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Why cancer cells waste so much energy

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Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#91

Post by beagle3 »

chmod600 wrote: post #77
captaincrunch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No medical experience, other than as a patient... however I read the body can live up to two months without food (but with adequate water). If you managed to survive longer than the cancer cells, wouldn't they just come back after defeat? Doesn't this stem from DNA?

Dumb question: why two months? Doesn't it depend on your fat reserves? If you are 350 pounds, can't you just not eat until you are 150 and be fine? (I am not suggesting that this is true or that anyone should try it; I don't know and I am asking the question.)

With respect to energy, that’s apparently true.

However, metabolism has non-energy needs which are supplied through food: vitamins, minerals, protein, and some fats that cannot be synthesized iirc. Though these needs are greatly reduced when fasting, they do not go to zero.

Google “angus barbieri” for the most famous, though not unique, example for medically documented long term fasting.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#92

Post by navaati »

majkinetor wrote: post #78
foxhop wrote: post #9

At the end of the day life is a series of ever complex systems of inputs and outputs. I'm not surprised by the findings and the resolution to this paradox. When we look at apparent inefficiencies of life systems (singletons and complete systems) we have to take into account setting and environmental factors as well as the various layers of abstraction. Looking down at cancer (similar to a defect in software) and ques…

> life is a series of ever complex systems of inputs and outputs. That changes dynamically depending on environmental changes. Basically infinite plasticity. Not something we have in our human engineering.

> Not something we have in our human engineering.

That's not true if you're talking about software engineering and you include the developpers and product people in the system ;)

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#93

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

excannuck wrote: post #53
wittyreference wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots It's not close to even 'relatively' being new. I was giving cancer talks that made mention of it back when I worked in cancer bio, just about 16 years ago now. I didn't come up with it, and it wasn't new then. I used it in tal…

Since you were a cancer researcher in a previous life, may I ask you a question I thought of commenting on another's comment? If cancer cells have high metabolic requirements, couldn't you attack them by: 1. lowering the caloric intake of the patient 2. Making the glucose the patient intakes mildly radioactive, say with a beta or an alpha emitter [1]. As the patient is strictly kept on a low caloric diet, the radioac…

Low-carb is a thing/fad/potentially useful practice among patients.

As to Radioactivity, I’m not sure if your model would work: higher usage does not necessarily mean “more contact with”. Does the fish that drinks more have more exposure to water than his friend?

That said, radioactivity is obviously used, because cells at the proliferation stage are specifically susceptible to it. The same is true for most chemotherapy, I. e. they target the mechanisms of cell division.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#94

Post by PeterisP »

zaroth wrote: post #15
yholio wrote: post #12

This is the type of fundamental research that private labs do not typically pursue, yet might yield revolutionary treatments.

Was it public or private labs that did all the amazing mRNA research?

50/50 - as with most things, the initial breakthroughs took 10+ years in public labs (e.g. the work by Kariko & Weissman), and one it was clear that the new idea works and roughly how it could be used, it took 10 or so years in private labs to make it practical and scalable.

Also, it's not exactly accurate to view something as "developed in public lab" or "developed in private lab", as often (also in this case) the research is done by the same people but they do the early stage in a public lab and then move on to (or create) a private lab for the later stage of technological readiness.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#95

Post by whatshisface »

smartscience wrote: post #87
dnautics wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1] Say replacing the hydrogens in glucose with tritium That's part of the problem. Think you can come up with a synthesis of glucose that replaces the nonlabile hydrogens with tritium, is doable on the days scale, repurifiable for human consumption and mass producable on-site at a hospital? For reference ($900/20Ci): https://www.perkinelmer.com/product/glucose-d-3-3h-hplc-puri...

I'd be willing to have a crack at this if I thought it could help (my background is in nuclear methods for materials characterisation). But I've a feeling that the difference in uptake between cancerous and normal tissue might not be large enough to make this especially useful. Fluorine-18 labelled glucose is used in PET imaging, but not for treatment as far as I'm aware. On the other hand, if a compound can be found…

Isotope labeling for imaging requires only a low isotope purity. One radioactive glucose in a vast sea of normal glucose is just fine, because as I'm sure you know the energies of the emitted particles make a very distinct marker.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#96

Post by wtetzner »

wittyreference wrote: post #39
inglor_cz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots; multicellular organisms used to be single cell organisms a billion years ago and the original genes might carry on within our DNA until today. But they should be switched off. Once they are switched on, the cells will stop coop…

> There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots It's not close to even 'relatively' being new. I was giving cancer talks that made mention of it back when I worked in cancer bio, just about 16 years ago now. I didn't come up with it, and it wasn't new then. I used it in tal…

> It doesn't produce any alternative lines for thinking about treatment, causality, etc.

The whole "genes that shouldn't be on being switched on" thing made me think about David Sinclair's work on aging, and his information theory of aging.

Has anyone been really looking into ways to avoid damaging (or ways to repair) epigenetic information as a potential solution to cancer?

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#97

Post by majkinetor »

navaati wrote: post #92
majkinetor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> life is a series of ever complex systems of inputs and outputs. That changes dynamically depending on environmental changes. Basically infinite plasticity. Not something we have in our human engineering.

> Not something we have in our human engineering. That's not true if you're talking about software engineering and you include the developpers and product people in the system ;)

Totally spot on :-).

Its in good part inherited complexity (as humans didn't engineer humans). The other part is in Mytical Man Month :-)

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#98

Post by twic »

excannuck wrote: post #53
wittyreference wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots It's not close to even 'relatively' being new. I was giving cancer talks that made mention of it back when I worked in cancer bio, just about 16 years ago now. I didn't come up with it, and it wasn't new then. I used it in tal…

Since you were a cancer researcher in a previous life, may I ask you a question I thought of commenting on another's comment? If cancer cells have high metabolic requirements, couldn't you attack them by: 1. lowering the caloric intake of the patient 2. Making the glucose the patient intakes mildly radioactive, say with a beta or an alpha emitter [1]. As the patient is strictly kept on a low caloric diet, the radioac…

> Making the glucose the patient intakes mildly radioactive

The carbon and oxygen in glucose used as fuel doesn't stay in the cell - it becomes lactic acid (or carbon dioxide and water), which leaves the cell.

You could make a weaponised version of something which does get retained in the cancer cell. For example, nucleosides, which are the raw material for DNA, and which are needed in volume to support cancer cells' rapid proliferation. These drugs are called nucleoside analogues, and are used to treat cancer and viruses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemcitabine

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#99

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

aficiomaquinas wrote: post #88
excannuck wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you were a cancer researcher in a previous life, may I ask you a question I thought of commenting on another's comment? If cancer cells have high metabolic requirements, couldn't you attack them by: 1. lowering the caloric intake of the patient 2. Making the glucose the patient intakes mildly radioactive, say with a beta or an alpha emitter [1]. As the patient is strictly kept on a low caloric diet, the radioac…

There is a very interesting book around the metabolic route for treating cancer. It's called "Starving cancer" by Jane McLelland. It talks about using over the counter drugs and supplements that have been studied for their metabolic blocking properties for cancer, as well as changing the diet to reduce as much as possible the nutrients that cancer craves the most according to their metabolic phenotype. Most of the ti…

If something is flagged by YouTube, it must be a really bad idea.

Chlorine isn’t too bad in terms of toxicity, or it wouldn’t be added to drinking water and freely sold for all sorts of purposes.

But there’s absolutely no reason to ingest it (or any other route of administration).

I guess it’s exactly because of it’s ubiquity that those of a conspiratorial mindset like it so much: it fits with the idea that there are obvious and easy answers suppressed by that mighty cabal of Bill Gates/Soros/some other Jews.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#100

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

dnautics wrote: post #71
excannuck wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you were a cancer researcher in a previous life, may I ask you a question I thought of commenting on another's comment? If cancer cells have high metabolic requirements, couldn't you attack them by: 1. lowering the caloric intake of the patient 2. Making the glucose the patient intakes mildly radioactive, say with a beta or an alpha emitter [1]. As the patient is strictly kept on a low caloric diet, the radioac…

[1] Say replacing the hydrogens in glucose with tritium That's part of the problem. Think you can come up with a synthesis of glucose that replaces the nonlabile hydrogens with tritium, is doable on the days scale, repurifiable for human consumption and mass producable on-site at a hospital? For reference ($900/20Ci): https://www.perkinelmer.com/product/glucose-d-3-3h-hplc-puri...

Just grow some sprouts in it?

(Not an endorsement of the idea)

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