7 ms·

Potentially Reprogramming Cancer Cells Back to Normal Cells

208 points by jaoued 11y ago

joeyspn 11y ago
A novel approach and more good news. We're in the right direction. Link to the study in Nature Cell Biology... http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227.html http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227...
- dekhn 11y ago
  The article is paywalled for me at the moment, but based on the abstract, the media claims are excessive for what they are reporting.
- pazimzadeh 11y ago
  PDF: http://cl.ly/cmQ6 http://cl.ly/cmQ6
mavdi 11y ago
This is it. This is what we should be focusing on with all the cancer research funds available. Cancer is just a data corruption in the cell DNA and we have a few methods of fixing data in the digital world.
- jp555 11y ago
  Cancer can mean different things. Would you consider a viral infection "just data corruption"? The virus "corrupts" a cell's DNA to manufacture more virus. Nothing is "just" when it comes to code that's been running for billions of years.
  - i000 11y ago
    You should not forget about oncoviruses (e.g. EBV, HPV), also many oncogenes have viral homologs (e.g. RAF genes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Raf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Raf)
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Cancer is just a bad word for grouping things. A hard tumor (say bone cancer/osteosarcoma) is vastly different than say leukemia. Cancers types are Carcinoma (surfaces of the body i.e. skin), Sarcoma (tumors that originate in hard or soft tissue i.e. bone cancer), Lukemia (start in the blood, no tumors), Lymphoma (Hodgkin, Non-Hodgkin), Multiple Myeloma (starts in plasma cells), Melanoma (skin cancer), Brain and spinal cords, Germ cell (starts in sperm or egg cells but can be anywhere in the body), Neuroendocrine tumors (from cells that produce hormones), Carcinoid tumors (slow growing tumors in the rectum and small intestine and spreads to the liver). Cancer definition - The bad cells can spread to other areas of the body. Benign tumors do not spread into, or invade, nearby tissues. - http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/what-is-cancer http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/what-is-cancer
- reasonattlm 11y ago
  Would disagree. The thing that a sizable amount of cancer research funds should focus on is preventation of telomere extension. Selectively or periodically turn off all mechanisms of telomere extension, which covers telomerase activities and ALT, the alternative lengthening of telomeres processes. All cancers abuse telomere extension in order to thrive, it is required for rapid cellular replication. Normal cells are not so much in need of it, so turn it all of for some period of time until the cancer is gone then restore telomere extension capabilities. This will work for all cancer types. Telomerase interdiction can be achieved via RNAi or similar methods, while the hurdle to blocking ALT is that it isn't well understood at this time; the targets till need to be listed and understood. It will probably be the case that targeting telomere extension interdiction to cancer cells will be superior or even necessary, but fortunately selective targeting of cancer cells is a going concern in research, with considerable progress achieved already and more in the works.
hacker808 11y ago
Hacker
cfontes 11y ago
Be aware that this only works so far to few types of cancer. It's positive nevertheless. I fell like Cancer is an umbrella term for several different little monsters.
- jghn 11y ago
  It is. There are a ridiculously large number of cancers and they are all different. Even something seemingly simple like "lung cancer" can be divided into several high level diseases, each of which have their own subcategories. People who expect a one size fits all solution to cancer will be sorely mistaken
  - nkozyra 11y ago
    Sure, but people who commonly tout it's "not one disease" miss the broader point of the common nature of the disease(s).
    - VeejayRampay 11y ago
      Yeah, it feels like they're not different diseases at all, merely different dialects of the same disease (my words, a tad hand-wavey). I understand the need to be precise about the wording and the willingness to not let people get their hopes up too much, but I feel that this "a bunch of different diseases" concept is introducing a whole slew of misconceptions in the mix as well.
      - niels_olson 11y ago
        Cancer is one disease like infectious disease is one disease. Some things we thought were different are now seen as similar (BRAF V600E, for example), but the genes and proteins involved are usually radically different, one to the next. If anything, it's striking that our morphological classifications have withstood genetic scrutiny at all.
        nkozyra 11y ago
codecamper 11y ago
It seems more & more the solutions to the big 3 diseases: cancer, heart disease, and dementia/alz, involve direct DNA / RNA / Mitohcondrial DNA reprogramming. It would then seem prudent to ASAP get your own DNA sequenced. As time goes on, you collect more & more DNA damage & probably your original DNA becomes harder & harder to find.
- lqdc13 11y ago
  DNA damage is not a major issue at all. Most of the damage can be "reversed" by looking at your close relatives since it's single nucleotide mutations. Right now you can't even get the genome sequenced without gaps for a reasonable price. The current $1000 genome is 30x coverage which leaves some parts unsequenced. You can probably infer what some of those sequences should be, but that would be much harder than reversing potential DNA damage over your lifetime. But even if we had the whole thing sequenced, modifying DNA in some or every cell is definitely not easy and in some cases impossible. Also, all current methods have all kinds of side effects. Finally, even if you had some dangerous DNA mutation reversed, it may not help if a mutation induced cascade already began.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Eh, genome engineering is a possible solution to those problems, but that doesn't mean that it has to be the only solution. I'm working on genome engineering solutions for a couple of cancers right now-- we're close to solving problems in vitro, but that doesn't mean these treatments can be transferred to actual sick human subjects successfully. Genome engineering is white hot right now, sailing off of CRISPR. Wait five years, see what pans out. I highly doubt that we'll have cures in hand on that timescale, but we can hope! I expect that genome engineering will improve human health vastly, but it's not going to be as easy as they make it out to be. A last tidbit: like all medical interventions, genome engineering has side effects, too. They're largely side effects that have never been seen or treated before, and they can frequently be fatal or severe. I wouldn't expect that there is an incentive for these side effects to go away unless they're fatal more than 10% of the time.
sravfeyn 11y ago
(Sorry for being naive) What is the discovery of this finding - is it the Chemistry of reprogramming the cells or a spontaneous way to evolve these cells back to their original code?
- pazimzadeh 11y ago
  What do you mean by a "spontaneous way to evolve these cells back to their original code"? The cells' genetic code (DNA) itself not changing, but not every gene in a genome is expressed in equal amounts or at the same time. In addition to encoding genes that "do stuff", the genome also codes for helper molecules which regulate the expression of these "action genes/proteins" in response to stimulus and environmental conditions. Modifying or replacing these helper molecules can therefore change the fate of the overall cell without even touching the main "action genes".
  - pazimzadeh 11y ago
    sorry, it's too late to edit but I meant not expressed in equal amounts or at the same time
cryoshon 11y ago
What this group is doing has been pursued for quite a while, and many people have laid claim to finally cracking it, so I'm skeptical. It'll be a good while before this kind of intervention is finished being refined in vitro, nevermind in vivo.
escape_goat 11y ago
This popped up in /r/worldnews yesterday with another source, where /u/sharplydressedman gave it some context [1]. > I hate to be a buzzkill, but the linked article is very sensationalist ... it entirely misses the point of the research published by the Anastasiadis lab (pubmed link [2]). Being able to stop or revert transformed cells in vitro is not new, we've been able to stop or revert tumor cells for decades.... > Tldr of this is that this is unexciting unless you're a researcher studying E-cadherin/B-catenin, and means very little to someone outside of the cell biology field. /u/squaresarerectangles provided a link to the original Nature Cell Biology paper, reproduced in citation [3]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3idyjg/us_scientists_successfully_turn_human_cancer/cufspjw https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3idyjg/us_scient... [2]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26302406 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26302406 [3]http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227.html http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227...
- joe_the_user 11y ago
  Not to mention that killing cancer cells, which can be done in umpteen way in vitro and in vivo today, seems superior to reverting cells to normal, except on unusual circumstances. That is, I assume one would want to have a tumor die rather just stabilize as it's cell reverted to normal (if that's even possible). Also killing cells on the outside of tumor seems the most effective way to deliver drugs to the cells on the inside of a tumor. (Just speaking from common sense, if there's something I'm missing, I'd be interested).
  - jszymborski 11y ago
    Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
- runeks 11y ago
  Isn't the big question WHY that cancer cell developed inside a human body in the first place? I mean, if it happened once, what would prevent it from happening again?
mc_hammer 11y ago
suspect it would go better with a bit of NLP or training of the brain to stop them from doing whatever they did in the first place that programmed those cells wrong. :)
- mc_hammer 11y ago
  not sure what the downvote is for, im assuming its because you suspect a mutagen like pesticide is directly responsible for the mutation that causes cancer cells to grow. bbbut my government lobbyists and their scientists recommended eating pesticide sprayed foods for 100 years, because spraying lemon juice on the foods was more expensive than pesticide. typical hacker news downvote because its actually a good idea thats not in your college text books.
dang 11y ago
Many posts of this, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10121168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10121168 and the threads I linked to from there. We added the qualifier "potentially" from the article's first paragraph.
jakeogh 11y ago
Interesting talk - Paul Davies[1] on FQXi - The Physics of Cancer: http://traffic.libsyn.com/fqxipodcast/Physics_of_Cancer.mp3 http://traffic.libsyn.com/fqxipodcast/Physics_of_Cancer.mp3 From: http://fqxi.org/community/podcast/2014.10.02 http://fqxi.org/community/podcast/2014.10.02 (the extended version of this interview is also available) [1]: http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/2012/02/is-cancer-an-ancient-throwback/ http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/2012/02/is-cancer-an-ancient-...
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
That seems to be a low-utility solution. Miss one cell, and it recurs.

208 points by jaoued 11y ago

A novel approach and more good news. We're in the right direction. Link to the study in Nature Cell Biology... http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227.html http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227...

dekhn 11y ago
The article is paywalled for me at the moment, but based on the abstract, the media claims are excessive for what they are reporting.
pazimzadeh 11y ago
PDF: http://cl.ly/cmQ6 http://cl.ly/cmQ6

mavdi 11y ago

This is it. This is what we should be focusing on with all the cancer research funds available. Cancer is just a data corruption in the cell DNA and we have a few methods of fixing data in the digital world.

jp555 11y ago
Cancer can mean different things. Would you consider a viral infection "just data corruption"? The virus "corrupts" a cell's DNA to manufacture more virus. Nothing is "just" when it comes to code that's been running for billions of years.
- i000 11y ago
  You should not forget about oncoviruses (e.g. EBV, HPV), also many oncogenes have viral homologs (e.g. RAF genes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Raf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Raf)
- baldfat 11y ago
  Cancer is just a bad word for grouping things. A hard tumor (say bone cancer/osteosarcoma) is vastly different than say leukemia. Cancers types are Carcinoma (surfaces of the body i.e. skin), Sarcoma (tumors that originate in hard or soft tissue i.e. bone cancer), Lukemia (start in the blood, no tumors), Lymphoma (Hodgkin, Non-Hodgkin), Multiple Myeloma (starts in plasma cells), Melanoma (skin cancer), Brain and spinal cords, Germ cell (starts in sperm or egg cells but can be anywhere in the body), Neuroendocrine tumors (from cells that produce hormones), Carcinoid tumors (slow growing tumors in the rectum and small intestine and spreads to the liver). Cancer definition - The bad cells can spread to other areas of the body. Benign tumors do not spread into, or invade, nearby tissues. - http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/what-is-cancer http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/what-is-cancer
reasonattlm 11y ago
Would disagree. The thing that a sizable amount of cancer research funds should focus on is preventation of telomere extension. Selectively or periodically turn off all mechanisms of telomere extension, which covers telomerase activities and ALT, the alternative lengthening of telomeres processes. All cancers abuse telomere extension in order to thrive, it is required for rapid cellular replication. Normal cells are not so much in need of it, so turn it all of for some period of time until the cancer is gone then restore telomere extension capabilities. This will work for all cancer types. Telomerase interdiction can be achieved via RNAi or similar methods, while the hurdle to blocking ALT is that it isn't well understood at this time; the targets till need to be listed and understood. It will probably be the case that targeting telomere extension interdiction to cancer cells will be superior or even necessary, but fortunately selective targeting of cancer cells is a going concern in research, with considerable progress achieved already and more in the works.

hacker808 11y ago

Hacker

cfontes 11y ago

Be aware that this only works so far to few types of cancer. It's positive nevertheless. I fell like Cancer is an umbrella term for several different little monsters.

jghn 11y ago
It is. There are a ridiculously large number of cancers and they are all different. Even something seemingly simple like "lung cancer" can be divided into several high level diseases, each of which have their own subcategories. People who expect a one size fits all solution to cancer will be sorely mistaken
- nkozyra 11y ago
  Sure, but people who commonly tout it's "not one disease" miss the broader point of the common nature of the disease(s).
  - VeejayRampay 11y ago
    Yeah, it feels like they're not different diseases at all, merely different dialects of the same disease (my words, a tad hand-wavey). I understand the need to be precise about the wording and the willingness to not let people get their hopes up too much, but I feel that this "a bunch of different diseases" concept is introducing a whole slew of misconceptions in the mix as well.
    - niels_olson 11y ago
      Cancer is one disease like infectious disease is one disease. Some things we thought were different are now seen as similar (BRAF V600E, for example), but the genes and proteins involved are usually radically different, one to the next. If anything, it's striking that our morphological classifications have withstood genetic scrutiny at all.
      - nkozyra 11y ago

codecamper 11y ago

It seems more & more the solutions to the big 3 diseases: cancer, heart disease, and dementia/alz, involve direct DNA / RNA / Mitohcondrial DNA reprogramming. It would then seem prudent to ASAP get your own DNA sequenced. As time goes on, you collect more & more DNA damage & probably your original DNA becomes harder & harder to find.

lqdc13 11y ago
DNA damage is not a major issue at all. Most of the damage can be "reversed" by looking at your close relatives since it's single nucleotide mutations. Right now you can't even get the genome sequenced without gaps for a reasonable price. The current $1000 genome is 30x coverage which leaves some parts unsequenced. You can probably infer what some of those sequences should be, but that would be much harder than reversing potential DNA damage over your lifetime. But even if we had the whole thing sequenced, modifying DNA in some or every cell is definitely not easy and in some cases impossible. Also, all current methods have all kinds of side effects. Finally, even if you had some dangerous DNA mutation reversed, it may not help if a mutation induced cascade already began.
cryoshon 11y ago
Eh, genome engineering is a possible solution to those problems, but that doesn't mean that it has to be the only solution. I'm working on genome engineering solutions for a couple of cancers right now-- we're close to solving problems in vitro, but that doesn't mean these treatments can be transferred to actual sick human subjects successfully. Genome engineering is white hot right now, sailing off of CRISPR. Wait five years, see what pans out. I highly doubt that we'll have cures in hand on that timescale, but we can hope! I expect that genome engineering will improve human health vastly, but it's not going to be as easy as they make it out to be. A last tidbit: like all medical interventions, genome engineering has side effects, too. They're largely side effects that have never been seen or treated before, and they can frequently be fatal or severe. I wouldn't expect that there is an incentive for these side effects to go away unless they're fatal more than 10% of the time.

sravfeyn 11y ago

(Sorry for being naive) What is the discovery of this finding - is it the Chemistry of reprogramming the cells or a spontaneous way to evolve these cells back to their original code?

pazimzadeh 11y ago
What do you mean by a "spontaneous way to evolve these cells back to their original code"? The cells' genetic code (DNA) itself not changing, but not every gene in a genome is expressed in equal amounts or at the same time. In addition to encoding genes that "do stuff", the genome also codes for helper molecules which regulate the expression of these "action genes/proteins" in response to stimulus and environmental conditions. Modifying or replacing these helper molecules can therefore change the fate of the overall cell without even touching the main "action genes".
- pazimzadeh 11y ago
  sorry, it's too late to edit but I meant not expressed in equal amounts or at the same time

cryoshon 11y ago

What this group is doing has been pursued for quite a while, and many people have laid claim to finally cracking it, so I'm skeptical. It'll be a good while before this kind of intervention is finished being refined in vitro, nevermind in vivo.

escape_goat 11y ago

This popped up in /r/worldnews yesterday with another source, where /u/sharplydressedman gave it some context [1]. > I hate to be a buzzkill, but the linked article is very sensationalist ... it entirely misses the point of the research published by the Anastasiadis lab (pubmed link [2]). Being able to stop or revert transformed cells in vitro is not new, we've been able to stop or revert tumor cells for decades.... > Tldr of this is that this is unexciting unless you're a researcher studying E-cadherin/B-catenin, and means very little to someone outside of the cell biology field. /u/squaresarerectangles provided a link to the original Nature Cell Biology paper, reproduced in citation [3]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3idyjg/us_scientists_successfully_turn_human_cancer/cufspjw https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3idyjg/us_scient... [2]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26302406 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26302406 [3]http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227.html http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ncb3227...

joe_the_user 11y ago
Not to mention that killing cancer cells, which can be done in umpteen way in vitro and in vivo today, seems superior to reverting cells to normal, except on unusual circumstances. That is, I assume one would want to have a tumor die rather just stabilize as it's cell reverted to normal (if that's even possible). Also killing cells on the outside of tumor seems the most effective way to deliver drugs to the cells on the inside of a tumor. (Just speaking from common sense, if there's something I'm missing, I'd be interested).
- jszymborski 11y ago
  Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
runeks 11y ago
Isn't the big question WHY that cancer cell developed inside a human body in the first place? I mean, if it happened once, what would prevent it from happening again?

mc_hammer 11y ago

suspect it would go better with a bit of NLP or training of the brain to stop them from doing whatever they did in the first place that programmed those cells wrong. :)

mc_hammer 11y ago
not sure what the downvote is for, im assuming its because you suspect a mutagen like pesticide is directly responsible for the mutation that causes cancer cells to grow. bbbut my government lobbyists and their scientists recommended eating pesticide sprayed foods for 100 years, because spraying lemon juice on the foods was more expensive than pesticide. typical hacker news downvote because its actually a good idea thats not in your college text books.

dang 11y ago

Many posts of this, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10121168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10121168 and the threads I linked to from there. We added the qualifier "potentially" from the article's first paragraph.

jakeogh 11y ago

Interesting talk - Paul Davies[1] on FQXi - The Physics of Cancer: http://traffic.libsyn.com/fqxipodcast/Physics_of_Cancer.mp3 http://traffic.libsyn.com/fqxipodcast/Physics_of_Cancer.mp3 From: http://fqxi.org/community/podcast/2014.10.02 http://fqxi.org/community/podcast/2014.10.02 (the extended version of this interview is also available) [1]: http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/2012/02/is-cancer-an-ancient-throwback/ http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/2012/02/is-cancer-an-ancient-...

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

That seems to be a low-utility solution. Miss one cell, and it recurs.