12 ms·
Scientists glue two proteins together, driving cancer cells to self-destruct
- mountainriver 2y agoI feel like I’ve heard this before, is this something that is actually novel?
- staplung 2y agoHard to tell. The cynical response is that the novelty is that it's coming from Stanford. The perhaps more correct response is that the novelty is the mechanism of triggering the apoptosis and the specificity. Here's a paper from 2018 that discusses the prospect of using apoptosis for cancer treatment. They even talk about BCL-2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5855670/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5855670/
- SanjayMehta 2y agoIt’s due to the phrase “self destruct.” For some reason people who write headlines like using this in the context of cancer cells. First noticed it in 2010 when I was researching multiple myeloma treatments for my father. It’s medical clickbait.
- F-Lexx 2y agoIsn't the phrase "self destruct" just meant to be a popular term of referring to apoptosis or programmed cell death in general?
- emporas 2y agoTriggering the automatic cell death on demand, instead of a period of time, i.e. apoptosis, sounds pretty smart and novel. After 7 years all of our cells die and regenerate, but using biochemistry and some endogenous proteins glued together to control that period of time, i haven't heard about it before. Not a medical expert, but cancers have a vast number of variations in the type of the cancer cell they create, but one common characteristic of all cancers is that they are derived from our own cells. So they should respond to some "commands" our own cells follow. Inducing apoptosis for cancer prevention and treatment is old news though. Fasting, water fasting that is, causes apoptosis of cells en mass and has proven to be very effective in minimizing radiotherapy or chemotherapy sessions, and even a total treatment. Instead of doing 20 chemotherapy sessions, reducing it down to 1 or 2 and the cancer is gone. Anyway, someone doing the same using a biochemical pathway and light up gene expression, is pretty novel.
- bglazer 2y agoI think you’re overstating the “proven” effect of water fasting. That said I’m surprised and happy to see that several academic medical centers are running trials of fastingin conjunction with chemotherapy. https://www.cedars-sinai.org/discoveries/fasting-as-next-step-in-cancer-treatment.html https://www.cedars-sinai.org/discoveries/fasting-as-next-ste...
- emporas 2y agoI meant "proven" when done by the patients themselves, not by the doctors necessarily. Dr. Gundry has done an interview with a martial arts guy who was diagnosed with cancer, and fasted for 20 days only water, and 20 days a little meat and nothing else, and one or two sessions of chemotherapy or radiotherapy later he was clear of cancer. There are many people who talk about same experiences, from the patient side. If some doctors are seriously researching fasting and cancer treatment, that's going to produce some measurements instead of relying on anecdotes. I cannot find Gundry's interview, it's 5 years old something like that.
- Auracle 2y agoYou’ll find anecdotal “evidence” for all sorts of stuff when it comes to cancer. Some of it is just woo, others might just work for really specific genetic mutations, etc. Fasting in general has been known for quite a while but (and I’m far from an expert) it only helps with certain cancers. Hell, I had a friend die this year from stomach cancer and he literally couldn’t eat or drink. He only went to the hospital when he was already skin and bones, got a few chemo treatments, and then it was too late.
- lr0 2y agoSame as mountainriver's comment. I really find strange how I've been reading news lines over the past years about great advancements in many incurable and chronic diseases (like Alzheimer's, diabetes, and cancers) yet after all that time people's treatment is not going any better. I'm not sure whether scientific journalism somehow delivered some unintended messages to me, or we're just supposed to experience these great advancements after couple of decades from the announcement.
- njtransit 2y agoWhy do you think “people’s treatment is not going any better”? As far as I know, cancer outcomes have greatly improved.
- bb88 2y agoIt's the articles that decry "Big discovery in X". This could be because the researchers need funding so they will hype the results as much as possible. Then the articles need as much readership so the journalists hype the results as much as possible. Then the people suffering from the disease want as much help as possible so they push the articles/papers to the doctors. On the other hand, it's been my experience that GLP-1 agonsists weren't overhyped, I was completely surprised when my doctor prescribed Mounjaro for weight loss. Even after decades of articles about "NEW WEIGHT LOSS TREATMENT!" (See also phen-phen)
- markus92 2y agoIt's mostly the PR department of universities that boast about those big discoveries. Researchers themselves usually try to add some nuance to it.
- SoftTalker 2y agoCancer detection/testing has gotten a lot more attention. Detected early, many victims are still alive after 5 years and considered "cured." But it still gets you in the end. A lot of expense and misery while under medication/chemo/rad/surgical therapy and in the end you are dead just the same.
- biotechbio 2y agoThere's a decent amount of cynicism in the comments, which I understand. I think this is a really cool and novel study, though. Historically, cancer was treated with therapies that are toxic to all cells, relying on the fact that cancer cells divide quickly and are unable to handle stress as well as normal cells (chemotherapy, radiation). The last couple of decades we've seen many targeted cancer therapies. These drugs generally inhibit the activity of a specific protein that lets the cancer cells grow (e.g. EGFR inhibitors) or prevents the immune system from killing the cancer cells (e.g. PDL1 inhibitors). This mechanism is way more interesting. The gene BCL6 is usually turned on in immune cells when they are mutating to recognize foreign invaders. This process involves lots of DNA damage and stress, but BCL6 stops the cells from dying and is therefore important for normal immune function. Unfortunately, this makes BCL6 a gene that is often co-opted in cancer cells to help them survive. The method cleverly exploits the oncogenic function of BCL6 not by inhibiting it, but by turning it into a guide, enabling the delivery of activating machinery to the targets of BCL6 and reversing the inhibitory effects on cell death. The whole field of targeted degraders, molecular glues, and heterobifunctional molecules is a growing area of interest in cancer research.
- vlovich123 2y agoWhat would be the kinds of expected side effects of such approaches?
- melagonster 2y agooop talked about mechanism, so we can't know side effects here. someone will publish a new drug that relies on this mechanism, and then they will check the side effects of the specific drug on cells, rats, or other experimental species.
- joconne 2y agoMy understanding is that even though immunotherapy's mechanism may seem more natural than chemotherapy and radiation, and in some instances may be a magic bullet, up-regulating the immune system can have serious consequences. I remember reading about a clinical trial showing similar progression free survival but increased grade 4-5 toxicities (requiring hospitalization or being fatal). My assumption was that these are autoimmune conditions that are aggravated in some of the patient population.
- midtake 2y agoI am tired of news like this that never gets anywhere. We have a billion way to destroy cells, great. Let's get a reliable delivery system working now. While that is in the works, I will stick to fasting and other simple methods of decreasing oxidative load.
- v3ss0n 2y agoBought out and shutdown by profiting businesses as usual.
- purplethinking 2y agoNo, this whole spiel of big pharma wanting to keep people sick is insane. That could work if there was a single pharma company in the world, but all it takes is one company making an effective cure for a disease and they will make big bucks. Even if you think the people in charge are evil profiteers, we all win in the end
- v3ss0n 2y agoWe gotta win in the end.
- adamredwoods 2y agoAs someone who tried to keep a cancer patient alive for as long as possible, this type of news offers hope, and encourages young people to become oncologists and researchers, which we so desperately need.
- elcritch 2y agoThe entire point of this research is to develop a targeted delivery mechanism based on malfunctioning gene activations. It's a simple but clever approach IMHO.
- aetherspawn 2y agoThis seems too straightforward to be credible? If I was researching in this field surely this is the first thing I’d try? If it is indeed credible … this sounds like the “CRISPR moment” of cancer treatment, sure. And I’m really happy for that. But I will be honest and write what I’m thinking: if this is real then frankly I’m disappointed it took this long. Do we really have our best people working on cancer? I have known so many who died waiting. It seems like there has been roughly the same investment this decade (around $200B) in climate tech compared with cancer research, and yet electric cars and batteries are now a “solved problem” that’s just waiting to scale. The progress with Cancer is noticeably less. Is the money being well spent? Or are we donating $100B-s for researchers and labs to sit on a gravy train making sub tier progress. Here’s a wild theory. Perhaps as a society we built the wrong prerequisites to get into cancer research and we filtered out all the Mozart’s and Leonardo’s…
- pama 2y agoI work in this area. It took time to know what each protein does in a cell (we still dont really understand most of them), it took time to find all the ways that various cancers use the protein machinery in the cell to their benefit (new ways are still being discovered these days), it took time to think about molecular glues and turn them practical, and it took time to build the right chemistry and then test it (it takes time even after you know all of the previous steps.) It will still take years, possibly over a decade before this particular development can lead to a drug that passes human clinical trials and is eventually approved. It is not the lack of geniuses that slows things down, rather it is the very careful consideration of risks to minimize the loss of human life during experimentation, and the attempt to optimally allocate the resources across too many different challenging problems in order to maximize the long term benefit to society. The true amount of money spent in cancer research is much higher than the $200B over a decade that you mentioned, however the vast majority of it is just capital losses of various companies spent on the tools and research in early stage discovery across tens of thousands of projects, and a separate huge and more obvious chunk goes to attempts and failures at human clinical trials. The cost of drug discovery has stopped increasing exponentially during the last decade but is still pegged at several billion dollars per approved drug without counting costs from competitors who never get anything approved.
- equasar 2y agoWonder if the study is freely available without paywall.
- Faaak 2y agoSci-hub.pub
- jobigoud 2y agoIs this still working? Am I being blocked at the ISP level? For me sci-hub.pub opens a simple page listing other sci-hub URLs, but each and every one of them fails, ending in "Unable to connect" as if the server did not exist. (Tested: sci-hub.ee, sci-hub.ren, sci-hub.ru, sci-hub.se, sci-hub.st, sci-hub.wf). Is sci-hub still working for people, I haven't been able to use it for a while. edit: Wow, it works if I go there via VPN… incredible. So sci-hub is illegal in France?
- Retr0id 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France#Blocking_of_Sci-Hub_and_LibGen_on_7_March_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France#...
- skibidisigma 2y agoWe got a cure for cancer before gta 6
- szundi 2y agoI love these headlines
- moffkalast 2y agoUsing prions to destroy cancer, pitting one cosmic horror against the other. Nice.
- dottjt 2y agoHopefully it can help people with Sarcomas. My partner was diagnosed with stage 4 sarcoma about a month ago and life as I know it has been flipped upside down.
- adamredwoods 2y agoI'm so sorry. We all hope for a magic formula, but even with clinical trials, bench-to-bedside takes years. >> the chimeric compound killed only diffuse large cell B-cell lymphoma cells
- dottjt 2y agoIt's been a very weird 6 weeks. It's like, everything was fine. We had our normal suburban life. Things were going great. We had just celebrated our daughter's first birthday. Then it's like, you realise that everything you had imagined over the next 40 - 50 years is suddenly not going to happen anymore, and it just feels so surreal. Thankfully, a lot of the initial hysteria is gone. But there's definitely a sense of "why me?"
- elcritch 2y agoSorry about your partners disease. Learning such news about loved ones is difficult. I have a chronic condition and spent years wondering "why me?". Now my thoughts are more like "why not me?" and to try and embrace what life we're lucky to get and live day by day. Godspeed
- dottjt 2y agoThank you. Did any readings or practices help you?
- elcritch 2y agoRegardless of your religious background, the Book of Job is deep, and sort of boils down to “Why not you? There’s much you don’t understand”. I myself became Eastern Orthodox about 15 years ago, which has a somewhat different view of death than Western European Christianity (1). There’s also an acceptance that death occurs and that we prepare for it in our hearts, while still believing that death isn’t “natural” state. It’s a dichotomy of beliefs, but helped me accept both the reality of death but a hope for more. I pray and also love the funeral prayer in Orthodox Churches of “may their memory be eternal”. Very beautiful. I also find the Stoic philosophers (Marcus Arelius, Epictetus) to hold to an acceptance of death and similar views of preparing oneself for it as Orthodox do. They discuss the concept of “memento mori” (2) which plays a big role in Stoic Philosophy. They focus on directing one’s internal emotions to gratitude of time with loved ones and settling anything weighing on your heart, if I understand them. At the end of the day, both focus on preparing ourselves to realize we can die any moment and really don’t have any “right” to life. That it’s better to view each day as such and to find gratitude and peace with loved ones while you can instead of focusing on ourselves and expectations of life. We can and should feel sad and disappointed but also to not become lost in it. Apologies for the poor writing. I’m writing on my phone and well it’s a hard topic. My mother passed away last year way too young and there’s always a feeling of loss. May you find peace friend. 1: https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/sickness-suffering-and-death/death https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spiritualit... 2: https://www.stoicsimple.com/stoicism-death-facing-fears-of-mortality-with-stoic-beliefs/ https://www.stoicsimple.com/stoicism-death-facing-fears-of-m...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- unit149 2y agoInducing ketogenesis whose byproduct is the retention of water and generation of ATP has historically acted as an epiphenomenal method of apoptosis. Survival rates vary but fasting has proven to be an effective method.
- Funes- 2y agoA ketogenic diet or a strict fasting regimen are two health strategies that are too frowned upon, still, and unfortunately so. Food (or whatever passes for "food" in modern times) has become such a crutch, and people have such potent emotional ties to it, that the sole idea of restricting one's diet will come across as negative from the get go. Nonetheless, there have been advancements in that regard, culturally, I believe.
- NemoNobody 2y agoApparently I'm an incredibly healthy individual - just had a physical that stated that. I do have a good genetic base but in general I don't live a particularly healthy lifestyle, my activity is pretty much the same as everyone else - except my diet. I'm a vegetarian and a celiac (no gluten) so I don't eat a lot of processed food. Rice, oatmeal, corn tortillas, black beans, cheese, hemp hearts, flax seeds, chia seeds, Sriracha, coffee w/honey and hazelnut creamer - all that is easily 90%+ of my diet. I also drink a protein drink called OWYN daily. About once a week I'll have a little to eat in the morning and then I just won't really get hungry again til really late and I'll often just not eat then and go to bed. Intermittent fasting is great. A few times a year I'll go a few days without really eating - there are so many benefits to the process. The primary being autophagy - that I sus is the reason I look so much younger than people my age. The science of sleep radically disagrees with the next thing I'm about to say. The process with food and the body is very similar to the process of sleep and the brain. Occasionally pulling an all nighter playing video games (can't be a stressful all nighter) is actually good for you - it resets some stuff in your head. This can be particularly effective for dealing with certain states of depression or melancholia.
- bulbosaur123 2y agoWhen can this be used to cure prostate cancer?
- steveBK123 2y agoAll of this stuff is promising, and I hope the diagnostic side catches up as well. Just went to a funeral this weekend for a 40 year old who died of breast cancer 4 weeks after diagnosis at her first annual mammogram. A lot of skeptical people under 30 here haven't lived through regularly various cancer diagnoses in their friends & family group that your late 30s/early 40s starts to bring. I don't have the data on it, but anecdotally I notice that women's cancers seem to strike 5-10 years earlier than mens even if they can be caught early & treated well.. Though apparently men have overall worse cancer survival rates.
- fwip 2y agoI believe I read, but can't find the source now, that the sex-specific survival rate is mostly explained by men not catching it and starting treatment as early as women. Even for cancers that shouldn't be sex-specific, like lung cancer, men are less likely to survive it.
- steveBK123 2y agoThis is very believable given gender differences in being on top of healthcare..
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- frowin 2y agoI'm finishing my PhD in hyperpolarization (hopefully) soon. In my opinion, hyperpolarization will significantly contribute to early-stage diagnosis. We're designing machines, processes, and chemicals that create novel contrast agents for MRI, enabling the localization of cancer cells and even tracking their metabolism. For example, it's possible to inject hyperpolarized pyruvate and track its conversion to lactate. Essentially, this technique boosts the MRI/NMR signal of the contrast agent by up to 100,000-fold. When the contrast agent undergoes metabolism, it creates a unique signal footprint through chemical shift changes, which can aid in characterizing cancer.
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- zackkatz 2y agoStrange: the New York Times wrote about this on July 26, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/health/cancer-self-destruct.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/health/cancer-self-destru...
- Duller-Finite 2y agoThat describes a related but previous Nature paper from the same group, whereas this is referring to a more recent Science paper.
- mannyv 2y agoThe next challenge is getting the protein in there.
- lawrenceyan 2y agoCurrent SOTA (state of the art) treatment for cancer is: Sequence patient's tumor mutanome distribution, create personalized therapy encoding the top N neoantigens + Anti-PDL1 checkpoint inhibitor + mRNA encoded albumin-IL2
- varelse 2y ago[dead]
- phtrivier 2y agoJust like there is a convention in posting headlines for [video], [pdf], etc... should there be a convention for any article related to some "breakthrough" (in typical categories like cancer treatment and batteries capacity) to highlight whether the article mentions theoretical work, petri-dish, mice, other animals, test trial, clinical trial, phase X, a proto, a demo, or some stuff that's ready for the market ? All those things have they place in the long run to discovery, but I wish there was a penalty for posting "scientists have done x and it cured cancer" (in a computer model of a spherical mouse of negative mass, that may or may not have been cancer-free.)
- fdestro 2y ago[dead]
- fdestro 2y ago[dead]