Lab Disaster May Lead to New Cancer Drug

Reuters ^ | Feb 4, 2007 | Maggie Fox

[diamond6]

bttt

[rambo316]

A question for all my fellow Freepers: After reading this article about finding a cure for Cancer, the question just popped into my head, being a cancer survivor myself also my wife has worked for an Oncologist for 14 years and I just asked her. In these tests, how do they give the mice the different forms of Cancer? My wife could not answer the question and she told me to drop it because she did not want to get freaked out.

[narby]

cancer cells eventually evolve mechanisms to pump out the drugs

You'd best take that sentence out. Believing that cells evolve is religion.

[boop]

Fleming left the window in his lab open one night and some spores got blown into his culture dishes. The mold killed his cultures, like you said, and he became interested in the "why" it did the killing.

Another thing that is interesting is the noting that Cancer cells can be "immortal" in the lab, because they grow so fast. There are cells called He-La, that were grown from a woman's cancer for years after she died.

[SC DOC]

In these tests, how do they give the mice the different forms of Cancer?

They use nude mice which gets its name because it has no hair. Nude mice have no thymus gland and therefore cannot generate mature T lymphocytes. Therefore they are unable to mount most types of immune responses. The absence of functioning T cells prevents nude mice from rejecting not only allografts (from other nude mice), but they cannot even reject xenografts; that is, grafts of tissue from another species.

Human cancer cells grown in culture can be injected subcutaneously into the nude mouse, and will grow to form a human tumor in the mice. This allows researchers to test a variety of cancer drugs on the mouse and see what happens to the human cancer. One can also grow skin cells from other species in the nude mouse. For example, you can get cells from a chicken, inject them into the mouse, and it will grow feathers on the skin.

[doc30]

Does this refer to tumors already in a person or is it talking about the ones formed initially? How would a tumor develop a resistence to a cancer treatment unless the cancer had been previously exposed to the drug. If that's the case, cancer would have to be a disease that's transmitted from person to person.

The immunity comes from evolution through natural selection. When someone with cancers is given chemotherapy, cancer cells die. But not always all of them. A few cancer cells may have a variation that lets them survive the chemo. They continue to reproduce and the cancer comes bsck. This time, though, the cancer is descended from the few cells that were immune to chemo the first time so repeat chemo has almost no success the second time around.

[Balding_Eagle]

After reading your post, I think you may also be interested in this thread:

"Cheap, Safe Drug Kills Most Cancers"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1778434/posts

[Kevmo]

Thanks for the post, bump for later reading & kill 2 birds with one stone.

[Jotmo]

Some time ago, someone posted a link to an animation of the internal workings of a cell. It was absolutely fascinating.

I didn't bookmark it, and I cannot find it. Anyone help me out?

[Jotmo]

Some time ago, someone posted a link to an animation of the internal workings of a cell. It was absolutely fascinating.

I didn't bookmark it, and I cannot find it. Anyone help me out?

[hocndoc]

Thanks! Cool news!

[MaxMax]

Just an observation,.
If they could make this compound with a limited lifespan,
then inject directly into the tumor, it seems possible so long
as it doesn't kill everything else it contacts due to the body's own abilities
to attack anything obscure.

I appreciate any cancer breakthrough.

God Bless America,
MaxMax.

[skr]

I think X-Rays were discovered by accident.

[poindexter]

I wonder how many of science's greatest discoveries were "accidents".

Most of them, at least in chemistry.

[MarkL]

Every now and then in pharmacological research, failure leads to success. IIRC, the drug company SK&F was near bankruptcy and they were testing a new drug as a heart medication. It failed miserably, but it seemed that some in the test group also had ulcers, and the new medication seemed to help them quite a bit. That medication later became known as Tagamet, and quite literally saved the company, and went on to be one of the best selling drugs in history.

Mark

[MarkL]

Interesting. I wonder how many of science's greatest discoveries were "accidents". Assuming it proves to be safe and effective, I hope this gets on a fast track through whatever route they take it and it gets to patients quickly.

Lexan, Gortex, there are quite a few...

Mark

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

...but this just sounds like greed getting in the way of good medicine.

Along with death and taxes...that is one thing you can always count on.

Do some reading on dichloroacetate. It's being looked at as a new cancer treatment as well.

DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.

Let's watch and see how quickly this compound comes through trials and gets approved by the FDA.

[rambo316]

Thanks for the info. It is mind boggling, this stuff. About the cancer though, why do doctors say that Cancer surviviors cannot donate blood?

Again, thanks for all the info and have a nice day.

[twinzmommy]

LOL Fleming was a sloppy scientist who didn't clean his petri dishes :)

That's what got us penicilin!

[painter]

I wonder how many of science's greatest discoveries were "accidents".

Penicillin was discovered by accident.