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Before cancer kills, it cheats

news.harvard.edu

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Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#21

Post by fouc »

klmr wrote: post #15
untilHellbanned wrote: post #2

Professor at a med school here. Regardless of whether you think the specifics presented in this article (e.g., NSAIDS-esophageal cancer) are right, it’s great to see this kind of philosophical approach to biomedical research. We need more people like this professor. That she started with a plant and that made her think about humans was a great insight. She rightly recognizes the key role of cell autonomous vs. cell n…

> She rightly recognizes the key role of cell autonomous vs. cell non-autonomous processes in how multicellular organisms work. This is an odd comment: This realisation is quite literally at the core of cancer research, and every researcher in the field recognises this. Heck, it’s implied if not mentioned outright in the seminal Hallmarks of Cancer paper [1] that every cancer researcher (and probably generally most h…

I agree, it also struck me as an odd comment. To be honest parent post gives me the feeling of having a mansplaining tone to it.

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#23

Post by [deleted] »

fastball wrote: post #20
untilHellbanned wrote: post #2

Professor at a med school here. Regardless of whether you think the specifics presented in this article (e.g., NSAIDS-esophageal cancer) are right, it’s great to see this kind of philosophical approach to biomedical research. We need more people like this professor. That she started with a plant and that made her think about humans was a great insight. She rightly recognizes the key role of cell autonomous vs. cell n…

That she is a woman... publicity from Harvard I'd hate to break this to you, but that's definitely not surprising behavior from Harvard of all places. I mean, we're talking about the same Harvard, right?

[deleted]

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#24

Post by inteleng »

untilHellbanned wrote: post #2

Professor at a med school here. Regardless of whether you think the specifics presented in this article (e.g., NSAIDS-esophageal cancer) are right, it’s great to see this kind of philosophical approach to biomedical research. We need more people like this professor. That she started with a plant and that made her think about humans was a great insight. She rightly recognizes the key role of cell autonomous vs. cell n…

I find this comment extremely sexist.

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#25

Post by bhickey »

Slime molds are another excellent model for studying cheating. They're typically single cell organisms except when starved. Then they chemotax an aggregate into a multi-cellular organism. At this point they undergo sporulation, producing a stalk and a fruiting body. Cells in the stalk die while those in the fruit are hopefully whisked to greener pastures. When the slimes are homogeneous this works just fine. In a heterogenous setting all bets are off.

Cheater mutants have been widely observed and fall into two categories: obligatory and opportunistic cheaters. The obligatory cheaters refuse to participate in the stalk, while the opportunistic cheats preferentially segregate themselves into the fruit. It's easy to see how these behaviors might be beneficial. There's a double edge to obligatory cheating, though: in they cannot undergo sporulation.

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#26

Post by gshubert17 »

danharaj wrote: post #22

> This is what cancer cells do: Proliferate without limit, avoid cell death, monopolize resources, co-opt the labor of other cells, and destroy the surrounding environment. Rings a bell

Agreed. What can society, which creates corporations, do to limit the likelihood that they will "go rogue" to harm society?

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#27

Post by breckinloggins »

danharaj wrote: post #22

> This is what cancer cells do: Proliferate without limit, avoid cell death, monopolize resources, co-opt the labor of other cells, and destroy the surrounding environment. Rings a bell

I was thinking the same thing. Those locust plagues are hugely devastating...

Thinking beyond the snark for a bit, though, locusts might be an example of a species-level cancer cheating the “rules” of a habitat.

Humans? We just throw the rules away altogether and have historically written new ones that only apply to us. The difference between us and locusts, though, is that many of us fight back against our own short term interests and argue “hey, we’re a tumor right now. We should consider not being one of those.”

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#28

Post by jtbayly »

inteleng wrote: post #24
untilHellbanned wrote: post #2

Professor at a med school here. Regardless of whether you think the specifics presented in this article (e.g., NSAIDS-esophageal cancer) are right, it’s great to see this kind of philosophical approach to biomedical research. We need more people like this professor. That she started with a plant and that made her think about humans was a great insight. She rightly recognizes the key role of cell autonomous vs. cell n…

I find this comment extremely sexist.

I find this comment to be devoid of reason.

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#29

Post by epmaybe »

tcj_phx wrote: post #19
klmr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She rightly recognizes the key role of cell autonomous vs. cell non-autonomous processes in how multicellular organisms work. This is an odd comment: This realisation is quite literally at the core of cancer research, and every researcher in the field recognises this. Heck, it’s implied if not mentioned outright in the seminal Hallmarks of Cancer paper [1] that every cancer researcher (and probably generally most h…

> But it doesn’t hold any striking new insights. All of this is not merely known but in fact fundamental knowledge. A lot of "fundamental knowledge" in medicine is wrong. The genetic theory of cancer has always been a dead-end, because it reverses cause and effect. The cancer industry has encouraged "kill all the cancer cells" treatments because it's convenient for their business model. The cancer treatment situation…

Your comment is misleading. Certain cancers are indeed 'caused' by genetic changes, and researchers are actively looking for ways to prevent those genetic changes from occuring in the first place. But do you really tell someone with a familial mutation that we know causes thyroid cancer that they should be on a ketogenic diet?

Most therapeutics today are developed knowing that they will not have a substantially more beneficial effect than current therapies. We still develop these because even if they are not better they could reduce adverse events caused by our current best meds.

As far as I can tell in the last 80 years the Warburg effect has led PET scanning a viable way to detect the progression of many cancers.

To suggest that increased research into the Warburg effect is going to be the thing that leads to an explosion in novel therapeutics for cancer is wishful thinking, as far as I'm concerned. Cancer is complex, and while we could stand to learn more about metabolic changes in cancer, there's not going to be a magic pill for this one.

Re: Before cancer kills, it cheats

#30

Post by lotsofpulp »

gshubert17 wrote: post #26
danharaj wrote: post #22

> This is what cancer cells do: Proliferate without limit, avoid cell death, monopolize resources, co-opt the labor of other cells, and destroy the surrounding environment. Rings a bell

Agreed. What can society, which creates corporations, do to limit the likelihood that they will "go rogue" to harm society?

I think the person you are responding to is alluding to humans, not corporations.
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