundamental pathways. It's a web of interactions," he said. "It's very difficult to do." That's why cancer "will probably never be completely eradicated."
I'll be people who get cancer will be perfectly happy to settle for "easily curable/reversible" if it can't be prevented in the first place. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
Like my 70's era assembly language book thought that 32 bit processors would "never' be widespread due to how expensive it would have to be to produce them?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Although that sounds vaguely like the premise of some sort of science fiction story that looks at inequalities between classes.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This seems like an overly dramatized article based on one sentence. Obviously there's been progress in cancer treatments and some cures for specific cancers.
FTA: One strategy might be to against these cells. Yervoy, a drug that does just that, eliminated melanoma in — and counting. An infusion of Yervoy and a similar drug, nivolumab, has kept some lung cancer patients disease-free for about six years so far. "Their cancer hasn't come back yet. It might never come back," Ben Creelan, an oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center. "I think it's the most exciting thing in decades."
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The entire premise of cancer being impossible to eradicate is based on our supposed descent from the hydra ("deep evolutionary roots"). Leaving aside multiple other ways the assertion is dubious in a reasoning-by-analogy level, is it even established there is such a line of descent?
It seems to me as a non-specialist that descent from the naked mole rat, which does not get cancer, would be a lot more directly supportable, since we're at least both mammals--which would lead to entirely the reverse conclusion from TFA.
Very light on useful evidence and sound inference, it seems to me.
Cancer is a terrible disease and a cure would be a very amazing thing to have. Certainly, if there is any chance of curing it, we should do so.
The thing is, though, we already know how you can greatly reduce your risk factors for developing cancer, and we don't talk about that often enough. We speak so often of "curing" cancer when we should be focusing more energy on preventing it from happening in the first place.
Cancer prevention: 7 tips to reduce your risk
... "it is an intrinsic feature."
No shit, really? Because all the knowledge of cancer-blocking genes (like p53) which trigger apoptosis (programmed cell death) wasn't a giveaway that runaway growth might actually be an intrinsic property of life? The whole point of these genes is to keep cells in a multicelled organism from defeating the ability for a given multicelled organism to live.
but I didn't read the study, so maybe this is saying something that isn't already obvious.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Also on the list of medical conditions that will never be eradicated:
Broken bones
Scratches
Bacteria (in the general case, specific ones may be)
Viruses (see bacteria)
Concussions
The mechanisms of evolution, like natural selection and genetic drift, work with the random variation generated by mutation. It would make sense that cells have have an intrinsic ability to mutate would have a higher chance of developing a beneficial mutation therefore would have a evolutionary advantage.
To form an organ, cells need to multiply, grow, and specialize, then stop multiplying at some point except as needed to maintain the organ.
Cancer is what you get when they lose the "stop multiplying" instruction.
the potential for cancer may be inevitable but the science we have conducted so far suggests its manifestation is correlative to how we live. obesity, drinking, smoking, and physical fitness all play a role in determining our risk.
Good people go to bed earlier.
...Catholic University of Croatia and other institutions discovered that hydra...
Out of the shadows and into the light.
To trigger that, you only need to raise the internal temp of cancer cells by a couple of degrees C, which would literally kill 98 percent of cancer cells and less than 1 percent of normal cells.
One of the researchers at the Wellcom Trust (sp?) figured that out, we had a Biochem seminar on it a few years back.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...does this mean I can smoke?
Disclosure: wife's paternal aunt and mother, and my grandfather and mother, all died of various cancers. IANA cancer expert but I've read a lot.
I have always figured that cancer isn't about "runaway growth"; it's about the failure of whatever STOPS that childhood growth and keeps adults stable. Curing the body's ability to reproduce cells would be curing the ability to heal and replace and continue living. The best I expect to see is a way to put "safety brakes" in the system so that a person can continue living longer with very-slowly-growing cancer. Eventually, anything that lives, dies; it's just about timing and quality/functionality of life while you're living.
It's too bad that this very interesting research - cancer in hydra! - is being overshadowed by sweeping statements about cancer. There are a number of species which experience little to no cancer, from naked mole rats to some whale species. There are a number of different ways that different species reduce or prevent cancer, from additional cell-death signalling via hyaluronan in naked mole rats to additional cell-death signalling via p53 pathways in blind mole rats to replicative senescence in many large mammals, to who-knows-what in eastern grey squirrels and elephants and whales.
The cancer-fighting idea in each case is something that should be near and dear to systems administrators: Redundancy. The more cell-death pathways there are, the harder it is for a series of mutations to result in immortal cancer cells. Redundant Arrays of Immortality Suppression, if you will.
This doesn't mean that we'll ever get rid of cancer in humans, mind you, because evolving a new cancer-prevention signalling pathway takes a couple of million years. But the fact that hydra get cancer doesn't have anything to do with whether we'll ever get rid of cancer in humans, either.
... in this so-called 'new' research?
Because, except for part about giving up hope based on one example in another species, medical science has known all of this for decades.
Just because cancer has been around for a very long time, should not make us defeatists.. I spent 5 years working on DNA sequencers and cancer cell sorting robots, and still consider biology to be hundreds of years behind other branches of science because we have not, until very recently had the tools to study the differences between cancer and normal cells at the DNA level. The Illumina machine can images two flow cells at once -- one for cancer, and one for normal cells. We can now study what happened to make the DNA replication fail and mutate, etc. Apparently it's now possible to do this for $1000.. The human genome project originally cost about 2 billion dollars.. The reduction in infrastructure and cost has been extraordinary.
We can now better identify specific cancers to take out some of the guesswork. In the journal Nature a few years ago , doctors used a DNA sequencer to identify a misdiagnosed cancer (muscle cancer in his lung, producing large tumors) who had only weeks to live, and brought him back from the brink with the right treatment. We've spend the last 40 years developing specific cures, and it was only just guess work to decide what actual cancer a patient had.. This was circa 2007-8..
One thing that really encouraged me a few years ago was a documentary from PBS called Cancer Warrior, that outlined the work of Judah Folkman and is work on angiogenic inhibitors.. Apparently tumors can trigger a persons body to grow veins to connect it to a blood supply , and that you can pick up unique chemical signatures of individual tumors in a patients urine..Strangely enough, large tumors send out chemicals that inhibit the growth of other tumors, and is why we often see many more tumors after removing one large tumor. We now have drugs that form angiogenic inhibitors ... Perhaps in the future we will understand how to create custom tumor growth inhibitor agents that have been tailored for a specific patient by analyzing the signatures in their urine.... An interesting application of synthesis and analytical chemistry.. I wonder what is the current state of research..
Too soon to tell if it's true that we can't overcome cancer, I say. We've been at our current level of understanding science (as in the process itself) for what, 100-200 years, tops? Maybe cancer is indeed intrinsic to our cells! Maybe that just means we need to make better cells, or learn to live despite it.
Someday we will, I think. Not soon but someday. And on that day, the guy above will sound like an idiot, and we'll quote him all over whatever passes for Slashdot when the day comes, chuckling to ourselves.
When we can put our own DNA under version control and have the ability to apply changes to live cells we will simultaneously cure cancer and aging. Lobsters already have biological immortality.
Unfortunately those parent cells are US!
The sole reason why we age is to destroy cancers (aging is a direct result of the body's limitations on cellular reproduction, which is there to keep cells from becoming cancers).
We can't cure old age, until we cure cancer, otherwise we would all get cancer and die before we made it past 50.,
But once we cure cancer, then we can get to work on stopping - and even reversing - aging.
Then we can all live in happy, unicorn land, with puppies for everyone!
Honestly, we will probably learn to make flying unicorns (and dogs that never age), long before we cure cancer.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Problem Existed before solution!1!111!
Therefore, its impossible to fix. Granted I'm mocking a slashdot summary, which is kind of like making fun of the fat prostitute's son's speech impediment, but still.
The research implies that cessation of cancer would cause the cessation of evolution and possibly other functions that we consider part of a natural life.
Humans could win the 'War on Cancer' if we developed a technology to upload our being into the cloud and then interact with the world via robotic avatars. I am not sure if that would still be considered human, though.
From the Alpha Centauri game:
How did it survive evolution? What is its function?
Decode your health
Could it be possible to use viral gene therapies to reformat a persons dna, replacing damaged cell dna with a perfect copy of a persons dna taken in their youth? This would be like an engineered self-checking mechanism. It seems to me that dna mutation/cancer is a data storage / reproduction issue...
I am not a cancer research doctor, but... has anyone considered the possibility of figuring out a way to get cancer cells simply to revert, and go back to being well-behaved, normal cells? Rather than execute them, can they not be rehabilitated? I know, such liberal thinking... but, has anyone seriously considered the possibility? Maybe even watch a group of cultured cells at close range, see what makes them become cancerous, and see step by step, and see if there's a way to reverse those steps?
Failing that, maybe figure out a way to convince them they're bad, and get them to kill themselves, via lysosomes? Bully them, basically? Okay, that may be a metaphor taken slightly too far.
Imagine if a tumor could be slapped, so to speak, and find itself thinking, "oh, that's right, I'm supposed to be lung tissue," and resume being normal lung tissue?
Or perhaps how about using a virus... put those little bastards to work for us. I understand HIV waits until a T-4 helper immune cell latches onto it... could one be repurposed to do that same trick, but only to cancer cells, and then once it gets in, makes a bunch of copies of itself, then causes the cell to explode freeing all these basically Cancer Seek-And-Destroy Viruses into the system. Actually, that could have interesting side-effects, like if like HIV, it's sexually transmissible... you end up only having to vaccinate a relatively small number of people, and let them spread it to the population, like a vaccination hand-grenade. Talk about heard-immunity!
" anything that lives, dies; it's just about timing and quality/functionality of life while you're living."
You can't prove that until everything is dead; therefore I will live forever!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Excellent documentary about Judah Folkman and angiogenesis here
Your comment made me remember of Blame!.
Human (and similar) bodies work by the continuing controlled boil of of n-billion chain-reactions among n-billion complex molecules. These reactions, though unbelievably complex, have been channelled into very narrow auto-catalytic reaction pathways by evolution. As well as the reactions that do happen in successful organism continuance, there are a vast combinatoric possible range of alternate, and ultimately counter-productive reaction chains that could take place with the same molecule combinations that are present. Luckily, almost all of these destructive alternative reaction chains are energetically infeasible, again, because evolution produces more and more precisely regulated catalyzed reaction chains, equivalent to fine-grained control of living structure formation and process, including metabolism, cell reproduction, and programmed cell death.
However, the combinatoric possibilities for alternate reactions, and alternate metastable structure and process formations, are huge, due to both the number of redundant instances of each type of structure and each type of (chemical) process, and the complexity of the number of different interacting structures and (chemical) processes.
Again luckily, most alternative structure and process that arises is self-lethal. Self-continuing reaction chains (in any given chemical/structural/thermodynamic context) are exceedingly rare, relative to the number of alternatives that might start out.
More fortunately, the viable chains of structure and process have become so sophisticated due to evolution that they actively work to destroy many altered forms. (The immune system.)
However, again, given the vast combinatoric opportunities for even just slightly alternative structure and process to begin as a slight error in a routine living structure and process, not every alternative is non-viable, and not every alternative can be overcome by the immune system.
Some alternative auto-catalyzing structures/processes, starting as minor variants of normal structures/processes, can be viable in their own right, and form a simpler-than-their-host-organism replicating system within the host organism's body, and using its material and energy, and, it must be said, using many of the host body's still perfectly functional structures/structure types/ and processes (e.g. blood vessel recruitment by tumours.)
In summary, viable life as any single type of organism is a matter of a self-reinforcing chain/cycle of viable structure formation and chemical process/reaction continuation within and with that structure. There are virtually unlimited kinds of minor variations in structure or process that could accidentally occur in such a complex physical/chemical/thermodynamic context.Most of those alternatives are self-lethal (not programmed chemically and structurally to continue to reproduce and grow their alternative form). Many other alternatives that might be successful at alternate-form growth and reproduction are killed off by a healthy immune system.
But some forms get through.
The biggest predictor of cancer formation is lifespan. As an organism ages, a) There have simply been more opportunities for structure/process accidental variation experiment within the body, and b) Probably the regulation of process by the body itself becomes weaker as subsystems reduce from their early-life capability levels, due no doubt to a whole range of entropic breakdown of the uniformity of structure and process.
Organism bodies (and their vast self-supporting network of constraining structures and autocatalytic reactions) have a design-life (by evolution, not a designer), and that design life is "enough to reproduce, and care for the offspring if applicable to the species".
A tough story to hear, but that's the story of life and cancer. It is not a hopeless story. Both immune function improvement and novel artificial interventions stand good chances of beating back these alternative lifeforms within us in particular cases. In general though, it is just part of our life process.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Pope Benedict XVI endorsed this statement (before becoming pope):
"According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the 'Big Bang' and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5–4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution." - Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, plenary sessions held in Rome 2000–2002, published July 2004,
Evolution, and most other science is fine with Catholics.
The issue is that cancer is itsy bitsy and is good at hiding amongst *billions* of cells that don't look a lot different. If we solve the problem of how to accurately *find* the cancer then we can kill it. But we can't. Yet.
Sure it will, when we get uploaded into robot bodies.
But then you get problems like red ring of death.
The United Kingdom has announced a big study meant to target 100,000 citizens and cancer, specifically. My understanding is that a key goal is to understand common cancer pathways and mutations with the goal of more effective treatment. Not to mention the possibility of screening people for susceptibility to cancer.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/dna-tests-to-revolutionise-fight-against-cancer-and-help-100000-nhs-patients
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186254-the-uk-will-sequence-100000-genomes-to-better-understand-cancer-other-diseases
This could be a big deal and a game-changing understanding of cancer fundamentals. They are addressing the genetic underpinnings of cancer.
Neat post. Conceptually, single-celled organisms can't get "cancer" because, in a way, they are cancer. However, they no doubt can suffer mutations or other genetic changes (like from viruses) that make them survive and reproduce more or less well, all things considered for their current environment. Cancer has to do with a cell deciding not to play nicely with the rest in a body, and to strike out on its own, so to speak. Cancer in general is a bit like a crazy individual or small group in a society trying to take over the whole thing (current US plutocrats?); generally it works out badly for everyone as core services start to fail and the cancer cells are no longer supported by the rest of the body. Cancer is like spammers, who for a quick buck in the short term, are busy destroying email and the rest of the internet that could otherwise bring everyone abundance. Cancer is about "selfishness" where the individual ignores its part to play in the whole and where the whole supports the individual. But since evolution involves variation and selection, the underlying mechanism of cancer via mutation or viral infection also in a sense underlies evolution. So yes, it will always be with us.
I've heard most people in the USA age 40+ years old have cancerous cells in small amounts, but the immune system is continually killing them off to keep them from spreading.
Good nutrition helps with that, like Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about ... A typical anti-cancer diet should contain at least 4 fresh fruits daily, at least one large raw green salad, as well as a two other cooked (steamed) vegetables, such as broccoli, carrots and peas, squash or other colorful vegetables. A huge pot of soup laden with vegetables, herbs and beans can be made once a week and conveniently taken for lunch. Raw nuts and seeds are another important, but often overlooked, group of foods with documented health benefits contributing to longevity. ..."
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"Though most people would prefer to take a pill and continue their eating habits, this will not provide the desired protection. Unrefined plant foods, with their plentiful anti-cancer compounds, must be eaten in abundance to flood the body's tissues with protective substances. Vegetables and fruits protect against all types of cancers if consumed in large enough quantities. Hundreds of scientific studies document this. The most prevalent cancers in our societies are plant-food-deficiency diseases. The benefits of lifestyle changes are proportional to the changes made. As we add more vegetable servings, we increase our phytochemical intake and leave less room in our diets for harmful foods, enhancing cancer protection even further. Let's review some of these research findings and then review what a powerful, anti-cancer diet will look like.
One thing Fuhrman misses in his discussion is that these compounds are not "Anti-cancer" as much as the human body has adapted via evolution to use these compounds to prevent or fight cancer.
He is right that cancer is best prevented rather than treated. As I've heard, it said, you can either get your chemotherapy every day from fruits and vegetables, or you can end up getting it all at once in the oncologist's office (not that most current chemotherapy is probably worth it anyway).
Fasting may also sometimes help prevent cancer as well as can a ketogenic (fat burning) diet that deprives cancer cells of sugar.
https://www.google.com/search?...
https://www.google.com/search?...
But your point stands that this is all combinatorial (statistical, entropical?) about when something gets out of hand. Even when we have Elysium-like medical beds that get rid of cancer instantly, some computer virus or malicious person may make them work incorrectly. Or, as in the movie, selfish elites can keep the healing beds to themselves.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"That's why cancer "will probably never be completely eradicated.""
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
Mod parent up please, this is interesting.
The enzymes that copy DNA need a little bit of DNA past where they are "writing" to hang on to. As a result, the enzymes fall off before they reach the end of our linear DNA. Every single time one of your cells replicate, it loses a little DNA.
Eventually, you're going to cut off something important. Like genes regulating cell division.
That's your problem with teleportation?
What if the original isn't destroyed, but converted to light (or some FTL substance, as long as we're talking sci-fi) and reconstituted at the endpoint?
The process of converting a physical matter (containing protons, neutrons, electrons) into light (photons) _does_ necessitate its _destruction_
Here, in the year Lemon Meringue, we decided to solve the problem once and for all.
Instead of trying to kill cancer, we hijack its techniques. We start by having nanocomputers in the vaccuelles of each brain cell. These keep a continuous backup copy of the state of the brain up to death. Cancers disable the hard limit on cell duplication that cannot otherwise be avoided. By using the techniques of cell-devouring microphages, the cancer "consumes" the old cells and replaces them with new ones. They can't spread anywhere else, because that's how the cancer is designed to spread. Once the body has been fully replaced, the cancer is disabled. The brain is then programmed by the nanocomputers and the remaining cells are specialized by means of chemical signal.
This does result in oddly-shaped livers and three-handed software developers, but so far this has boosted productivity.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Does that matter? I'm actually surprised this is news at all, cancer is the result of things going wrong in a bad way, the same way a car crash is the result of things going wrong and resulting in damage. We can try all we want to prevent them, but it's still going to happen because we can't be perfect.
I don't think that really matters though, developing a cure and simple test for cancer is just fine. If we make it something curable like a common infection, with the few oddball deaths from it, I think we will be just fine. The problem with cancer right now is that it's always deadly if left alone long enough, in the same way that if you drive a car long enough you're basically guaranteed to be in a fatal accident. But cancer is usually pretty slow, so it should be possible to stop deaths due to cancer.
My girlfriend is a PhD geneticist who specialises in cancer studies (leukaemia etc.) and is currently working in hospitals doing genetic test to confirm cancerous tumours and other genetic diseases.
When we talk about it, I can't talk on her level, but the way she explains it, cancer is an inherent factor in living things. There's a reason for that. It's a natural replication mechanism that is based on parts of a cells DNA. DNA is basically damaged ALL DAY LONG in your body. UV does it. All sorts of things do it. And DNA has repair mechanisms not dissimilar to a error-correcting code that runs your RAID array, or your PAR files.
So most of the time, when a cell is damaged, it "fixes itself". If it doesn't fix itself, then there are mechanisms in the body itself to detect and cull damaged cells that get that far (the immune system, basically). If those mechanisms fail against the damage, or the damage is of certain undetectable types, then the cell will replicate. But, crucially, the damage to the cell will mean it will never stop replicating. And all the replicated cells will share the same error. And basically then you end up growing a tumour.
As such "cancer" is inherent in all living things with DNA. The question really is whether you live long enough to be statistically affected by the amount of damage it takes to get a cell that can't be fixed or eradicated by the body, or not. Babies can get cancer. It's pretty much down to chance.
So, I'm not at all sure what we're being told here. It seems like someone is trying to claim that somehow cancer is some kind of "disease" that they've found in an older species so it must have been around for longer. Actually, from what I gather, it's ALWAYS been around. Pretty much since DNA existed, if not before. Because it's a misfiring cell that never gets the "stop" signal when it starts replicating (which happens millions of times a day throughout your body).
It's a "flaw", if you like, in the DNA error correction mechanisms. It's not a disease as such. It's not something you "catch". It's not even something that "evolves". It's a mistake. An error. A bad sector or flipped bit on your cell's hard drive that corrupts the rest of the files on there and, when you then blindly execute those instructions, can lead to writing over your whole hard disk.
Seriously. If we have the technology to create an exact copy, why destroy the original? Wouldn't it be so awesome to have two of me?
While the new me gets to finish the mission, I get to slack off and watch TV. And when the mission is complete, I get a twin to hang out with while copy-1 is stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
Evolution, and most other science is fine with Catholics.
Well, there's also the possibility that if it wasn't caused by evolution, then God made us and everything this way. Would a loving god design us to have cancer?
That a university is catholic in name usually mainly a statement about its history. Additionally, as said by the other poster, denying evolution is mostly a protestant thing.
The was a strangely sensationalist article for NPR; one is left with a sense of hopelessness until the last paragraph or two about promising treatments. Not sure why they were so compelled to bury potential good news under a bushel of sorrow.
Mutation is a property of living things; cell reproduction is proven to not to be 100% reliable and environmental factors can trigger all kind of nasty reactions. Our bodies have actually developed a myriad of system just to make sure rogue cells are identified and neutralized before they can compromise the rest of the body, but of course thats not 100% bulletproof either.
Also, evolution depends on reproduction; things that are not directly detrimental to creating offspring and passing your own traits play a very little role (if any) as evolutionary pressure.
Yes, because our sins. Is there in their holy books, God explicitly takes responsibility for introducing death in the world, Cancer is simply one of his heralds.
The reason death exists is to make room for offspring due to limited resources. Without a mechanism for the 'old' DNA to be replaced by the 'new' DNA, biological organisms cannot adapt to changing conditions. Its more an issue of 'how it has to be' rather than whether God is being mean to us.
Knowing this, I would also assume that various forms of senility and other issues are baked into our meatware. Instead of spending so many research resources dicking around trying to fix these faulty vessels, we should instead focus our efforts on uploading consciousness so that it can be preserved. Once we know how to do that, we can start working on new, more reasonable body forms, or just start cloning folks to use serially, replacing their minds after we've purchased them. Because what better way is there to accumulate funds than being eternal? That's what economics is all about, huh?
That is all.
No Lt. Dan to save you either, Forrest http://news.slashdot.org/comme...