Why haven't biologists cured cancer? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#91

Post by grishka » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 11:24 AM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #74

grishka wrote: post #21

This article is a good illustration of what's wrong with the current predominant approach in biology — it's all about genes and proteins, it's all way too reductionist to yield any meaningful higher-level outcomes. It's like trying to understand and manipulate an alien technology equivalent to a computer running a React web app, except you're only ever looking at and manipulating individual transistors in the CPU. As…

Levin's work smells like bullshit. And it's also just as reductionist, trying to represent everything as electrical interactions.

Not everything, only morphogenesis, which is currently unexplained either way. And it does make sense for cancer to be a morphogenesis defect, because that's essentially what it is, it's cells "forgetting" that they are part of a larger whole that has goals more important than their own ones.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#92

Post by pyentropy » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 11:26 AM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #48

petermcneeley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the body is cells. Most of cancer would be rogue cells. Cancer can be cured if you can: 1. Identify rogue cells 2. Destroy the rogue cells. You can use technology to do both and pretty much ignore biology.

Pathologist here (doctor who diagnoses cancer), who happens to have a degree in physics and works on diagnostic ML problems, including cancer. Cancer is not a simple anomaly detection problem. I mean, there's that, but so much more. These cells, each one of them, by their very nature, looks exactly like your normal healthy cells, on the outside. It's what's inside the cell that's going to kill you. The uncontrolled r…

You should start a blog... or maybe not - pursue the battle in academia/work and occasionally drop nuggets of wisdom like this somewhere. But do not delete them.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#93

Post by pieter_mj » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 11:54 AM UTC

LarsDu88 wrote: post #15

This idea of "curing cancer" as if cancer was a monolithic disease really needs to die. Cancer is just a catch-all term for somatic cell mutations that become unmanageable. There are as many ways to get "cancer" as there are ways to mutate cells into these sort of uncontrollable states. And there are cures for multiple cancers today (Imantinib, Herceptin, etc). There actually have been enormous recent strides in drug…

Cured, no. But largely preventable, yes. With a paradigm shift from genetic to metabolic.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#94

Post by 6510 » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 12:15 PM UTC

Zenzero wrote: post #70

petermcneeley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appeals to authority tend not to fly in a hacker community which is all about questioning authority and the status quo. It is usually much better to respond with logic and refutation.

I really can't tell if you're trolling at this point but in the chance you aren't, I'll bite. Appealing to the authority of a pathologist is safe in my book given the subject matter and the education of the counterparty. There is a lower bound of requisite knowledge beneath which it's not worth even trying to entertain your claims about just "find and destroy rogue cells". You can't even begin to respond with logic a…

"find and destroy rogue cells" is an attempt to ask the right question. Sometimes, when stuck, questions from ignorance are useful even if it is just as inspiration.

My ignorance has a model like: If you keep putting sugar in the gas tank, how do you fix the car? How do I stay healthy if I eat only crap? How do I stay fit if I never get out of my chair?

Shit, would it be one of those cause and effect things?

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#95

Post by lolinder » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 12:42 PM UTC

petermcneeley wrote: post #46

lanternfish wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any technology purpose built to interface with cells would be a biological technology.

Many treatments today focus on simply killing the rogue cells. You dont really need to interface with something if your objective is to destroy it.

Your first step is to identify it. What mechanism do you propose to use that doesn't somehow interface with biology?

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#96

Post by alan-hn » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 1:21 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #45

alan-hn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its interesting how your example perfectly illustrates reductionism in action. There are so many things that can go wrong, which is why cancer is such a heterogeneous group of diseases. There are many mutations that can happen which can lead to cancer growth and they have nothing to do with electrophysiology.

That's the thing with Michael's research, he injected an oncogene into a tadpole, and then made the tumor cells reconnect with the surrounding tissue and become healthy again, all while the gene was still strongly expressed.

Again reductionism in action "an oncogene" is so vague that its meaningless. Do you have any idea how many oncogenes there are and how many different things they do?

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#97

Post by the__alchemist » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 1:27 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #30

LarsDu88 wrote: post #15

This idea of "curing cancer" as if cancer was a monolithic disease really needs to die. Cancer is just a catch-all term for somatic cell mutations that become unmanageable. There are as many ways to get "cancer" as there are ways to mutate cells into these sort of uncontrollable states. And there are cures for multiple cancers today (Imantinib, Herceptin, etc). There actually have been enormous recent strides in drug…

Yeah, I always make sure to say cancer(s) so we can skip the “it’s not one disease “ digression. It adds nothing to the conversation. According to Craig Venter, early detection is what we need to eliminate cancer(s): https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8?t=15m37s

100% re early det. Some projects to look at: GRAIL, PanSeer (blood cfDNA next-gen sequencing), and several ones looking at the fragmentome. I imagine an effective solution will take the form of something like this, but cheap and convenient enough so that everyone can get it done regularly.

"cancer isn't a single disease"is often used as a thought-terminating cliche.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#98

Post by petermcneeley » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 2:38 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #68

petermcneeley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appeals to authority tend not to fly in a hacker community which is all about questioning authority and the status quo. It is usually much better to respond with logic and refutation.

I think you’ve misjudged the culture here

Well more just the specific audience. A physician is basically the inverse of a hacker.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#99

Post by bowsamic » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

petermcneeley wrote: post #98

bowsamic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve misjudged the culture here

Well more just the specific audience. A physician is basically the inverse of a hacker.

Despite the name it isn’t so much a hacker culture here but rather a general intelligentsia one

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#100

Post by petermcneeley » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 3:18 PM UTC

Zenzero wrote: post #88

XorNot wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I kind of get it: if the problem is tumours, just "laser" all the tumours out and problem solved right? Which feels like it should be true for a sufficiently targetable "laser" right? Metastatic cancer is defined by essentially there being too many things to hit though, but therein lies the entire detail: you can't treat someone faster than they die of either the cancer or the treatment. *Laser is being used m…

> if the problem is tumours Google paraneoplastic syndromes. Cancer is rarely a problem of just tumors. > just "laser" all the tumours out and problem solved right? No. The tumors don't just evaporate. The treatment causes tissue necrosis. Your laser causes inflammation. Even the high tech IMRT you're picturing has those problems. >Metastatic cancer is defined by essentially there being too many things to hit though,…

I dont get it. The first hit there says it is a rare disorder due to cancer; so this is already not the more common case. Second it is still due to the presence although not local of the tumor. If you destroy the tumor you may have a chance of resolving the condition.

I am aware of necrosis. You need to either completely break down the cell or remove the material. Radiation of course does not do this but surgery of course does.

My appeal to you would be to allow more disruption in this space. Software and Hardware are (mostly) unregulated which allowed for the explosion of progress.