August 10, 2012
Cancer research: Open ambition
From Nature:
Jay Bradner has a knack for getting the word out online. You can follow him on Twitter; you can become one of more than 400,000 online viewers of the TEDx talk he gave in Boston, Massachusetts, last year; you can see the three-dimensional structure of a cancer-drug prototype created in his laboratory and you can e-mail him to request a sample of the compound. Bradner, a physician and chemical biologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, makes defeating cancer sound easy — one just has to play tricks on its memory. “With all the things cancer is trying to do to kill our patient, how does it remember it is cancer?” he asked his rapt TEDx audience. Bradner says that the answer lies in epigenetics, the programmes that manage the genome. DNA serves as the basic blueprint for all cellular activity, and DNA mutations have long been known to have a role in cancer. But much of a cell's identity is determined by modifications to chromatin, which comprises DNA and the proteins that bind and package it. Epigenetic instructions, in the form of chemical marks that cling to chromatin, tell cells how to interpret the underlying genetic sequence, defining a cell's identity as, say, blood or muscle. Findings over the past ten years have strongly implicated dysregulation of epigenetic instructions in cancer, where growth-driving genes express like crazy and genes that keep cell division in check are silenced. Bradner's aim is to create a drug that can rewrite those instructions so that cancer cells forget what they are and cease their deadly proliferation.
Bradner thinks that this epigenetic approach could strike down one of cancer's most treacherous drivers, the DNA-binding protein Myc. Myc is involved in up to 70% of cancers but is generally considered 'undruggable', because the active parts of its structure are not accessible to the kinds of small-molecule drugs that chemists generally create. “Myc is one of those things that people dream of targeting,” says Dash Dhanak, head of cancer epigenetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 06:33 AM | Permalink
Comments
Cue, the mad illogical rantings of one WJAbbe....
Take cover.!
(just don't ask him to engage your arguments though, that can't be done with cut 'n paste.)
Posted by: MattInOz | Aug 10, 2012 9:12:55 AM
Hard to believe WJAbbe missed this one.
Posted by: reader | Aug 10, 2012 9:31:18 AM
There is a simple scientific explanation of why heart cancer is rare compared to say breast or prostate cancer.
According to the experiments and facts developed by the genius in Germany Otto H. Warburg, M.D., Ph.D., decades ago, but mostly ignored by the prejudiced and ignorant and negligent cancer generals, cancer is a disease of oxygen deficiency or respiratory impairment or the wrong energy supply. All cancer cells metabolize by the abnormal process of anerobic glycolysis, primarily in the absence of oxygen or fermentation. These conclusions are based on experiments and facts, using for the most part real live tissue, not fake ones in dishes under artificial energy supplies. They are not based on genetic speculations as has been done by the prejudiced cancer generals.
Read the book “The Hidden Story of Cancer” by Brian Peskin, Pinnacle Press, Houston, 2010.
This book has a whole chapter and an appendix proving that cancer is not genetically caused.
Therefore, since even in a patient with heart problems, there is usually plentiful amounts of oxygen in the heart muscle, one observes very little cancer develop there.
However, in fatty breast tissue the oxygen must travel by the physics process of diffusion from the nearest blood supply to the cells, a difficult and easily impeded process. The same in the prostate and many other areas and organs of the body.
The simplest explanations are what should and must be accepted in science. This is called the law of Parsimony proved over long periods of time in physics and chemistry. Unfortunately the cancer generals and their comrades in biology never learned this basic principle or if they did, disregarded it due to the prejudice and ignorance of their teachers often at MIT and Harvard where they hated the genius in Germany Otto Warburg, M.D., Ph.D. Perhaps the reason for this is because many medical scientists and doctors take and learn very little physics beyond the high school level. Perhaps this is because few of them could pass a rigorous course in college physics. Just observe the damage this has wrought in failed cancer non research.
Here is what another prejudiced, ignorant "expert" said on this subject in 2007 while at the lab of the prejudiced "expert" Weinberg:
http://www.wi.mit.edu/programs/ask/010307.html
“Perhaps another interesting question is: why aren’t cardiac malignancies more common? This question can only really be answered with speculation. The most common explanation is that the heart is considered a post-mitotic organ, with little or no division of cardiac myocytes, in contrast to the rapid turnover of epithelial tissues in the skin, gastrointestinal tract, and other organs, which helps to explain the higher incidence of cancers in those organs. Currently, there is a great deal of interest in how the heart “remodels” after myocardial infarction, with some evidence for a role by putative cardiac stem cells in this process. Additionally, experimental studies suggest a role for mesenchymal stem cells in repair of heart damage and remodeling, so there probably are dividing cells in the heart, in contrast to what was previously thought.”
Obviously, the author of this unenlightening article, Rick Lee then at MIT, now at Mass. Gen. Hospital, has also not read of Otto Warburg.
http://www.massgeneral.org/doctors/doctor.aspx?id=17893 Rick Lee, MD, Ph.D
This is the underlying reason explaining why the prejudiced cancer generals and the failed war on cancer have gotten nowhere for almost a half a century and the squandering of over $100 billion public and private dollars.
In fact, it seems the more money we spend on worthless, complicated cancer non research, the more cancer we get!
Mutated genes are the result, not the cause of cancer. The prejudiced, negligent and scientific idiot cancer generals have it backwards. They literally do not know what they are doing and must all be immediately fired and prosecuted for scientific misconduct, fraud, medical quackery and crimes against humanity.
This illustrates why the great physicist Richard Feynman advocated to avoid paying attention to "experts". And when he did, after being diagnosed with horrible cancer, he did not heed his own advice and where did it leave him? Quite dead in a cemetery.
He might be alive today if he had read the many scientific experiments and facts proved by the genius in Germany Otto Warburg, M.D., Ph.D. on cancer.
Even Feynman was ignorant on cancer too; and he paid the ultimate price.
Posted by: W.J.Abbe | Aug 10, 2012 9:46:48 AM
Yes, it is quite amazing that this of all posts should have escaped him.
Posted by: Erich | Aug 10, 2012 7:54:15 PM
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