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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mars on June 19, 2008, 03:16:59 pm
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Clone cell cancer 'cure' hailed (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7460743.stm)
Scientists claim they have cured advanced skin cancer for the first time using the patient's own cells cloned outside the body.
The 52-year-old man involved was free of melanoma two years after treatment.
US researchers, reports the New England Journal of Medicine, took cancer-fighting immune cells, made five billion copies, then put them all back.
Scientists in the UK warned that further trials would need to be done to prove how well the treatment worked.
This is another interesting demonstration of the huge power of the immune system to fight some types of cancer
Spokesman
Cancer Research UK
The body's immune system plays a significant role in the battle against cancer, and doctors have been looking for ways to boost this tumour-killing response.
The 52-year-old man had advanced melanoma which had spread to the lungs and lymph nodes.
Scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle concentrated on a type of immune system cell called a CD4+ T cell.
FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME
More from Today programme
From a sample of the man's white blood cells, they were able to select CD4+ T cells which had been specifically primed to attack a chemical found on the surface of melanoma cells.
These were then multiplied in the laboratory, and put back in their billions to see if they could mount an effective attack on the tumours.
Two months later, scans showed the tumours had disappeared, and after two years, the man remained disease-free.
The new cells persisted in the body for months after the treatment.
'Immune power'
While claiming this as a world first, the study authors pointed out that their technique applied only to a patient with a particular type of immune system and tumour type, and could work for only a small percentage of people with advanced skin cancer.
Patients will live with their cancer, and die with their cancer, but not of their cancer - it will be like diabetes today
Professor Karol Sikora
Imperial College London
Dr Cassian Yee, who led the project, said: "For this patient we were successful, but we would need to confirm the effectiveness of therapy in a larger study."
Professor Karol Sikora, a cancer expert at Imperial College in London, described the research as "pretty exciting" with potentially wide application.
He said the researchers had focused on melanoma because the disease was well understood compared with other cancers, but other cancers could potentially be targeted.
He said: "I think we will be able to harness the power of the immune system. Eventually we will learn how to control cancer, in other words we will suppress it.
"Patients will live with their cancer, and die with their cancer, but not of their cancer - it will be like diabetes today."
A spokesman for Cancer Research UK also said more research would be needed, adding: "This is another interesting demonstration of the huge power of the immune system to fight some types of cancer.
"Although the technique is complex and difficult to use for all but a few patients, the principle that someone's own immune cells can be expanded and made to work in this way is very encouraging for the work that ourselves and others are carrying out in this field."
Obviously it was only one person, but that's pretty damn cool.
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Very! :)
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That's a very promising start to the treatment, however!
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Sure, it cures Caner, I'd be more concerned it if cured Cancer.
"Yay!" I say. This may end a lot of suffering. At least in Atheists.
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One step closer to "I am legend" Vampires. . . .this will either end very well or very badly. I always wanted to drive a dodge viper while hunting deer in St James' park ;D
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You think there is a cure to cancer? Don't viruses adapt to the medicine we give sometimes? Its a never ending cycle. Once we cure Cancer and I mean all different kinds Cancer.. something else bigger will come. Thats what I think. And no we shouldn't give up. Theres probably stuff in us we don't even know about that lie dormant until something activates it.
just my 2 cents. And no I'm not against curing I just find it hard to believe we can live 100% perfect. There is always a problem. Therefore its called life ;)
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You think there is a cure to cancer? Don't viruses adapt to the medicine we give sometimes? Its a never ending cycle. Once we cure Cancer and I mean all different kinds Cancer.. something else bigger will come. Thats what I think. And no we shouldn't give up. Theres probably stuff in us we don't even know about that lie dormant until something activates it.
just my 2 cents. And no I'm not against curing I just find it hard to believe we can live 100% perfect. There is always a problem. Therefore its called life ;)
QFT - we have to die sometime.
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You think there is a cure to cancer? Don't viruses adapt to the medicine we give sometimes? Its a never ending cycle. Once we cure Cancer and I mean all different kinds Cancer.. something else bigger will come. Thats what I think. And no we shouldn't give up. Theres probably stuff in us we don't even know about that lie dormant until something activates it.
just my 2 cents. And no I'm not against curing I just find it hard to believe we can live 100% perfect. There is always a problem. Therefore its called life ;)
There is no true cure to cancer...eventually it will get us because of its very nature. Its just a malfunction of cells produced by our own body. But why should an otherwise healthy and productive person die because a couple of their cells decided to start making mistakes? We do have to die sometime...that seems to be the way of things. But I'm all for prolonging life and attaching as much value to it as possible.
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QFT - we have to die sometime.
Says who?
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QFT - we have to die sometime.
Says who?
Entropy? :)
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This is not a medicine in the traditional sense. What they're doing is cloning the cells in the body that naturally attack cancer, and cloning them thousands of times, and injecting billions of these cells back into the body.
Basically it's a clone army of the soldiers we've always had.
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Hahaha, I can just see the fundo-conservatives' reaction: Cancer cure from Clone souls is evil! :lol:
...'cause every clone is sacred, every clone is great,
If a clone is wasted, God gets quite irate.
After all, they do oppose stem cell research... I'll be surprised if they don't go to the fricking barricades against this. :rolleyes:
Then again, perhaps they could take a reasonable approach on this matter.
By the way... if there were more radiation, the specimen prone to cancer would die out before getting a chance to reproduce, and the rest of the population would eventually develope more or less similar ways to fix radiation-induced cell damage like Deinococcus radiodurans has. Of course, too much radiation and it'll just kill the species out - along with a few others on the way - but it might be interesting (if a slightly inhumane) experience to separate a population of humans in a town and increase their radiation exposure generation by generation, until they were fit for interstellar traveling without significant radiation shielding... :p or nuclear reactor chamber maintenance crews.
I would offer a cookie for every unethical idea or implication in that, but I'd probably run out of them.
....soo.. where was it. Right. Cancer. Carry on...
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QFT - we have to die sometime.
Says who?
Entropy? :)
Curse you, thermodynamics!
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Actually, theoretically human life could last as long as the universe has some energy inbalance (entropy hasn't yet reached it's maximum value), as human body isn't a closed system and entropy itself does not answer to the question "why does human life end in natural death after lifetime t", but it does answer to the question "why will life, universe and everything end after time T when universe's entropy reaches it's highest state".
Thermodynamics are funny... they make the game theory kinda depressing, because the rules of the game are as follow:
0. You must play the game.
1. You can't win in the game.
2. You can't break even in the game.
3. You can't quit the game.
There, for all game theorists out there... try and figure out a successful strategy in that.*
*of course, the rules don't hold in a non-closed system like Earth. Which is convenient to leave out or remind depending on the subject of the matter... ;7
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Thermodynamics are funny... they make the game theory kinda depressing, because the rules of the game are as follow:
0. You must play the game.
1. You can't win in the game.
2. You can't break even in the game.
3. You can't quit the game.
There, for all game theorists out there... try and figure out a successful strategy in that.*
...that is awesome. :D
And I can't see why anyone (or at least, just about anyone) who has a problem with embryonic stem cell research would find anything objectionable about this, since no embryos are being destroyed. Hell, most opponents of embryonic stem cell research are heavy proponents of adult stem cell research, which uses essentially the same process that's being employed here.
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Crap. I just lost the game.
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Can't believe no one has asked the obvious question yet:
Does the army of cloned cells come with white armor, helmets, and blasters?
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And LAATs.
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Don't worry... those furry little cancer cells will tie them in knots :doubt:
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is there a disadvantage of having that many immune cells in your system all at once? be cool if you could implant a tiny immune system cloning factory in the human body and never have to worry about getting sick ever again.
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I personally have an autoimmune disorder that attacks my thyroid... basically my immune system produces anti-bodies that mark my thyroid as an invader. It's not at all serious, but other similar diseases exist, such as Lupus. It wouldn't be a huge surprise to me if an increase in immune cells made autoimmune disorders more likely
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is there a disadvantage of having that many immune cells in your system all at once? be cool if you could implant a tiny immune system cloning factory in the human body and never have to worry about getting sick ever again.
That's not how the immune system actually works.
B and T cells (which are the antibody-mediating cells of the immune system that fight a variety of different ailments, among them viruses and some types of cancer) are produced from stem cells in large numbers on a continuing basis, BUT experience elevated levels during the presence of an infection/disease. That said, both types of cells go through a rigorous genetic screening process within the body to ensure they don't attack our own healthy cells.
This process essentially takes one type of T cell which has been identified as having a cancer-type amino acid target and makes billions of copies. The copies are ONLY able to target a particular protein expression pattern which matches the cancer it was previously identified as being typed for. T cells have a natural life span of around 90 days, so they get flushed from the body fairly quickly.
The trouble with massive numbers of immune cells, even of a particular type, is that there is some serious potential for them to start attacking the wrong thing - which results in autoimmune diseases where the body starts to kill its own healthy cells. This is partially alleviated by the initial screening, and further eliminated by the 90-day life cycle. However, if we artificially and continuously boost the numbers of immune cells, we'll not only knock out metabolisms way out of whack (naturally creating that many cells costs energy from the body), but we have that much more potential to develop autoimmune disorders.
It's a delicate balance.
And more is not necessarily better. Specific-target CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in sufficient numbers can wipe a disease from your system quickly, but it limits the numbers of other specificities you can have floating around - making you more susceptible to other diseases. Unfortunately, these cells have to be extremely specific to target and kill disease, and one cell usually works for only one disease.
EDIT: You hit it bang on Mars
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That comment about a tiny cloning factory and never getting old a few posts up. . . . Someone saw Heroes last night didn't they :)
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Isn't the body knowing what it needs to attack part of the process with creating the cells in the first place? If so if you just had a bunch of them and a new variant of the cold showed up they wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. Kind of the whole theory behind immunizations. Give the body a sample of what it needs to know how to defeat so it knows how to make the cells to defeat it.
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It takes some very specialized cells to kill cancer, I'm not sure if they're existence is triggered by the appearence of the disease or if they always exist to kill cancer that hasn't taken off yet.
What we need is an immunologist in this thread.
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Well cancer cells are created in our bodies all the time. It's the ones that become malignant or in some other way damage the body that are the problem.
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Crap. I just lost the game.
Argh! I want to hurt you! I was... at least a year or more.
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I love you too.
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Can't believe no one has asked the obvious question yet:
Does the army of cloned cells come with white armor, helmets, and blasters?
And LAATs.
And AT-TEs.
is there a disadvantage of having that many immune cells in your system all at once? be cool if you could implant a tiny immune system cloning factory in the human body and never have to worry about getting sick ever again.
Too much of a good thing is still bad for you.
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It takes some very specialized cells to kill cancer, I'm not sure if they're existence is triggered by the appearence of the disease or if they always exist to kill cancer that hasn't taken off yet.
What we need is an immunologist in this thread.
*waves*
I answered that already.
The body has several template immune cells that target cancer specifically (known cancer triggers), and in addition CD4+ T-cells can "learn" to fight particular cancer variants once exposed to the cancer protein fragments.
Because I haven't thrown it out there recently...
I have a Bacclaureate of Science with Specialization in Molecular Genetics from the University of Alberta (http://www.ualberta.ca). Featured courses include molecular genetics, Mendelian genetics, evolutionary biology, immunology, virology, microbiology, and microbial genetics. I've also taken classes on human genetics and genetic disease, an immunology course on cancer and viruses, plus another genetics course that was entirely about human cancer.
So... any other questions you'd like cleared up? =)
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Well cancer cells are created in our bodies all the time. It's the ones that become malignant or in some other way damage the body that are the problem.
Sort of.
Cancer is not a disease, but rather a naturally occurring form of cellular decay. DNA gets damaged (either through aging or exposure to various chemical and physical disturbances) and the cells lose their ability to do three key things: (1) regulate cell division based upon density, (2) commit cellular suicide when they realize that something has gone wrong with them, and (3) lose their ability to remain stuck together. This leads to the perpetual growth unchecked by natural cellular destruction which is capable of spreading, through metastasis (breakage from the clump) throughout the body. And its usually not the cancer itself that kills you but the immune system's reaction to it (exceptions in the cases of cancers of vital organs such as the brain, lungs, and liver).
Cancer cells are created in our bodies every day but are promptly killed by immune cells that wander the body specifically looking for markers that are unique to only cancer cells.
Problem cancers occur in areas where immune cells are either unable to get at them, or unable to recognize them. This is where specialized cytotoxic T cells come into play and target the specific antigens of the specific type of cancer cell.
Cancer is primarily an affliction of the aged; however, with increasing levels of exposure to carcinogens, some forms of cancer triggered by non-natural causes are occurring earlier and earlier in life. In short, anything that can damage DNA is a potential carcinogen... and there are lots out there.