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Why cancer cells waste so much energy

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Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#131

Post by eloff »

wittyreference wrote: post #104
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…

Great questions. 1. We do attempt to attack cancers by reducing their available energy. That's why, at one point, a major field of research in cancer therapeutics was interfering with angiogenesis, because cancers will secrete messengers that help grow them dedicated (if crappy, low-quality) blood vessels. The issue with "starving" them more starkly is that they're very good at getting a share (e.g., forcing the body…

I favorited this comment, because it's one of the best high-level explanations of Cancer I've come across. Thank you for sharing.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#132

Post by wizzwizz4 »

aficiomaquinas wrote: post #120
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't agree with trusting YouTube blindly. I trust my friends and colleagues that have cured their cancer better. Also note that chlorine dioxide is not sodium hypoclorite. It's like comparing salt (which also contains chlorine) with sugar.

The people who didn't cure their cancer aren't your colleagues.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#133

Post by thotsBgone »

simplemen wrote: post #29
dplgk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This didn't work for Steve Jobs

He wasn't fasting, he was on fruits diet.

He was also on the fruits diet before the pancreatic cancer. Makes you wonder if the fruit diet contributed to the cancer.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#134

Post by caymanjim »

wittyreference wrote: post #104
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…

Great questions. 1. We do attempt to attack cancers by reducing their available energy. That's why, at one point, a major field of research in cancer therapeutics was interfering with angiogenesis, because cancers will secrete messengers that help grow them dedicated (if crappy, low-quality) blood vessels. The issue with "starving" them more starkly is that they're very good at getting a share (e.g., forcing the body…

> I hope my answer was actually useful in providing some biological context? I'm afraid I might have just word-vomited instead of being helpful.

I'm enjoying all your comments in this thread. You're knowledgeable and you're doing a good job of translating it into lay terms. I've had cancer and I'm a nerd, so I've read a fair bit about it. Everything you're saying fits well into my understanding, and you've given me some new things to look into.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#135

Post by tasty_freeze »

lisper wrote: post #65
tasty_freeze wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no biologist, but I'd be surprised if this is true. Genes which are essential the the function of an organism are well conserved relative to silenced genes over long time spans. This is because mutations happen randomly, and mutations to essential genes in the germline tend to get weeded out, while mutations to silenced genes can get corrupted without affecting the fitness of the offspring. This theory, from the…

You're assuming that the set of genes that produce multicellular life are largely disjoint from those that produce unicellular life, and that is unlikely to be the case. Much more likely, multicellular life is an incremental set of changes layered on top of unicellular life, and so the only thing required to revert from multicellular back to unicellular is a breakdown in that higher-layer functionality. If you're not…

> You're assuming that the set of genes that produce multicellular life are largely disjoint from those that produce unicellular life,

I assume no such thing.

I've read (but can't cite) that roughly 90% of our genes are related to construction and maintenance of the cell itself, and only about 10% are related to higher order organization. Just as it has been said that something like humans and tomatoes have 50% of our genomes in common, there is a significant but smaller percent that we have in common with single-celled life forms.

> HeLa

I read the book years ago.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#136

Post by Laforet »

aficiomaquinas wrote: post #120
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't agree with trusting YouTube blindly. I trust my friends and colleagues that have cured their cancer better. Also note that chlorine dioxide is not sodium hypoclorite. It's like comparing salt (which also contains chlorine) with sugar.

>chlorine dioxide is not sodium hypoclorite

I wasn't sure what to make of what you said until you dropped this common fallacy used by MMS cultists.

All forms of oxidising bleach (chlorine gas, hypochlorite solution, chlorine dioxide, hydrogen peroxide, sodium perborate, etc) take effect by taking electrons from other matter. These reactions are able to "bleach" because pigments are often complex organic molecules which tend to decompose in presence of strong oxidizers.

The toxicity of chlorine dioxide is very well studied. Guess what, once absorbed it acts as a bleach/oxidizer in your blood, rupturing red blood cells and may lead to kidney failure as haemoglobin is released into the plasma.

The reaction is caused by the inhibition of glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase which is probably the tenuous link between consuming bleach and cancer treatment. While the enzyme is indeed a drug target that people have looked into, it is very unlikely to work by oral dosing because many healthy issue also rely on the enzyme to survive.

This, of course, has not stopped the MMS cult from claiming that their panacea cures every single ailment under the sun which has no medical basis whatsoever.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#137

Post by caymanjim »

dplgk wrote: post #26
whalesalad wrote: post #19

I’m curious to see how fasting might influence cancer treatment. I know in other parts of the world it is seen as a legitimate treatment, while also potentially considered to be a hippy dippy homeopathic treatment. Anecdotally it seems you can starve certain cancers to death pretty easily by severely limiting your caloric intake. I sense a relationship between that and this study.

This didn't work for Steve Jobs

Jobs also had pancreatic cancer. It's just about the worst cancer you can get. Over 95% mortality rate. I don't think he did himself any favors by eschewing medical treatment in favor of alternative "medicine", but the harsh reality is that he was doomed no matter what.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#138

Post by lisper »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #135
lisper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that the set of genes that produce multicellular life are largely disjoint from those that produce unicellular life, and that is unlikely to be the case. Much more likely, multicellular life is an incremental set of changes layered on top of unicellular life, and so the only thing required to revert from multicellular back to unicellular is a breakdown in that higher-layer functionality. If you're not…

> You're assuming that the set of genes that produce multicellular life are largely disjoint from those that produce unicellular life, I assume no such thing. I've read (but can't cite) that roughly 90% of our genes are related to construction and maintenance of the cell itself, and only about 10% are related to higher order organization. Just as it has been said that something like humans and tomatoes have 50% of ou…

> I assume no such thing.

You certainly do:

"This theory, from the way you've stated it, would require preservation of inactive genes for hundreds of millions of years, only to spring back to action in cancer cells."

This is only true if the genes for being single-celled are inactive in multi-celled creatures and would need to be re-actived to revert to being single-celled. But this is not the case. Milti-cellularity is a functional layer built on top of single-cellularity, so to revert to being single-celled you have to deactivate currently active genes, not activate inactive ones.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#139

Post by INTPenis »

oedmarap wrote: post #107

Worth noting that unlike the cells of the human body, cancer cells are unable to utilize ketones as an energy source[0][1], hence the benefits of a ketogenic diet. A ketogenic diet can also be ideally coupled with intermittent fasting[2] in order to engage/enhance autophagy within the body. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5842847/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375425/ [2] https://…

Interesting!

But worth noting is that there are cancers that feed on estrogen for example. And other users have noted that cancers don't just feed on ketones.

But it's really cool because keto seems to be a diet that truly works, also requires some will power.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#140

Post by pazimzadeh »

The summary is that NAD+ is limited for cancer cells, so NAD+ depletion could be a promising cancer therapy.

On the other hand, a recent paper shows that NAD+ replenishment reverts tumor resistance to immunotherapy, so those therapies shouldn't be combined.

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(20)...

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