[HN Gopher] Why cancer cells waste so much energy
___________________________________________________________________
Why cancer cells waste so much energy
Author : chmaynard
Score : 270 points
Date : 2021-01-15 13:11 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| jgilias wrote:
| Very interesting. Another result showing how increased NAD+
| levels 'benefit' cancer cells casting a shadow on the idea of
| NAD+ boosting supplementation to increase healthspan and
| lifespan. But then, it's not like this means that heightened NAD+
| levels cause cancer. Just that it is plausible that it makes it
| more aggressive, once you have it.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Why doubt?
|
| It only proves that supplements work as indented in prolonging
| eycariotic cell life.
|
| Its just that you don't want everything in your body to be
| boosted, just some - cancer is just one of those, you don't
| want various constituents of your body flora influenced as
| well, like parasites, harmful microbiota etc.
| jgilias wrote:
| So the trick is figuring out how to boost the things you want
| to boost without boosting or preferably even inhibiting
| things you don't want to boost. Actually, this echoes what is
| sometimes said about curing cancer. That it's pretty easy to
| kill cancer. The problem is in keeping people alive in the
| process.
|
| In either way, I'm pretty excited by all the recent findings
| and breakthroughs in both fields - longevity and figuring out
| cancer.
| mncharity wrote:
| I enjoyed Zhaoqi Li's associated thesis defense "Bioenergetics
| and Metabolism of Eukaryotic Cell Proliferation" a few weeks ago.
| I don't quickly find his defense or thesis available online yet,
| but this paper[1] (open access) looks similar. Here's his
| twitter.[2] And a profile[3].
|
| Someday we'll need to address the issue that talks, with their
| more extensive and accessible graphics and explanations, are less
| available to the public than papers.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109727652...
| [2] https://twitter.com/zhaoqili [3]
| https://biology.mit.edu/graduate/why-mit-biology/graduate-te...
| oedmarap wrote:
| 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://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6257056/
| dpatrick86 wrote:
| Your point may be broadly true but subject to important
| caveats. Cancer is a very heterogeneous disease. There is
| evidence that _some_ cancers can use, for example,
| acetoacetate.
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170112141359.h...
| mehrzad wrote:
| Back when I had cancer in 2015, I read about this effect but I
| also read there was some potential danger in the cancer cells
| adapting to ketosis and accelerating their growth, so I thought
| it seemed too risky. It seems like the research may have
| improved since then though to suggest some benefit.
| mkrishnan wrote:
| Congrats.
| eloff wrote:
| I don't follow your logic there, cancer cells have an
| effective metabolism by default, so the chance that they can
| adapt to ketosis seems much better odds than the 100% that
| they're already adapted to your diet.
|
| But I'm very glad that whatever your decision, you're still
| among the living! Cancer is a terrifying diagnosis.
| INTPenis wrote:
| 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.
| wonder_er wrote:
| The fascinating story of these dualing theories of cancer
| (somatic vs. metabolic) is told in Tripping Over the Truth: The
| Metabolic Theory of Cancer [0].
|
| I've read it twice. Strongly recommended.
|
| [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164-tripping-
| over-t...
| whalesalad wrote:
| 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.
| captaincrunch wrote:
| 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?
| chmod600 wrote:
| 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.)
| ThePadawan wrote:
| It certainly has been done:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
| beagle3 wrote:
| 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.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Same disclaimer as you on expertise, but cancer basically
| comes from one mutation when a cell divides that causes it to
| start dividing out of control. So if you manage to starve all
| of those out of control cells to death, you've eradicated the
| cancer. The caveat is that you've got to kill _all_ of the
| cells, not just most of them.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Fasting certainly prolongs life by limiting resources to the
| cancer which can't handle it very well compared to your own
| cells (that do not grow as rapidly).
|
| It can't cure tho, because liver and kidney will create most
| important resources for body to be able to work.
| k__ wrote:
| When I look at this image [0] it seems to me that muslim
| countries (which tend to fast once a year, I guess?) and poor
| countries have fewer cases of cancer.
|
| But at least with the poor countries I'm not sure if it's
| because people die of other reasons before they even could get
| cancer.
|
| [0] https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-
| qimg-a0728f7c2418f32922558b...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| I'm not sure how detectable fasting during daylight hours 10%
| of the year would be. I'm thinking other confounding factors
| (like massive amount of fructose in diet driving obesity
| levels) in western countries would swamp that out. Not to
| mention the Ramadan fast is only a modest form of
| intermittent fasting. The caloric intake for the day is quite
| high, often higher than normal due to feasting, and the hours
| of fasting are anything from 12-18 (while eating once a day
| would be more like a consistent 21h of fasting year round).
| vmception wrote:
| That image doesn't warrant a single synapse of your thought
| without per capita numbers.
|
| And _then_ you can try to find other correlations.
| k__ wrote:
| It says _" rate per 100000 population"_ on the top right.
| vmception wrote:
| thanks, did not see that on mobile. so now we can just
| skip right on over to how people in those African regions
| die before they even reach more probable cancer age, it
| absolutely is more so because of them dying, as you
| initially pondered. Life expectancy is an average, and
| that average is less than 60 years old in large regions.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Would the supposed benefits of fasting happen right away, or
| only after your fat reserves start to deplete?
| whalesalad wrote:
| https://osher.ucsf.edu/patient-care/integrative-medicine-
| res...
| sjg007 wrote:
| There's some evidence it is beneficial and protects healthy
| cells from chemotherapy and radiation. Fasting and a keto diet
| force the body to use fatty acid metabolism.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Yup, check out Cole Robinson who apparently has helped numerous
| people beat cancer with it (in addition to rapid weight loss).
| He's rough around the edges with his training techniques, but
| he knows how to motivate and gets results out of people.
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_yUeH8TsG5pxqvkOxBtsFA
| dplgk wrote:
| This didn't work for Steve Jobs
| caymanjim wrote:
| 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.
| avaldeso wrote:
| > Jobs also had pancreatic cancer. It's just about the
| worst cancer you can get. Over 95% mortality rate.
|
| Jobs had GEP-NET cancer, which have 5 years OSR of 70% at
| stage IV. It's a slow growing cancer, very survivable and
| even surgically curable in early stage.
|
| The fast, almost always fatal is the pancreatic
| adenocarcinoma.
|
| Also, the mortality rate of a cancer is a function of many
| variables (stage at the time of diagnosis, tumor
| differentiation, tumor location, etc.). A number like 95%
| doesn't make any sense without a lot of context.
| simplemen wrote:
| He wasn't fasting, he was on fruits diet.
| Technically wrote:
| What's the metabolic difference between major and complete
| fasting? I honestly have no idea.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| So what is 'allowed'? Because I have been seeing 'low
| calories' (fruits/carrot juice etc) to nothing, even no
| water to make sure your digestive system does not trigger
| at all. I know no-one knows this for sure, but what is the
| current theory?
| rsync wrote:
| The idea would be to have zero caloric inputs.
|
| So water and coffee or tea (without milk, of course)
| would be fine. You're trying to avoid an insulin response
| and firing up the entire machinery of digestion.
|
| I think it's non-controversial to say that this starves
| the cancer cells.
|
| Perhaps less certainly we can also say that digestion
| demands a lot of resources and is an interrupt for a lot
| of other processes. When your body has nothing to do for
| 24-36 hours eventually lower priority tasks get attended
| to ... like garbage collection.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Not zero. Fat has zero effect on insulin. You need to
| limit carbs and proteins.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Student said that sadly cancerous cells could last longer
| starving than healthy cells.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| If you're fasting for this sort of thing, you do _not_
| want an elevated insulin level. High insulin levels
| disable autophagy pathways.
|
| The best way of doing this, based on years of science,
| would be, well, to eat nothing for 24+ hours at a time,
| but make sure you stay hydrated; as in, actually fast.
| The second best would be to seriously curb your carbs,
| under 30g a day; also tied for second best is to eat just
| once a day, none of this unscientific three square meals
| hogwash.
|
| Three of these together could halt the progress of some
| cancers, and before the shitstorm that was 2020,
| scientists were publishing papers involving animal models
| on this.
|
| Steve Jobs did none of these, and was, sadly, off in la-
| la land when someone with his money and connections could
| have had access to next generation scientifically-based
| treatments. Fruitarianism is, frankly, dangerous.
| thotsBgone wrote:
| He was also on the fruits diet before the pancreatic
| cancer. Makes you wonder if the fruit diet contributed to
| the cancer.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Yeah, and he also had a highly treatable form of cancer and
| access to the best medical care in the world. Unfortunately
| his arrogance got the best of him.
| dplgk wrote:
| He drank carrot juice which I'd say is severely limiting
| your caloric intake.
| teknopurge wrote:
| Also keep in mind that sugar is the enemy. Your body has
| chemistry to make sugar - there is no-need to ingest it.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Limiting your caloric intake is not the same as fasting.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| From a non-medical professional's perspective it doesn't seem
| that strange. Medical treatments for cancer include "let's
| slowly irradiate you and hope the cancer dies first" and "let's
| slowly poison you and hope the cancer dies first". "let's
| slowly starve you to death and hope the cancer dies first"
| doesn't seem all that different.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Starved of excess sugar. Not food in general.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Such treatments attempt to concentrate the radiation and
| poison where the cancer is, however.
| excannuck wrote:
| Insofar as cancer cells need more energy, starvation is
| also specific.
| peterdemic wrote:
| That is not entirely true... The prevalent chemotherapy is
| detrimental to cells all over the body and it has no way of
| distinguishing cancel cells vs non-cancer cells. Targeted
| therapies are different and are becoming more widely used
| but are still small in percentage of patients compared to
| "classic" chemotherapy.
| PeterisP wrote:
| "the prevalent chemotherapy is detrimental to cells all
| over the body" I'm not a doctor, but isn't the case that
| the prevalent chemotherapy is detrimental to _new
| /growing_ cells all over the body, which is a way of
| distinguishing cancer cells (and a few types of tissue
| e.g. hair) vs most types of non-cancer cells?
| peterdemic wrote:
| Yes, that's correct! My bad for not being more clear!
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Quite some time I had classes on this - but I believe
| chemo (some at least?) is designed to attack cells with
| same growth-rate as cancer cells. So they're not
| attacking just everything in a non-discriminatory fashion
| - but cells with similar growth as cancer cells, become
| collateral damage, so to speak.
|
| This is why some chemo will result in for example
| hairloss; Because the cancer you're being treated for,
| has the same growth rate as the cells in your hair - and
| thus the chemo will also kill those cells.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Cancer cells are among the fastest growing cells. Limiting
| available nutrition - specifically for growth - should do
| them the most damage, is the thinking.
| krrrh wrote:
| Valter Longo's lab at USC has done extensive research on this,
| and developed a fasting mimicking diet that can be used in
| conjunction with cancer treatments. They found that it
| increases resiliency from chemotherapy in healthy cells and
| makes cancer cells more vulnerable.
|
| This interview with Rhonda Patrick is a good introduction to
| his research, but it's quite extensive and the papers are worth
| checking out if you're interested in this topic.
|
| https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/valter-longo-2
| majkinetor wrote:
| Obligatory: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cells_2x.png
|
| (not because of article which describes mechanism, but because of
| people who will jump to conclusion)
| foxhop wrote:
| 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
| questioning why it behaves in seemingly counter intuitive ways
| makes it all the more appearent that we are still at the tip of
| our scientific and spiritual understanding for models of healthy
| systems, both cellularly and holistically as life on our planet.
|
| As above so below.
|
| Based on this research cancer switches to a process which accepts
| the inputs at hand and processes outputs for growth (often rapid
| growth).
|
| Regardless of how it looks as a spectator, the cells inside you
| make billions of individual decisions each second and those
| decisions may have eventual degrgations over time with enough
| entropy.
|
| The cell has blueprints and is on a mission, sometimes it's
| mission is corrupted or the order of operations is abnormal.
|
| I like how they make mention yeast fermentation as a similar
| process and I didnt know our cells could run both processes. I
| wonder why? Do we use fermentation at various parts of our human
| development?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Most animals (actually not only the animals but most eukaryotic
| cells) can produce energy (in the form of ATP) by transforming
| glucose into lactic acid, exactly like in the lactic
| fermentation of milk into yogurt.
|
| (Some animals and some other eukaryotic organisms use other
| fermentation variants, e.g. alcoholic fermentation by yeasts or
| fermentation of glucose + water into acetic acid + carbon
| dioxide + dihydrogen in cells with hydrogenosomes.)
|
| The energy produced thus is many times lower than the energy
| that could be produced by oxidizing the same quantity of
| glucose into water and carbon dioxide.
|
| While the energy is low, the power is very high, because the
| fermentation is done by a simpler sequence of reactions and a
| much larger quantity of glucose can be fermented in a given
| time than the quantity that could be fully oxidized.
|
| So the difference between using glucose fermentation and using
| the oxidation of either glucose or fat is like the difference
| between using supercapacitors and using batteries.
|
| Some devices are optimized for high power but lower energy
| storage capacity, while others are optimized for low power but
| much higher energy capacity.
|
| In most cells there is a more complex hierarchy of energy-
| producing mechanisms, which are ordered from the highest power
| and lowest energy capacity to the lowest power and the highest
| energy capacity. For example, in the muscles of vertebrates,
| you have, in the order from above, ATP hydrolysis,
| phosphocreatine hydrolysis, glucose fermentation and finally
| glucose & fat oxidation.
|
| The vertebrates are actually much better than most other
| animals at glucose fermentation, which gives them a significant
| advantage.
|
| Because of that, the vertebrates are able of short bursts of
| activity that use a very high power, e.g. running short
| distances or jumping or catching a prey, before having to
| reduce the power to the lower level that can be sustained for a
| long time by the aerobic oxidation.
| foxhop wrote:
| Thank you very much. That explanation really helps and has me
| off reading more!
| majkinetor wrote:
| > 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.
| navaati wrote:
| > 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 ;)
| majkinetor wrote:
| Totally spot on :-).
|
| Its in good part inherited complexity (as humans didn't
| engineer humans). The other part is in Mytical Man Month
| :-)
| skadamou wrote:
| Here is an NCBI article about the Warburg effect that I found
| illuminating
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4783224/
| [deleted]
| thornjm wrote:
| I posted this in a few cancer threads with good response: the
| seminal work on cancer is actually a really quite approachable
| and short free paper - "Hallmarks of Cancer" by Hanahan and
| Weinberg.
|
| For anyone wishing to understand the fundamental features and
| survivorship bias that all cancer cells go through I highly
| recommend it.
|
| I think this is an updated version:
| https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(11)00127-9
| balthasar wrote:
| Cancer is bad
| kypro wrote:
| I take a daily dose of NMN to boost NAD+ levels. I was aware that
| NAD+ could accelerate cancer growth, but does anyone know if
| there's any evidence to suggest NAD+ could cause cancer or at
| least increase the likelihood of developing it?
|
| From what I understand most experts seem to think it's probably
| safe and will extend health & life span, but the cancer risk is
| something that concerned me when I started. Surely if healthspan
| was as easy as just raising NAD+ levels the body would have
| already evolved this trait?
| aszantu wrote:
| I've been thinking and came to the conclusion that cancer might
| be a way of the body to get rid of excess sugar and maybe other
| toxins. Many cancers seem to respond well when ppl go keto for
| example
| crubier wrote:
| In this thread: Web engineers turned Cancer specialists.
| shishy wrote:
| That's.... backwards. Excess sugars and toxins promote
| environments that are favorable for cancer promotion (eg by
| weakening immune system by down regulating certain cells within
| the tumor microenvironment or activating metabolic pathways
| that should be inhibited and so on).
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yep. The guys who did that China Study were feeding
| aflotoxins (difficult to detect mold toxins) to rats and then
| fed them milk casin to trigger cancer. Then they would stop
| feeding them the casin to turn off the cancer.
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| Can we have one health thread where no one shills their fad
| eating disorder diet? Just one?
| majkinetor wrote:
| Seems a bit extreme don't you think ? Getting rid of the sugar
| by getting rid of the host, sounds like those AI fatalistic
| movies where curing misery involves killing all humans.
| jacobn wrote:
| Does the difference in metabolic pathway lead to e.g. different
| waste products present in the blood?
|
| I.e. could you do a blood test to detect elevated levels of
| fermentation-based metabolism, indicating that it might be time
| to do a deeper cancer screen?
| paxswill wrote:
| Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) is one test that uses this effect
| and it is used for monitoring some cancers. It's non-specific
| to cancer, but elevated levels can be cause by a range of not-
| great conditions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactate_dehydrogenase#Testing_...
| yholio wrote:
| This is the type of fundamental research that private labs do not
| typically pursue, yet might yield revolutionary treatments.
| zaroth wrote:
| Was it public or private labs that did all the amazing mRNA
| research?
| PeterisP wrote:
| 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.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| In 2017, Berridge and Neuzil reported that stromal cells can
| donate healthy mitochondria to respiration-deficient tumor cells,
| restoring normal respiration as well as their ability to form
| tumors in mice.
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1440-1681.1...
| deskamess wrote:
| So the cancer cells went with the non-blocking, albeit slower
| algorithm. With aerobic, pipelines could get filled with ATP and
| end up blocking the essential NAD+. So the optimization was a
| loosely decoupled slower fermentation process over the faster
| aerobic process. Back pressure avoided and all that.
|
| So tempting to go with analogies we are familiar with.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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
| cooperating with the rest of the tissue and start acting
| "selfishly", at others' expense.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5474827/
|
| This is known as "atavistic theory of cancer" and it is rather
| controversial, there are people who utterly hate it, not least
| because the original authors are not specialists in cancer
| treatment.
|
| Part of this theory is that cancer cells "cannot help but
| switch to the previous single-celled metabolism, very
| inefficient compared to ours".
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| It also has no scientific grounding whatsoever:
| https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/12/06/the-
| atavi...
| hobofan wrote:
| Yeah, there isn't really any science to back it up.
|
| > and the original genes might carry on within our DNA
| until today
|
| Luckily we don't need to resort to "might". Since the
| advent of genome sequencing we can just go ahead and take a
| look!
|
| E.g. yeast (your standard single-celled organism) posesses
| ~6000 genes of which ~23% (= 1380 genes) are similar in
| function to those of humans. Of those genes most of them
| have been severely mutated, on average sharing 32% sequence
| similarity, which is a world of difference in terms of
| protein functionality.
|
| The few highly preserved genes that remain are core parts
| of all eucaryotic life (ribosomes, proteins for amino acid
| metabolism, etc.) and are some of the most studied genes
| (regarding cancer and in general).
|
| Suggesting that there are some genes hiding in there and
| have been overlooked due to narrow-mindedness of the whole
| life science community is a bit naive.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, that is why I linked to NIH rather than one
| scientist's blog.
|
| Myers is very outspoken in his rejection of the idea, but
| even as an amateur I can see rhetoric sleights of hand in
| his argumentation. An example:
|
| These "layers" don't exist! When my car malfunctions, I
| don't get a horse
|
| Bad comparison, a car did not evolve from a horse, there is
| no mechanism for it to have a previous "horse layer".
|
| Myers seems to hate the idea so much and return to it so
| often and with so many damnations and so few citations that
| it actually decreases his credibility in my eyes.
| benibela wrote:
| When the escalator malfunctions, you get a staircase
| sjg007 wrote:
| Well I wouldn't say the multicellular system is reverting
| to a single older cell phase per say. Rather it needs
| NAD+ so it optimizes for that. The cells also lose
| adhesion and then migrate so clearly there's some
| "programming exception" not being caught. I view the cell
| as a bunch of copy paste code that's had some degree of
| refactoring applied so there are different programs and
| control systems in operation at any given time. Sometimes
| these get activated or not repressed erroneously,
| sometimes the source code gets scrambled.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| 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
| 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.
| lisper wrote:
| 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 already familiar with them, you might want to
| look up HeLa cells:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| > 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.
| lisper wrote:
| > 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.
| wittyreference wrote:
| > 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 talks to
| laymen, to give a very abstract idea of how cancer worked.
| But it fell into the category of "lies we tell children,"
| because it was only true in the most abstract way, and
| utterly incorrect once you dug into any details.
|
| The reason cancer bio people dislike it is because it's only
| true at the 10,000-foot, highly abstracted level. When you
| start digging into the granular level, its testable
| predictions rank between 'falsified' and 'irrelevant'. It
| doesn't produce any alternative lines for thinking about
| treatment, causality, etc. Especially given that the progress
| of a single cancer tends to be _all_ about their interaction
| with the multicellular milieu - e.g., developing immune
| evasion, which isn 't at all an "atavistic" trait, although
| it's one of the core hextad that defines malignant
| development. (On the contrary, it comes built-in for normal
| cells - they're now developing a novel immune evasion, to
| hide their newly altered antigens from the immune system).
|
| e.g., "Cannot help but switch to previous single-celled
| metabolism" doesn't follow in any meaningful way from the
| thesis of atavistic traits. In fact, it doesn't predict at
| all the relationship between tumor size, distance from
| vascular supply, and anaerobic metabolism. "Cells without
| controlled growth will outgrow their vascular supply,
| requiring a transition to anerobic metabolism" does, however,
| and predicted the relationships we see. It's not "cannot help
| but engage with less efficient metabolism", it's "transition
| to relying on the only metabolism afforded to a highly-
| dysregulated cell that is not responsive to environmental
| signals that normally trigger or withhold growth." Normal
| unicellular organisms _are_ responsive to those signals.
|
| Yeah, I don't hate it - it's a cute metaphor. It's a nice way
| of thinking of cancer at the 10K-foot level. It's just also
| _wrong_ at any closer level of inspection than that, which is
| why people whose job is to be elbow-deep in all of the nitty-
| gritty details of cancer can 't help but look at it and go
| "please stop wasting my time."
| wtetzner wrote:
| > 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?
| excannuck wrote:
| 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
| radioactive glucose is consumed and expelled quickly (i.e.
| doesn't accumulate in the adipose (?) tissue).
|
| Not so radioactive that the person is harmed but
| radioactive enough to pack an extra punch to the
| metabolically starved, and therefore stressed, cancer cells
| (who are drawing more of the glucose to themselves).
|
| That should target cancer more specifically, and I guess it
| can be done in tandem with other techniques.
|
| Is something similar done? I know that's how cancer is
| imaged, and the way I see it (I studied optics in a
| previous life) if you can image it, you should be able to
| destroy it.
|
| [1] Say replacing the hydrogens in glucose with tritium.
| Hydrogen hopping will ensure that the water produced by
| metabolizing the sugar is homogeneously mixed, and
| therefore expelled with all the water loss mechanisms.
| According to wikipedia, TO2 has a half life of 12 days. I'd
| imagine you can lower that by pumping fluids into the
| patient.
| phkahler wrote:
| The high metabolic rate is used. Some forms of
| chemotherapy kill cells that replicate quickly. That's
| why hair falls out and patients puke - the gut lining
| replicates quickly.
|
| At least that's my understanding. I'm not in the field.
| twic wrote:
| > 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
| wittyreference wrote:
| 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 to supply them with blood
| vessels), so you're going to be hitting other labile
| tissues as fast or faster (skin, GI mucosa, blood and
| immune cells.)
|
| Another way of targeting their rapid metabolism is
| pointing our therapy at cells with high replication
| rates. A number of our cancer therapeutics are aimed
| directly at cells that are currently replicating, which
| should selectively hit cancer cells (though again, it
| hits skin, GI mucosa, blood and immune cells, etc.
| because they're also high-turnover cells.)
|
| We use methotrexate to interfere with DNA synthesis, thus
| reducing the rate of replication altogether (in cancer
| cells, as well as.... above).
|
| The problem is, besides the dose-limiting toxicities of
| all of these things (because targeting metabolism hits
| all high-metabolism cells), is that cancer cells are
| really good at developing resistances. So, for instance,
| if you starve them of blood supply, they'll switch to
| anaerobic metabolism of glucose. If you starve them of
| glucose, well, you can't really - I'll discuss that
| below. If you give them methotrexate or other nasty
| drugs, they alter the cells' native drug-efflux pumps to
| target those drugs better and pump them right out of the
| cell. Cancer cells have a broken mechanism for protecting
| DNA - the result is really high rates of cell death among
| cancer cells, and also really rapid evolution.
|
| In terms of starving cells of glucose: glucose is the
| least common denominator of cellular metabolism. It's the
| primary food source for the brain. Different cells have
| different receptors for absorbing it, with different
| levels of affinity. If you're running low, pretty much
| every cell in the body that _can_ will kick up metabolic
| products to the liver to turn into glucose it can share
| with the bloodstream - because the best receptors in the
| bloodstream for picking up glucose belong to the brain.
| You 'll starve, or poison, the brain long before you
| manage to starve out a cancer. (Yes, Ketone bodies are a
| thing, but that happens alongside your body mobilizing
| everything it can to feed the brain, not instead of.)
|
| We also can't 'see' all the tumor. The way cancers
| actually develop is you have an abnormal cell A, which
| grows into a tiny nest. These are below detection in any
| practical clinical way, and we don't want to treat them
| because they're ridiculously common - your immune system
| wipes them up. If we tried to detect and treat them all,
| we'd kill everyone with side effects long before we
| prevented a fatal cancer.
|
| Out of the bunches of these that develop and die, or
| develop and go permanently quiet, one gets active enough
| to start seeding tumor cells into the blood stream. Most
| of those cells will die, too, because blood is rough for
| cells not built to withstand it. Most of these are going
| to be undetectable in any way, and do nothing to people.
|
| (Every time I say something is undetectable, I mean
| "Except for high precision laboratory experiments used to
| detect just such things").
|
| Eventually a tiny pre-pre-tumor will start seeding cells
| into the blood stream that _can_ survive the blood. These
| will get seeded effing everywhere. Most of these are
| permanently quiescent and do nothing, ever. They exist at
| the level of single cells - we can 't see them. They
| don't do anything, metabolic activity very low, so we
| can't target them.
|
| Once in a blue moon you get one seeded that is actually
| metabolically highly active. Or maybe it mutates into
| metabolic activity later. Most of those die.
|
| Once in a blue moon, one of these will live enough to
| start replicating for real. Most of those get wiped out.
|
| And once in a blue moon, they start replicating for real,
| and develop immune evasion, and you have something that
| becomes a cancer, maybe. Or it gets triggered by
| something external and becomes a cancer. There's a "seed
| and soil" element here. It'll often start seeding back
| into the blood stream.
|
| By the time you have a detectable mass, your entire body
| has been seeded with these cells, most of them both un-
| image-able and un-selectively-treatable. Luckily, the
| overwhelming majority of these cells - lots of nines -
| won't do jack. Of the trillions that will seed your body,
| if we stimulate them just right, you might get a couple
| of new tumors, or none at all.
|
| We know this because we learned that tumors benefit from
| circulating inflammatory markers early in modern
| oncology. When a surgeon took out a tumor, not
| infrequently, a patient would come in a year later with a
| new one or two that weren't previously detectable. We
| eventually learned that the inflammatory growth signals
| that come with surgical trauma can provoke an otherwise
| sleepy tumor cell into metabolic activity.
|
| Which is a roundabout way of saying "cancers are more
| metabolically varied than the late, aggressive stage of
| the process we usually refer to as 'cancer' would
| suggest."
|
| That being said, if you could inject something directly
| into the tumor (rather than the bloodstream would
| prioritize sending said poison pill glucose to the brain
| or liver) and take advantage of its metabolism, that
| would be great. We do kind of do that: we implant
| radioactive pellets directly, with the added benefit that
| we know it won't affect much tissue outside of the
| immediate area.
|
| 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.
| mercurialshark wrote:
| I appreciate your comprehensive answer, it's very
| helpful.
|
| Question:
|
| > "you'll starve, or poison, the brain long before you
| manage to starve out a cancer. (Yes, Ketone bodies are a
| thing, but that happens alongside your body mobilizing
| everything it can to feed the brain, not instead of.)"
|
| Layman here, but my understanding is that depriving the
| body of the ability to replenish glycogen stores that are
| normally used for energy forces the body to metabolize
| fat in order to produce ketones, which in a ketogenic
| state, the brain is entirely fine utilizing as a primary
| energy source. Thus, if in a ketogenic state (or on a
| strict ketogenic diet), the body isn't being starved,
| just consuming stored energy reserves.
|
| Am I oversimplifying the concept?
| wittyreference wrote:
| A little bit?
|
| You've got it essentially correct, it's just that every
| metabolic pathway is in a dynamic equilibrium. So let's
| say you do deprive the body of fresh glucose intake.
| While liver is turning fat into ketone bodies, and brain
| and skeletal muscle are digesting those ketone bodies, at
| the same time that TCA cycle that is now getting fed
| ketone bodies is going to push back upstream to tilt 'eat
| sugar' (glycolysis) a little bit more towards 'make
| sugar' (gluconeogenesis); meanwhile, other ketone bodies
| (dihydroxyacetone) are going to plug right into the
| gluconeogenic pathway.
|
| The body will be making glucose where it can, because, if
| I recall correctly, red blood cells can't make use of
| ketone bodies, full stop. Some level of production must
| be maintained.
|
| Which, in the body's parlance, is 'starvation'. If red
| blood cells are going hungry, from the body's
| perspective, there's a serious problem. But that's part
| of the difference between true ketosis and a ketogenic
| diet - the latter continues glucose intake, with a
| preference towards stimulating ketogenesis. The former is
| "oh fuck where's the glucose why can't I use the glucose
| aaaaaah!"
|
| I gotta go refresh this now - you're painfully reminding
| me of how long it's been since I reviewed biochem.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I hope my answer was actually useful in providing some
| biological context? "
|
| Yes, it was!
|
| "These are below detection in any practical clinical way,
| and we don't want to treat them because they're
| ridiculously common - your immune system wipes them up.
| If we tried to detect and treat them all, we'd kill
| everyone with side effects long before we prevented a
| fatal cancer."
|
| I suppose it would help, if this would be more common
| knowledge. That cancer cells are very common and nothing
| to be afraid of. Just that when things go very wrong, it
| becomes a problem. And that is mainly, when the immune
| system fails?
|
| So I suspect the stress for the fear of getting cancer,
| might in some people lead to actual cancer, by lowering
| their immune system.
|
| Could you agree to such a statement, or do you think it
| is far off?
| wittyreference wrote:
| I do wish people were more aware of how common pre-cancer
| cells are. Generally speaking, there are about eight
| major functional changes in the cell needed to go from
| 'cell' to 'cancer cell', and on average, each takes about
| a decade to occur. When I first learned about this at the
| age of 20, I already had a bunch of cells that were 2/8
| of the way to cancer, essentially. (Not counting
| mutations I was already born with. Most of us are, which
| is why cancer is common before age 80.)
|
| It's fair to say that it's a "failure of immunity,"
| though it's a bit more varied than that. You _might_ have
| started with a failure of the immune system, in the sense
| that something like autoimmune proliferative syndrome
| means cells that should be committing suicide aren 't,
| and so eventually you have cancer. More common is a
| "normal" immune system, and a cancer cell lineage that
| evolves to be invisible to it.
|
| Either way, it's fair to say that normal cells and cancer
| cells are divided by the fence of "immunity," and cancer
| doesn't happen until the cancer cells hop the fence or
| the fence falls down.
|
| I suspect the fear -> cortisol -> immune suppression ->
| cancer pathway is probably, quantitatively, pretty small.
|
| Stress does have negative effects on the immune system,
| in the broad sense, but granularly it gets more
| complicated. For instance, one of the key cells involved
| in keeping cancer at bay is the CD8+ cell. While total
| CD4/CD8 t-cell counts seem to trend down when cortisol
| trends up, CD8 T-cell counts actually trend up.
|
| We know that Natural Killer T-cell activity drops in
| response to cortisol, in isolation, but that it has
| differing effects on NK cells in different organs. In
| some organs, it had no impact at all, due to shielding by
| other inflammatory signals.
|
| It's probably true that there are some people who, if
| they didn't stress out about getting cancer, wouldn't
| have gotten cancer. I suspect that number is very, very,
| very low, though, and I'd certainly never tell a patient
| (or believe about a patient) "if they'd had different
| thoughts, they wouldn't have cancer."
|
| I can't rule it out as never having happened. It's not
| physically impossible. But, compared to all of the other
| things that play a role in cancer development, it's
| probably not worth mentioning.
|
| (I feel like I should clarify on the first paragraph: in
| short, every cell is somewhere on the continuum between
| 'normal cell' and 'cancer cell'. The only difference
| between the two is time. Like that Palahniuk quote, "On a
| long enough timeline, everyone you love is dead"? Well,
| "on a long enough timeline, every cell is a cancer
| cell.")
| caymanjim wrote:
| > 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.
| eloff wrote:
| I favorited this comment, because it's one of the best
| high-level explanations of Cancer I've come across. Thank
| you for sharing.
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| 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 times it's glucose or
| glutamine, but the trick is to block as many metabolic
| pathways using the drugs so that mutation is prevented.
| Most of these drugs have their patents expired and are
| quite cheap. The author had a very aggressive form of
| cancer with less than 5% statistic survival rate and were
| able to survive and go back to NED (no evidence of
| disease). It's not exactly a substitute for standard
| therapy such as chemo, but there's many people who also
| went to NED just with her protocol. I tried this back
| when I had cancer, and even though my survival rate was
| very high just on standard care, my tumor markers went
| way down almost to normal on the first cycle combined
| with Jane's protocol. Unfortunately, the cancer industry
| and pharmaceutical industry won't really invest much
| money on clinical trials for expired patent, or even
| existing drugs in their portfolio. There are a couple of
| independent clinical trials going on, so far, with good
| results AFAIC. Another very controversial, but
| interesting treatment for cancer that will probably never
| see the light is Chlorine Dioxide. And don't you dare
| write that on Facebook or YouTube because it'll be
| outright banned or deleted for "spreading
| misinformation". I have friends and persons I know that
| went to NED just on chlorine dioxide and diet. Having
| used it myself for many months with no negative effects,
| and, after chemo, I can't help but cringe every time
| someone tells me that it's "very toxic". Oh lord, you
| should have seen what chemo was like. Now, _that_ was
| toxic.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| About the conspiratorial mindset, as you call it, for
| example, if YouTube censors "Gong Fei " ("communist
| bandit"), then it _must_ be a really bad idea, right? In
| which cases do you think it 's reasonable not to trust
| YouTube blindly.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-
| deleting...
| wittyreference wrote:
| Chlorine sucks. It's added to water because the other
| major way of disinfecting water (ozone) is too transient
| to last all the way through the water pipelines.
| Nonetheless, they're often used in combination, to
| minimize the amount of chlorine needed. The only thing
| worse than chlorinated water is the diseases you catch by
| not having chlorinated water.
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| This is exactly my point. If anything, the effects of
| chlorine dioxide seem minimal or barely noticeable
| compared to chemo, and of course, much better than dying
| of cancer. I'm not saying that cancer patients should
| skip chemo, though!
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| 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.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The people who _didn 't_ cure their cancer aren't your
| colleagues.
| Laforet wrote:
| >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.
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| > [...] which has no medical basis whatsoever.
|
| I'm not a doctor, but there seems to be some medical
| basis in some pathologies. If you are a doctor or
| scientist perhaps your input would be greatly appreciated
| in the following papers:
|
| In vivo evaluation of the antiviral effect of ClO2 in
| chicken embryos inoculated with avian infectious
| bronchitis coronavirus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10
| .1101/2020.10.13.336768v1
|
| Subchronic toxicity of chlorine dioxide and related
| compounds in drinking water in the nonhuman primate
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7151767/
|
| Mechanistic aspects of ingested chlorine dioxide on
| thyroid function: impact of oxidants on iodide metabolism
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3816729/
|
| Efficacy and Safety Evaluation of a Chlorine Dioxide
| Solution https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28327506/
|
| Also, CDS is not MMS.
| Laforet wrote:
| The chicken embryo study is interesting but chlorine
| dioxide is already known to be less toxic to birds. And
| your other sources clearly state that chlorine dioxide
| and chlorites suppress thyrioid function and
| haematopoesis in primates and humans. Is that supposed to
| be a good thing?
|
| >Also, CDS is not MMS.
|
| Out of curiosity, do you acidify the ClO2 solution before
| quaffing it? It's a ritual very well associated with MMS
| proponents but probably does more harm than good if the
| goal is to deliver chlorine to the body.
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| The results in monkeys seem to suppress thyroid function,
| but:
|
| > No evidence of thyroid effects were detected in the
| serum of human volunteers who ingested approximately 1
| mg/l. of ClO2 in drinking water as a result of routine
| use in the community water treatment process.
|
| I don't acidify the ClO2 solution.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| A company named Neuraltus Pharmaceuticals created a drug
| named NP001. NP001, a pH-adjusted IV formulation of
| purified sodium chlorite, is a novel molecule that
| regulates inflammation in vitro and in vivo.
|
| It was used in a phase II clinical trial for ALS, and a
| subset of patients did not have any progression during
| the 6 month trial [0]. Something highly improbable.
|
| Unfortunately this was not confirmed in a following phase
| III trial.
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396529/
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| Very interesting. Thank you.
| eloff wrote:
| I don't think you should get health advice from banned
| YouTube videos.
|
| In fact for the average layperson, figuring out what's
| good information and what's bad information on YouTube or
| the internet in general is probably beyond their
| abilities. I know my dear mother, who I love, can't do
| it. I like to think I can, but I'm the least qualified
| person to judge that. I'm also not average.
|
| But I want to point out that one of the main treatment
| options for cancer is Chemo, which is basically
| injecting/ingesting toxic substances in the effort to
| weaken or kill the cancer before killing the host. So
| chlorine could well work in the vein, but I wouldn't want
| to use myself as test subject A in an unregulated pre-
| clinical trial.
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| I think it really depends on your statistical survival
| rate. If you're almost guaranteed to die, there's less of
| a concern in using yourself as a test subject.
| bbojan wrote:
| What is "cancer industry"?
| dnautics wrote:
| [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...
| smartscience wrote:
| 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 that is more selective for the
| cancer in question, making it radioactive may offer a
| further improvement.
| whatshisface wrote:
| 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.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Just grow some sprouts in it?
|
| (Not an endorsement of the idea)
| eutectic wrote:
| What about an enzymatic synthesis? Or even partial
| biosynthesis.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| 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.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _If cancer cells have high metabolic requirements, couldn
| 't you attack them by:_...
|
| The keto diet is actually recommended for certain types
| of cancer patients for this reason. While almost all
| human body cells can adjust to using ketones, most types
| of cancer cells cannot.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Cancer tumors as Metazoa 1.0: tapping genes of ancient
| ancestors.
|
| https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Cancer-tumors-as-
| Metaz...
| jrockway wrote:
| So someone left in a bunch of legacy code and nobody knows
| which combination of feature flags fully turns it off? At
| least if we cure cancer we can use whatever we learned to
| make programming a little easier.
| [deleted]
| im3w1l wrote:
| > There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant,
| metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms,
|
| This is the track they are on, but given how shortlived they
| are, they never get the chance to do much evolution. They
| only have time to learn a few tricks. Simple things like
| turning stuff of or up/downregulating existing systems. It's
| a strange step to "cannot help but switch to the previous
| single-celled metabolism, very inefficient compared to ours".
|
| Theory in article seems much more likely.
| jetrink wrote:
| > given how shortlived they are, they never get the chance
| to do much evolution
|
| There is a very rare category of cancers for which this is
| not true, clonally transmissible cancers[1]. They can move
| from individual to individual like other pathogens. One
| example is the devil facial tumor disease[2] that has
| killed around 95% of Tasmanian devils.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer
|
| 2.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease
| [deleted]
| blakesterz wrote:
| "The findings suggest that drugs that force cancer cells to
| switch back to aerobic respiration instead of fermentation
| could offer a possible way to treat tumors. Drugs that inhibit
| NAD+ production could also have a beneficial effect, the
| researchers say."
|
| And hopefully that's a path to follow that will help treat/cure
| some types of cance? This all just barely makes sense to me,
| but my first question was "Does this help beat cancer in a new
| way?" and I guess the answer is... maybe?
| majkinetor wrote:
| Or maybe not because cancer cells do not exist in vacuum but
| are part of the body.
|
| You will force your own cells to do so: red blood cells,
| certain immune cells etc.
|
| We already do something along those lines - reducing sugar
| input via diet and sugar neogensis via metformin.
|
| Be all that as it may, the finding is astounding.
| loceng wrote:
| It sounds like there's speculation that yes it potentially
| could, in theory, but it needs to be tested.
| ben_w wrote:
| Article also says that other cells using this process include
| immune cells, so I wouldn't be on this being a silver bullet.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| It is a basic research question - it doesn't produce directly
| usable results, but the better understanding may be helpful
| in the long run.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I'm waiting for them to suggest starving the cancer. That
| wouldn't keep the cancer industry going though. X
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| 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)...
| hlfy_hn wrote:
| Dichloroacetate influences NAD+ level (but increases)
| tyingq wrote:
| This is why PET scans work well for highlighting cancer as bright
| spots. The injected 18F-FDG marker looks like glucose to the
| cancer cells, and is consumed by them for the energy.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Yeh, PET scans are eye opening.
| calebkaiser wrote:
| The research around NAD+ production and cancer proliferation may
| also give some causal explanation--or at least, a place to start
| looking--for the correlation between B vitamin supplementation
| (edit: folic acid, specifically) and increased cancer
| rates/fatalities in certain high-risk populations:
| https://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20091117/folic-acid-b12-ma...
| majkinetor wrote:
| Not B vitamins, but folic acid (just one of them).
|
| Folic acid is required for stable DNA, something that cancer
| doesn't need at all (it needs mutations for plasticity).
|
| Its also needed for DNA production, but many more cells need
| it, those that have short lifespan - cells lining the stomach
| for example, sperm cells, some immune cells etc.
| calebkaiser wrote:
| Good point--I amended my original comment to specify folic
| acid.
|
| What you're saying about stable DNA makes sense. I'm curious,
| though, if the supplementation helps the body generate more
| NAD+ (relative to someone with a deficiency), and if that
| could help cancer proliferate in its earliest stages (hence
| why the correlation is most pronounced in people already
| likely to develop cancer--smokers).
| majkinetor wrote:
| That is the whole problem - everything that benefits your
| body, benefits cancer and vice-versa. Cancer forms all the
| time - body should handle it when functioning correctly
| (via immune system).
|
| NAD is essential for many functions, especially longevity
| as sirtuins require it for proper function.
|
| As far as I know only massive Vitamin C doses uniquely
| influence cancer in negative manner and get pretty much no
| effect on non cancer cells. Massive vitamin C infusions
| (which work via mechanism similar to chemotherapy) while
| can't cure cancer per se, have potential to make life span
| and quality of life much longer (toward chronic disease).
| wtetzner wrote:
| > Cancer forms all the time - body should handle it when
| functioning correctly (via immune system).
|
| Is this why some people think fasting can help? It gives
| the body a chance to clean up cancer cells, since you
| have more time in a catabolic state?
| majkinetor wrote:
| Don't know what anybody thinks, but there are multiple
| reasons, some of which are:
|
| - No sugar input => low insulin (insulin promotes cancer)
|
| - No nutrition for cancer cells => no folate etc.
|
| - Metabolic slowdown due to starvation => means
| everything works slower including cancer
|
| - Promotion of autophagy which consumes damaged
| organelles. This one is dubious as cancer cells can do
| autophagy themselves to stay alive, but I suppose that
| due to extensive mutations in cancer there is still a
| chance that normal cells do it more efficiently. In
| healthy parts of the body this can also lead to better
| immune system as damaged parts of it could be replaced in
| the process. On the other hand, good immunity needs
| various vitamins and minerals most of which can't be
| produced or stored.
| XnoiVeX wrote:
| I know a few friends who take NAD booster supplements.
| Does it increase their chance of developing cancer? Just
| curious as there seems to be a connection based on what I
| read recently.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Probably, in specific context - unrecognized and left to
| develop cancer will be boosted according to this research
| and if supplement reaches it which depends on many
| factors.
|
| At this point there is literrary nothing you can
| recommend to your friend.
| calebkaiser wrote:
| That makes total sense--thanks!
| bfieidhbrjr wrote:
| YSK, cancer as a metabolic disease, and tripping over the truth,
| are excellent books about this, and why we got cancer wrong since
| watson and crick.
| chaganated wrote:
| " _Tripping Over The Truth_ ," seconded.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| I'm listening to his other books now, Ketones.
|
| There's also Emperor of All Maladies (and his other book
| Genes) from another author that may be of interest.
| avaldeso wrote:
| > There's also Emperor of All Maladies (and his other book
| Genes) from another author that may be of interest.
|
| Author name's Siddhartha Mukherjee. Great book, focused
| more on history of oncology than the biology of cancer
| though.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Here is a video on "Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: Implications
| for Novel Therapies" [1] by Prof. Thomas Seyfried that may be
| related. I think their research is very promising.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06e-PwhmSq8 [video]
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| So I know that Gundry's book "Plant Paradox" is probably rife
| with some scientific hyperbole, but it's enticing for me to at
| least follow a system with this principle in mind: that you
| want to essentially mellow out your metabolism.
| vmception wrote:
| If they really take this approach of targeting NAD+ production,
| which other types of "fast growing cells" will this kill? People
| will still go bald?
| mountainboy wrote:
| I suggest that anyone interested in this topic research Johanna
| Budwig and her Budwig Protocol. She was a world expert on
| essential fats as well as a physicist. Her work directly followed
| on that of Otto Warburg, and it is said she cured many many
| people of Cancer. Having tried her "Budwig Protocol" myself at a
| time when my energy levels were so low that I had to quit my job
| and focus only on recovering my health, I can attest that it
| truly works for delivering more oxygen and thus energy and
| vitality to one's cells. Today I am healthy and feel much better
| than I did 5 years ago.
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