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User: jenik

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  1. Re:Related to stem cells causing cancer, too on Using Enzymes To Counter Cancer Growth · · Score: 1

    Not sure where the quote comes from but IAABAD(biochemist and doctor) and I have never heard of the immune system using pancreatic enzymes to turn off stem cells' growth. Also, overgrowth of normal cells is not cancer, it is for example a wart or freckle. The word "enzyme" in your post is used somewhat non-specifically - indeed, it is easy to kill cells by blocking their enzymes but how do you distinguish between normal and cancer cells? This is also the reason why the immune system is relatively inefficient with fighting cancer cells - they generally look way too much like normal cells (and some of them even express molecules that kill immune cells - FasL on some malignant melanomas or other tumors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAS_ligand) The reason you get cancer is (VERY generally speaking) not because your body is stressed but because DNA replication and repair is not perfect. It leads to mutations which, in a VERY VERY unlikely event, create immortal and invasive cell lines we clinically call cancer.

  2. Breakthrough? on Using Enzymes To Counter Cancer Growth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unfortunately, there are many, many enzymes and proteins that are downregulated or mutated in cancer cells and most of them have been known for ages (p53http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53, rb... tumor suppresors). The problem is that turning a gene on is not that easy in vivo. If everything that worked in cell culture worked in human patients there wouldn't be any more uncurable diseases.