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U.S. scientists successfully turn human cancer cells back to normal...

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A

Angelus Errare

Banned
U.S. scientists successfully turn human cancer cells back to normal in process that could ‘switch off’ disease

Cancer cells have been programmed back to normal by scientists in a breakthrough which could lead to new treatments and even reverse tumour growth.

For the first time, aggressive breast, lung and bladder cancer cells have been turned back into harmless benign cells by restoring the function which prevents them from multiplying excessively and forming dangerous growths.

Scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Florida in the U.S. said it was like applying the brakes to a speeding car.

So far it has only been tested on human cells in the lab, but the researchers are hopeful that the technique could one day be used to target tumours so that cancer could be “switched off” without the need for harsh chemotherapy or surgery.
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53f106809b1e228549e7ba55_bb-yeah-science.gif
 
E

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
I am always cautious about news stories in non-scientific publications. They very often get the facts wrong and exaggerate or misrepresent results. Nevertheless, science moves forward every day, and its nice to be reminded of that.

/edit: Yep, Valhelm.
 
B

btags

Member
People have done so much stuff with miRNA and shRNA in the lab only to later have problems with delivery to actual tissue later on, which is exactly what this article says they plan to improve. I am sure it is cool science, but do not get your hopes up that this will be anything significant (as in a real treatment) any time soon. It is notoriously hard to deliver miRNAs to actual tissue and then for them to have a real effect. Even using viral particles to deliver shRNAs and the like is still very difficult in primary culture let alone a living human.

Besides, all the cool people know immune therapy is the future!
 
E

Epsilon-delta

Banned
ElTorro said:
I am always cautious about news stories in non-scientific publications. They very often get the facts wrong and exaggerate or misrepresent results. Nevertheless, science moves forward every day, and its nice to be reminded of that.

/edit: Yep, Valhelm.
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The last sentence in the article my man:

The research was published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.
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And Soka linked to the publication.
 
B

Baraka in the White House

2-Terms of Kombat
It seems like the ratio of new cancer-fighting discoveries to new cancer-fighting treatments is always something like 100,000-1.

The best treatments are still Hulk rays and/or pumping the body full of Drain-O.
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
Here's the Mayo Clinic's writeup:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Cancer researchers dream of the day they can force tumor cells to morph back to the normal cells they once were. Now, researchers on Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus have discovered a way to potentially reprogram cancer cells back to normalcy.

The finding, published in Nature Cell Biology, represents “an unexpected new biology that provides the code, the software for turning off cancer,” says the study’s senior investigator, Panos Anastasiadis, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Cancer Biology on Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus.

That code was unraveled by the discovery that adhesion proteins — the glue that keeps cells together — interact with the microprocessor, a key player in the production of molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs). The miRNAs orchestrate whole cellular programs by simultaneously regulating expression of a group of genes. The investigators found that when normal cells come in contact with each other, a specific subset of miRNAs suppresses genes that promote cell growth. However, when adhesion is disrupted in cancer cells, these miRNAs are misregulated and cells grow out of control. The investigators showed, in laboratory experiments, that restoring the normal miRNA levels in cancer cells can reverse that aberrant cell growth.

“The study brings together two so-far unrelated research fields — cell-to-cell adhesion and miRNA biology — to resolve a long-standing problem about the role of adhesion proteins in cell behavior that was baffling scientists,” says the study’s lead author Antonis Kourtidis, Ph.D., a research associate in Dr. Anastasiadis’ lab. “Most significantly, it uncovers a new strategy for cancer therapy,” he adds.

That problem arose from conflicting reports about E-cadherin and p120 catenin — adhesion proteins that are essential for normal epithelial tissues to form, and which have long been considered to be tumor suppressors. “However, we and other researchers had found that this hypothesis didn’t seem to be true, since both E-cadherin and p120 are still present in tumor cells and required for their progression,” Dr. Anastasiadis says. “That led us to believe that these molecules have two faces — a good one, maintaining the normal behavior of the cells, and a bad one that drives tumorigenesis.”

Their theory turned out to be true, but what was regulating this behavior was still unknown. To answer this, the researchers studied a new protein called PLEKHA7, which associates with E-cadherin and p120 only at the top, or the “apical” part of normal polarized epithelial cells. The investigators discovered that PLEKHA7 maintains the normal state of the cells, via a set of miRNAs, by tethering the microprocessor to E-cadherin and p120. In this state, E-cadherin and p120 exert their good tumor suppressor sides.

However, “when this apical adhesion complex was disrupted after loss of PLEKHA7, this set of miRNAs was misregulated, and the E-cadherin and p120 switched sides to become oncogenic,” Dr. Anastasiadis says.

“We believe that loss of the apical PLEKHA7-microprocessor complex is an early and somewhat universal event in cancer,” he adds. “In the vast majority of human tumor samples we examined, this apical structure is absent, although E-cadherin and p120 are still present. This produces the equivalent of a speeding car that has a lot of gas (the bad p120) and no brakes (the PLEKHA7-microprocessor complex).

“By administering the affected miRNAs in cancer cells to restore their normal levels, we should be able to re-establish the brakes and restore normal cell function,” Dr. Anastasiadis says. “Initial experiments in some aggressive types of cancer are indeed very promising.”

Co-authors include Siu Ngok, Ph.D.; Ryan Feathers; Lomeli Carpio; Tiffany Baker; Jennifer Carr; Irene Yan; Sahra Borges, Ph.D.; Edith Perez, M.D.; Peter Storz, Ph.D.; John Copland, Ph.D.; Tushar Patel, M.B., Ch.B.; and E. Aubrey Thompson, Ph.D., from Mayo Clinic; and Pamela Pulimeno, Ph.D., and Sandra Citi, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants R01 CA100467, R01 NS069753, P50 CA116201, R01 GM086435, R01CA104505, R01CA136665; the Florida Department of Health, Bankhead-Coley grants 10BG11; the Breast Cancer Research Foundation; the Swiss Cancer League; and the Jay and Deanie Stein Career Development Award for Cancer Research at Mayo Clinic.
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Certainly sounds worth pursuing further. Any potential new avenues at attacking cancer are more than welcome.
 
J

Josh7289

Member
I would quote the comic in the second reply, but it's already been quoted enough. I'll wait to hear a summary about this from a more scientific, accurate, reliable source.

EDIT: Yeah, like that Mayo Clinic article. Pretty cool. Hopefully this develops further!
 
E

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
hucast21 said:
The last sentence in the article my man:
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And? I was referring to the summary and interpretation of research written by non-scientific publications like the National Post. Do you seriously think that any journalist can adequately understand the actual publication?
 
D

devilhawk

Member
The research article is interesting. MicroRNA is not really my thing as a cancer geneticist, but there is some good science here.

Tho, they only did the experiments in two cell lines; one renal and one colon tumor line. No idea where the wrapup article is getting the lung and bladder stuff.
hateradio said:
Sounds good.



ortLM4o.png


GAF, why?
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Most likely that is small cell lung cancer, which is not even epithelial based, which likely means this research is not applicable at all.
 
B

btags

Member
hucast21 said:
GAFer Dan just linked an article straight from the horses mouth.
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Yeah, and I said the science is probably good (I haven't read the actual paper or anything so I cannot say with absolute certainty, but the fact that it is in nature is a good sign). But transferring these kind of treatments from a cancer cell line culture in a flask to a real person is going to take a while. People always post finds like this acting like cancer is cured, yet there have been many times in which a technique that worked in vitro failed to work in vivo due to unaccounted variables, delivery mechanism, etc. I am not trying to be a cynic, just telling people to temper their expectations.
 
E

Epsilon-delta

Banned
ElTorro said:
And? I was referring to the summary and interpretation of research written by non-scientific publications like the National Post. Do you seriously think that any journalist can adequately understand the actual publication?
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I take it you did not read the thread completely before replying to my post.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
btags said:
Yeah, and I said the science is probably good (I haven't read the actual paper or anything so I cannot say with absolute certainty, but the fact that it is in nature is a good sign). But transferring these kind of treatments from a cancer cell line culture in a flask to a real person is going to take a while. People always post finds like this acting like cancer is cured, yet there have been many times in which a technique that worked in vitro failed to work in vivo due to unaccounted variables, delivery mechanism, etc. I am not trying to be a cynic, just telling people to temper their expectations.
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Yep. There's a better chance of seeing HL3 releasing sooner than seeing this being used in hospitals on patients. And not to mention this is going to cost a ton of money as well, initially at least.
 
E

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
hucast21 said:
I take it you did not read the thread completely before replying to my post.
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I take it that you did not understand my post at all. I was making a general statement about journalism on scientific research.
 
M

M1ch04c4n0

Banned
Next headlines:

"Cancer researchers found dead, other is missing"
"Big pharma announces new cancer treatment. Cost lots of money, patients expected to sell soul prior to begin treatment".
 
B

bill0527

Member
btags said:
People have done so much stuff with miRNA and shRNA in the lab only to later have problems with delivery to actual tissue later on, which is exactly what this article says they plan to improve. I am sure it is cool science, but do not get your hopes up that this will be anything significant (as in a real treatment) any time soon. It is notoriously hard to deliver miRNAs to actual tissue and then for them to have a real effect. Even using viral particles to deliver shRNAs and the like is still very difficult in primary culture let alone a living human.

Besides, all the cool people know immune therapy is the future!
Click to expand...

I have no idea wtf you just said, but I think you just killed my erection.
 
E

Epsilon-delta

Banned
ElTorro said:
I take it that you did not understand my post at all. I was making a general statement about journalism on scientific research.
Click to expand...

You questioned the validity of the article, and then Mayo Clinic did their own write-up with the same language.

I think it's clear this particular journalist understood the actual publication.
 
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