5 ms·

Cancer Cured? Granulocytes Treatment Worked 100 Percent In Mice

19 points by dmoney 18y ago

ericb 18y ago
I can't find the exact quote or attribution, but someone once said, as a scientist, if you can't cure cancer in mice, you may as well hang up your hat.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  The quip that I heard, back in my cancer research days, was "if you have cancer, and you are a mouse, we can help you". There was a positively awesome paper a few years back which put the problem in perspective: According to currently accepted theory, cancer is a disease which is caused by random mutations. The more cells with mutations, the greater the chance that you'll get cancer. So your cancer risk is proportional to the number of cells in your body (more candidates for mutation), to the age of those cells (more opportunities for mutagenic factors to strike the right genes in one cell or another -- this is why cancer incidence increases with age), and to the number of mutation-causing factors in your life. (Do not smoke. Seriously, quit smoking right now.) Mice are very tiny creatures relative to humans, and they live a very short time (a three year old mouse is an old mouse). If mice had the same anti-cancer mechanisms as humans, a mouse with cancer would be vanishingly rare. As it is, it's still pretty hard to find a mouse with cancer, but it does happen -- but only because mice, who have no need for an infrastructure that will protect their cells for 70-plus years, haven't bothered to evolve the same anti-cancer mechanisms that humans have. The upshot is that "cancer in mice" is a very different disease from "cancer in humans", so while curing cancer in mice is suggestive it is never conclusive. One way to change the nature of this problem is to transplant human cancer cells into mice. Unfortunately, this technique only solves half the problem -- the cancer cells only make up a portion of a tumor, and their environment is very important. Worse, the mice have to be immunodeficient to make a human-cancer transplant take. That makes studies like the one cited here -- which involve the cancer-fighting activity of a mouse's own immune cells -- difficult to do with human xenografts. (I actually think that such a study is impossible, but I'm not a biologist so maybe there's a loophole I can't see.)
  - rw 18y ago
    Off Topic But Important: Could you point me to the most medically-reputable ways to quit smoking?
    - mechanical_fish 18y ago
      Honestly, no. I've never had to fight that battle. Good luck, and I hope some of the more experienced folks here (or elsewhere on the Web) can be of more help than I.
    - mynameishere 18y ago
      A friend of mine moved to a ski resort. The peer pressure did the job.
    - pxlpshr 18y ago
      the will of the mind. no medicine will help an individual that does not want to quit.
    - menloparkbum 18y ago
      Read the book "the easy way to quit smoking" by Alan Carr. The reason people don't quit (explained in the book) is that they are afraid of what will happen when they quit. There are all sorts of imagined withdrawal symptoms. The first thing to realize is that smoking isn't merely a bad habit, it is a legitimate drug addiction. Smokers are addicted to nicotine. Now, even though nicotine addiction is real, the withdrawal symptoms are ridiculously mild when compared to other drugs. When a heroin addict quits, they get the shakes, fevers, cold sweats, diarrhea, barf all over the place, can't eat anything, and even get physical goose bumps. When a smoker quits, the only thing that happens is that you want another cigarette. Nicotine actually leaves your body completely in 3 days, so the actual physical withdrawal symptoms (which are just craving cigarettes) only last a long weekend. After that, you have to deal with the behavioral issues, which is easier to do if you have some sort of cognitive framework to deal with them, which is what the book I mentioned provides.
    - rms 18y ago
      It depends on how high your level of addiction is. If you're at multiple packs a day, you definitely want to taper off, either by smoking less or consuming your nicotine in a healthier way (like gum or a patch). If you must smoke after you quit, smoke something other than nicotine. I would recommend blue lotus as a mild smokeable herb that isn't a poison. Beyond that, there are psychiatric medications that help. The one one expressly to help quit smoking has some very odd side effects (vivid dreams and suicidal ideations). I suspect that plain old anti-depressants would also help. Ask your neighborhood psychiatrist.
brfox 18y ago
jeez... If I had a dollar for every headline which reads "cancer cured"...
ed 18y ago
For those who are interested, you can sign up to be a white cell donor for this study here: https://www1.wfubmc.edu/LIFT/blooddonor.htm https://www1.wfubmc.edu/LIFT/blooddonor.htm

19 points by dmoney 18y ago

ericb 18y ago

I can't find the exact quote or attribution, but someone once said, as a scientist, if you can't cure cancer in mice, you may as well hang up your hat.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
The quip that I heard, back in my cancer research days, was "if you have cancer, and you are a mouse, we can help you". There was a positively awesome paper a few years back which put the problem in perspective: According to currently accepted theory, cancer is a disease which is caused by random mutations. The more cells with mutations, the greater the chance that you'll get cancer. So your cancer risk is proportional to the number of cells in your body (more candidates for mutation), to the age of those cells (more opportunities for mutagenic factors to strike the right genes in one cell or another -- this is why cancer incidence increases with age), and to the number of mutation-causing factors in your life. (Do not smoke. Seriously, quit smoking right now.) Mice are very tiny creatures relative to humans, and they live a very short time (a three year old mouse is an old mouse). If mice had the same anti-cancer mechanisms as humans, a mouse with cancer would be vanishingly rare. As it is, it's still pretty hard to find a mouse with cancer, but it does happen -- but only because mice, who have no need for an infrastructure that will protect their cells for 70-plus years, haven't bothered to evolve the same anti-cancer mechanisms that humans have. The upshot is that "cancer in mice" is a very different disease from "cancer in humans", so while curing cancer in mice is suggestive it is never conclusive. One way to change the nature of this problem is to transplant human cancer cells into mice. Unfortunately, this technique only solves half the problem -- the cancer cells only make up a portion of a tumor, and their environment is very important. Worse, the mice have to be immunodeficient to make a human-cancer transplant take. That makes studies like the one cited here -- which involve the cancer-fighting activity of a mouse's own immune cells -- difficult to do with human xenografts. (I actually think that such a study is impossible, but I'm not a biologist so maybe there's a loophole I can't see.)
- rw 18y ago
  Off Topic But Important: Could you point me to the most medically-reputable ways to quit smoking?
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    Honestly, no. I've never had to fight that battle. Good luck, and I hope some of the more experienced folks here (or elsewhere on the Web) can be of more help than I.
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    A friend of mine moved to a ski resort. The peer pressure did the job.
  - pxlpshr 18y ago
    the will of the mind. no medicine will help an individual that does not want to quit.
  - menloparkbum 18y ago
    Read the book "the easy way to quit smoking" by Alan Carr. The reason people don't quit (explained in the book) is that they are afraid of what will happen when they quit. There are all sorts of imagined withdrawal symptoms. The first thing to realize is that smoking isn't merely a bad habit, it is a legitimate drug addiction. Smokers are addicted to nicotine. Now, even though nicotine addiction is real, the withdrawal symptoms are ridiculously mild when compared to other drugs. When a heroin addict quits, they get the shakes, fevers, cold sweats, diarrhea, barf all over the place, can't eat anything, and even get physical goose bumps. When a smoker quits, the only thing that happens is that you want another cigarette. Nicotine actually leaves your body completely in 3 days, so the actual physical withdrawal symptoms (which are just craving cigarettes) only last a long weekend. After that, you have to deal with the behavioral issues, which is easier to do if you have some sort of cognitive framework to deal with them, which is what the book I mentioned provides.
  - rms 18y ago
    It depends on how high your level of addiction is. If you're at multiple packs a day, you definitely want to taper off, either by smoking less or consuming your nicotine in a healthier way (like gum or a patch). If you must smoke after you quit, smoke something other than nicotine. I would recommend blue lotus as a mild smokeable herb that isn't a poison. Beyond that, there are psychiatric medications that help. The one one expressly to help quit smoking has some very odd side effects (vivid dreams and suicidal ideations). I suspect that plain old anti-depressants would also help. Ask your neighborhood psychiatrist.

brfox 18y ago

jeez... If I had a dollar for every headline which reads "cancer cured"...

ed 18y ago

For those who are interested, you can sign up to be a white cell donor for this study here: https://www1.wfubmc.edu/LIFT/blooddonor.htm https://www1.wfubmc.edu/LIFT/blooddonor.htm