4 ms·

Hope for Cancer Cure from New Discoveries (1906)

52 points by apsec112 11y ago

refurb 11y ago
Fascinating! In case folks don't know, trypsin is a proteolytic enzyme produced in the pancreas. It helps your body digest proteins. I'm assuming that these scientists had the exact same problem that scientists do today: xenographs (grafting tumor cells into health animals) isn't the best model. That issue still is a problem today. That said, we've come a long way. It wasn't until ~40 years after this article that the nitrogen mustards (chemotherapies) were actually put into clinical practice. Their clinical usefulness was only realized when a bunch of military folks/civilians were exposed to mustard gas and they noticed their lymphocyte count decreased. A doctor noticed it and thought "maybe we can use this in lymphoma (where cancer produces too many lymphocytes)"
- ngoldbaum 11y ago
  I had no idea that chemotherapy is basically intravenous mustard gas. Thanks for the insight!
  - refurb 11y ago
    To be clear, some chemotherapies are mustard gas derivatives. Others act similarly (disrupting DNA), but work through other mechanisms. Treanda (bendamustine) is a great example of a nitrogen mustard that is still used in chemotherapy today. They've modified it a bit so it has better pharmacodynamics, but it's very similar to mustard gas! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendamustine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendamustine
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    Chemotherapy in general is mostly just poison. The general idea being that your body is more capable of bouncing back from damage than mutated cancer cells that have a runaway growth problem.
    - cperciva 11y ago
      It's a bit more than that. Cancerous cells will tend to absorb more chemotherapy drugs than non-cancerous cells do, because rapid cell division means that they're absorbing more of everything.
    - trhway 11y ago
      >Chemotherapy in general is mostly just poison. "slash, poison and burn" for surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy - a phrase from a well know cancer doctor mentioned on NPR couple days ago. As another commenter mentioned it isn't just a poison though. Just for example - the artemisinin - the anti-malaria drug that was discussed recently being the subject of the recent Nobel prize - is looking promising so far as a [low toxicity] chemotherapy drug due to the same super-oxide interaction with iron-rich cells that makes it an anti-malaria drug as cancer cells are iron-rich too.
- chang2301 11y ago
  great insight from the articles and comments.
- charlesism 11y ago
  "we've come a long way" That's your takeaway? It's like we're reading two completely different versions of HN ;) I'm so jaded from all these medical and scientific miracles of which we're constantly on the cusp. I wish there were a content-blocker that somehow removed links to any story regarding a breakthrough that hasn't already occurred. Future "cures" and "revolutionary treatments" are a dime a dozen, and nobody bothers to write an article when they don't actually pan out.
  - dang 11y ago
    Yes, it's a problem. Where are all the articles about confirmed breakthroughs, say of work that was done 10 years ago? Are there really so few of those?
  - majormajor 11y ago
    We have, overall, come a long way medically in the past hundred years, but I'd be very interested in an article that looked at how much of that was revolutionary breakthroughs and how much was incremental. And how much was both: e.g. being able to transplant many organs for the first time in the 20th century, and then the gradual increase in post-transplant life-expectancies since then. (And that's an area with a potentially scary future, too, if the superbug scare proves to be more real/less media hype than many positive "breakthroughs.")
narrator 11y ago
Still an active area of research: http://precedings.nature.com/documents/4895/version/1/files/npre20104895-1.pdf http://precedings.nature.com/documents/4895/version/1/files/...
- jszymborski 11y ago
  This paper smells off. From the @rambler.ru email (emails have been shown to be important for papers [1]), to the declaration conflict of interest, you already have a hint that this isn't very promising. Their findings, for anyone who does cell culture in a biomed lab, are hilariously trivial. This is bunk. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-the-peer-review-scam-1.16400 http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-the-peer-review-scam-1...
shakil 11y ago
Found another article which clarifies and updates from this 1906 article: http://www.internetwks.com/owen/CancerCure.htm http://www.internetwks.com/owen/CancerCure.htm
- copperx 11y ago
  The page you linked reads like quackery, but as a son of a woman with cancer, I'm interested in what others think about the explanations in the page.
  - unimpressive 11y ago
    Quackery. Evaluating the claims of quacks is very difficult, so you're better off just trusting your initial red flag heuristic judgement on this sort of thing.
cLeEOGPw 11y ago
Cancer is such a broad term for diseases that I doubt it is even possible to make a single cure for all cases.
teekert 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_All_Maladies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_All_Maladies Highly recommended if you like these kind of biographies of cancer.

52 points by apsec112 11y ago

Fascinating! In case folks don't know, trypsin is a proteolytic enzyme produced in the pancreas. It helps your body digest proteins. I'm assuming that these scientists had the exact same problem that scientists do today: xenographs (grafting tumor cells into health animals) isn't the best model. That issue still is a problem today. That said, we've come a long way. It wasn't until ~40 years after this article that the nitrogen mustards (chemotherapies) were actually put into clinical practice. Their clinical usefulness was only realized when a bunch of military folks/civilians were exposed to mustard gas and they noticed their lymphocyte count decreased. A doctor noticed it and thought "maybe we can use this in lymphoma (where cancer produces too many lymphocytes)"

ngoldbaum 11y ago
I had no idea that chemotherapy is basically intravenous mustard gas. Thanks for the insight!
- refurb 11y ago
  To be clear, some chemotherapies are mustard gas derivatives. Others act similarly (disrupting DNA), but work through other mechanisms. Treanda (bendamustine) is a great example of a nitrogen mustard that is still used in chemotherapy today. They've modified it a bit so it has better pharmacodynamics, but it's very similar to mustard gas! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendamustine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendamustine
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Chemotherapy in general is mostly just poison. The general idea being that your body is more capable of bouncing back from damage than mutated cancer cells that have a runaway growth problem.
  - cperciva 11y ago
    It's a bit more than that. Cancerous cells will tend to absorb more chemotherapy drugs than non-cancerous cells do, because rapid cell division means that they're absorbing more of everything.
  - trhway 11y ago
    >Chemotherapy in general is mostly just poison. "slash, poison and burn" for surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy - a phrase from a well know cancer doctor mentioned on NPR couple days ago. As another commenter mentioned it isn't just a poison though. Just for example - the artemisinin - the anti-malaria drug that was discussed recently being the subject of the recent Nobel prize - is looking promising so far as a [low toxicity] chemotherapy drug due to the same super-oxide interaction with iron-rich cells that makes it an anti-malaria drug as cancer cells are iron-rich too.
chang2301 11y ago
great insight from the articles and comments.
charlesism 11y ago
"we've come a long way" That's your takeaway? It's like we're reading two completely different versions of HN ;) I'm so jaded from all these medical and scientific miracles of which we're constantly on the cusp. I wish there were a content-blocker that somehow removed links to any story regarding a breakthrough that hasn't already occurred. Future "cures" and "revolutionary treatments" are a dime a dozen, and nobody bothers to write an article when they don't actually pan out.
- dang 11y ago
  Yes, it's a problem. Where are all the articles about confirmed breakthroughs, say of work that was done 10 years ago? Are there really so few of those?
- majormajor 11y ago
  We have, overall, come a long way medically in the past hundred years, but I'd be very interested in an article that looked at how much of that was revolutionary breakthroughs and how much was incremental. And how much was both: e.g. being able to transplant many organs for the first time in the 20th century, and then the gradual increase in post-transplant life-expectancies since then. (And that's an area with a potentially scary future, too, if the superbug scare proves to be more real/less media hype than many positive "breakthroughs.")

narrator 11y ago

Still an active area of research: http://precedings.nature.com/documents/4895/version/1/files/npre20104895-1.pdf http://precedings.nature.com/documents/4895/version/1/files/...

jszymborski 11y ago
This paper smells off. From the @rambler.ru email (emails have been shown to be important for papers [1]), to the declaration conflict of interest, you already have a hint that this isn't very promising. Their findings, for anyone who does cell culture in a biomed lab, are hilariously trivial. This is bunk. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-the-peer-review-scam-1.16400 http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-the-peer-review-scam-1...

shakil 11y ago

Found another article which clarifies and updates from this 1906 article: http://www.internetwks.com/owen/CancerCure.htm http://www.internetwks.com/owen/CancerCure.htm

copperx 11y ago
The page you linked reads like quackery, but as a son of a woman with cancer, I'm interested in what others think about the explanations in the page.
- unimpressive 11y ago
  Quackery. Evaluating the claims of quacks is very difficult, so you're better off just trusting your initial red flag heuristic judgement on this sort of thing.

cLeEOGPw 11y ago

Cancer is such a broad term for diseases that I doubt it is even possible to make a single cure for all cases.

teekert 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_All_Maladies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_All_Maladies Highly recommended if you like these kind of biographies of cancer.