Cancer Research

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Emmveepee

Registered Senior Member
What kind of research is being done to cure cancer?

The way I see it is there are only 3 ways:

Cure the cells. Somehow force them to stop replicating, or fix their inhibitors.

Kill the cells - They would need to cure nearly every cell, wouldn't they? Can't the immune system take care of a lot of the cells?

Prevent the cells from forming - Do we even know that much about cancer to even start with that?

I just started to study cancer, and I'm already overcome with this feeling "There isn't a cure".
 
One interesting thing that I've seen on formation of cancers is how they gain a blood supply. Angiogenesis, if I remember the correct terminology. Rerouting of blood supply with new blood vessels. It was once thought that angiogenesis didn't occur after fetal development. But, it has been shown that tumors actually exude some type of chemical that draws blood vessels to them even through quite a bit of flesh. Tumors require a lot of blood. Without it they'd die.

Also, there is a possibility of using this ability of tumors to reroute blood supply in areas not related to curing cancer. This could be used to reattach limbs and restore circulation and such.


Another thing that I've found interesting is how one tumor actually represses other tumors in the immediate vicinity. Remove that tumor and all the tumor seeds that had been repressed spring up like a cancer garden. If it could be determined exactly how one tumor keeps the others down, it might be possible to use that mechanism to keep all tumors down.


Both of these are several year old stories and I'm not sure what might be the latest news on either one.

Cancer will be cured one day. Believe it.
 
I saw an interesting approach that is reasonably successfully. Of those that where cured, none as yet have had any resurgence of the cancer. It involves taking some of the patients white blood cells and some of the cancer cells and then injecting the white cells with cancer cells individually then injecting the white blood cells back into the body in a effort to get the white blood cells to produce the correct immune response . Unfortunately it is extremely expensive process but it does hold great promise
 
Emmveepee said:
The way I see it is there are only 3 ways:
Cure the cells. Somehow force them to stop replicating, or fix their inhibitors.
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No, this isn’t a way of stopping cancer. Cancer is a genetic disease. In order to become cancerous, a cell needs to acquire numerous different mutations in different genes. To “cure” the cancer cells you would somehow need to reverse all these mutations. It’s impossible.

Emmveepee said:
Prevent the cells from forming - Do we even know that much about cancer to even start with that?
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No, this isn’t a way of stopping cancer unless you spend your entire life living in a sterile bubble free from all potential mutagens, such as sunlight and any cooked food.

The single biggest risk factor for cancer is age - cancer is a disease of the elderly. This is because it takes time for cells to acquire all the various mutations that are needed to turn ‘cancerous’ – some five or six decades. So the only real way to ensure that cancer cells do not form is to kill yourself in your 40’s.

Of course, certain behaviors can dramatically increase your chances of contracting cancer – smoking, not protecting your skin from the sun, working with mutagenic chemicals/substances (eg. asbestos). Avoiding these behaviors help to reduce your chances of contracting cancer.


Emmveepee said:
Kill the cells - They would need to cure nearly every cell, wouldn't they? Can't the immune system take care of a lot of the cells?
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Yes, this is the only way to treat cancer. All the cancer cells need to be removed.

Emmveepee said:
What kind of research is being done to cure cancer?
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There are a number of research directions for the treatment of cancer. As has already been mentioned, anti-angiogenesis therapy and stimulating the immune system to attack to cancer cells are two of them. Mind you, surgery has always been (and still is) the best way modern medicine has to cure cancer (often in combination with chemo- and/or radio-therapy). But clearly surgery has its limits when it comes to non-solid tumors (eg. bone marrow) and brain tumors. New generation cellular therapies are needed.

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/

Emmveepee said:
I just started to study cancer, and I'm already overcome with this feeling "There isn't a cure".
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I also hold this pessimistic view even though I have worked as a scientist at a cancer research institute. It is very plain to me that cancer is the result of fundamental cellular processes gone wrong. Because we are dealing with fundamental biological processes, I just don’t see how we will ever develop true “magic bullet” methodologies that specifically target cancer cells and not any other ‘normal’ cells as well. I do think we will be able to cure cancer in the future, but I think it will always be at some cost to the person’s health, as is the case with chemotherapy and major surgery nowadays.
 
Okay, thanks for clearing that up.

Everything I find on the internet is either really basic (like regular high school Biology) or really advanced.

I'm a senior in High School taking AP Biology, but the class moves pretty slow (even though we cover about 1-2 chapters a week), so I do extra research on my own time. I'm looking to have a career in some section of Biology; Every section looks real fun and rewarding, I just can't pick one.

Thanks again, you guys completely cleared my thoughts up.
 
yeah. they have lots of cool new technologies to fight cancer as well. theres on with something attached to gold, that causes it to bind to thecancer cells. then they put you through a scanner and it just heats all the cancer to death with a minimal amount of damage to the other cells. pretty cool. :m:
 
It just seems, without having something that can distinguish between cancer cells and normal cells, malignant tumors are just.. :mad:

I guess the answer lies in the immune system.
 
hotsexyangelprincess said:
yeah. they have lots of cool new technologies to fight cancer as well. theres on with something attached to gold, that causes it to bind to thecancer cells. then they put you through a scanner and it just heats all the cancer to death with a minimal amount of damage to the other cells. pretty cool. :m:
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Yes, one of the major research directions is with monoclonal antibodies that specifically recognize cancerous cells. A variety of different things are attached to the antibodies in an effort to kill the cancer cells that the antibodies recognize and attach to, such as gold particles, cytotoxic drugs or radioactive elements.<P>

Emmveepee said:
I'm looking to have a career in some section of Biology; Every section looks real fun and rewarding, I just can't pick one.
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Cool! :) Don’t be in a hurry to choose specific directions. There is plenty of time and opportunity for someone in your position. Just sit back and enjoy (and be good at!) as many different biology subjects as you can. Hard decisions don’t come until a few years into college.<P>
 
I read a news article a few weeks ago about the discovery that cancerous tumors have little tiny stem cells of their own. Nobody had ever noticed them before because of their size. They're very localized and killing them stops the cancer from reproducing. They were already experimenting with medications that seemed very effective at killing the cancer stem cells without doing a lot of other damage to the patient.

This was in a newspaper, the Washington Post, so there's no telling how accurate it was. However, with NIH right around the corner, there's probably something to it.
 
Cure for cancer?
What kinda cancer are you talking about?

Thats your answer in a nutshell

The problems are as many and varied as the 'victims' of cancer.
Current practice takes the 'Falluja' approach i.e kill everything and hope that the collateral damage ain't too severe ;)
Anybody whose lost a breast or two (plus a side order of lymph nodes) understands exactly what I'm talking about.
That works to a certain degree and current 'radio' treatments are far more accurate than they were 10 years back but Chemo is still very much a hit and hope technique.

IMHO you need pretty specific gene targeting perhaps even specific to each individual treated (not cheap) So 90% of the worlds population can not expect access to the cure if and when we get one.
Meanwhile....
Effective palliation should be the goal for clinicians at the moment, it's easy, cheap and can improve the length and quality of life.

Trust me I'm a Doctor :)
Dee Cee
 
Hercules Rockefeller said:
No, this isn’t a way of stopping cancer. Cancer is a genetic disease. In order to become cancerous, a cell needs to acquire numerous different mutations in different genes. To “cure” the cancer cells you would somehow need to reverse all these mutations. It’s impossible.
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But can't we request to cancer cell for Apoptosis? Btw, whether reversal of mutations is not possible?
 
Kumar said:
But can't we request to cancer cell for Apoptosis?
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And how do you propose to do that? One of the phenotypic transformations that cancerous cells display is <I><B>resistance</B></I> to apoptosis, both intrinsic and extrinsic mediated pathways.

Example: inactivation of p53 pathway mediated apoptosis, upregulation of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2, upregulation of anti-apoptotic Apaf-1 etc.

Some cancer cells, especially lung and colon cancer cells, secrete elevated levels of a soluble "decoy" molecule that binds to FasL, plugging it up so it cannot bind Fas thereby disabling cytotoxic T cells ability to kill the cancer cells. Other cancer cells express high levels of FasL itself, and can kill cytotoxic T cells that express Fas.<P>

DeeCee said:
Trust me I'm a Doctor :)
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So am I. :) <P>
 
Hercules Rockefeller said:
And how do you propose to do that?
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Apparently the use of caffeine and other such methylxanthines which inhibit DNA repair (apparently quite specifically for tumour cells) is one way! Large doses of caffeine make tumours radiosensitive.
 
What about Calcium-Mediated Apoptosis?

I've heard about this and I'm left wondering how, exactly, you can target and deliver your calcium as needed. What's the planned dosage regime?
From what I hear (very little :( ) it seems this particular avenue requires a good deal of further exploration.

Pumping the elderly (your main client group) full of systemic inotropes is a therapy best avoided IMHO
It's a cardiac thing :)
Dee Cee
 
Large doses of caffeine make tumours radiosensitive.

Calcium and caffeine?

Looks like my crash calls are about to get much more interesting :D
Dee Cee
 
Kumar said:
What about Calcium-Mediated Apoptosis?
http://www.stormingmedia.us/57/5768/A576814.html
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From my brief reading of this area of research, it is a very preliminary idea that has been derived from <I>in vitro</I> cell culture experiments, not any <I>in vivo</I> experiments. Don’t hold your breath......

DeeCee said:
…I'm left wondering how, exactly, you can target and deliver your calcium as needed.
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Exactly.<P>
 
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