At a recent Fora.tv airing, some doctors, researchers, administrators talked about battling cancer or the state of cancer research. Among the participants was a Nobel prize winner who stated that all cancers involved jammed accelerators or disabled/defective braker genes--that is, genes that speed up or speed down certain cell processes. According to the CRF theory this is not entirely true for aberrations in these genes and only these genes would only result in benign tumors. You would have uncontrolled growth but no metastases.
There were some sobering stats on cancer mortality: survival is getting better and better but only for cancers that have not metastasized. The moral is, get tested every year you may be at risk.
One of the participants was a clinical immunologist. In my immunological studies in college, I expected that great use would be made of immune cells in battling cancer. This still holds promise but I think we can use CRF to greater effect. The body has two sets of molecules that its cells use to communicate with each other. One set is used during embryological development and the other is the final endpoint set that we carry with us the rest of our normal life after we've fully matured in the womb. A very interesting phenomenon takes place shortly after complete maturity is obtained: immune cells that are capable of recognizing the adult CRF are killed off by the body. This makes perfect sense because we don't want our immune cells to turn against us. What it also means is that the surviving immune cells have the ability to recognize the CRF's of the cancer cell and destroy those cells. Unfortunately, many factors enter into play here. One of the most important is that the cancer cell employs the same mechanism that a parasite uses to escape the immune cells: they keep changing the molecules that are expressed on their surfaces--the immune cells just can't act quickly enough--by the time they recognize a foreign cell (be it cancer or parasite) that cell expresses a different molecule and fools the immune cell. It is important to note that the immune cell that recognizes the foreign intruder usually only recognizes that particular intruder and no other. It is up to another immune cell to come along and recognize the "new" intruder (he's not new, of course, only expressing a new "coat" if you will).
A great milestone in cancer treatment could be reached once we are able to identify the two sets of CRFs that an individual inherits. If we know the embryologic set, we can immunize the patient against them. This might actually be better than allowing the cancer to develop into normal tissue because the latter leaves us with the issue of what to do with the extra tissue. If we pursue an immunological attack, we get rid of the cells in their entirety. It is unfortunate for cancer treatment that these two sets are different for every individual, but with future technology, this may just be a minor annoyance.
I'd like to mention an idea that's surfaced time and time again related to CRF's. If the CRF theory is correct, there must be genes that code for them. It is said by genomic researchers that there are about 20,000 genes but all of these are believed to code for enzymes, cell structures, hormones, and sundry other molecules. No accounting has been made of how many genes are required to "form" a typical multicellular organism--that is, how many CRFs does an organism need to develop properly. Many would argue that tissues and organs mostly "flower" into existence and that there may not be a tedious step-by-step developmental program that's followed by the genome. I think the opposite. Although chemotaxis and other signals may guide development of a complex multicellular organism, I don't think evolution would leave it up to such error-prone mechanisms. I would look into the possible role of so-called selfish DNA in development.
There were some sobering stats on cancer mortality: survival is getting better and better but only for cancers that have not metastasized. The moral is, get tested every year you may be at risk.
One of the participants was a clinical immunologist. In my immunological studies in college, I expected that great use would be made of immune cells in battling cancer. This still holds promise but I think we can use CRF to greater effect. The body has two sets of molecules that its cells use to communicate with each other. One set is used during embryological development and the other is the final endpoint set that we carry with us the rest of our normal life after we've fully matured in the womb. A very interesting phenomenon takes place shortly after complete maturity is obtained: immune cells that are capable of recognizing the adult CRF are killed off by the body. This makes perfect sense because we don't want our immune cells to turn against us. What it also means is that the surviving immune cells have the ability to recognize the CRF's of the cancer cell and destroy those cells. Unfortunately, many factors enter into play here. One of the most important is that the cancer cell employs the same mechanism that a parasite uses to escape the immune cells: they keep changing the molecules that are expressed on their surfaces--the immune cells just can't act quickly enough--by the time they recognize a foreign cell (be it cancer or parasite) that cell expresses a different molecule and fools the immune cell. It is important to note that the immune cell that recognizes the foreign intruder usually only recognizes that particular intruder and no other. It is up to another immune cell to come along and recognize the "new" intruder (he's not new, of course, only expressing a new "coat" if you will).
A great milestone in cancer treatment could be reached once we are able to identify the two sets of CRFs that an individual inherits. If we know the embryologic set, we can immunize the patient against them. This might actually be better than allowing the cancer to develop into normal tissue because the latter leaves us with the issue of what to do with the extra tissue. If we pursue an immunological attack, we get rid of the cells in their entirety. It is unfortunate for cancer treatment that these two sets are different for every individual, but with future technology, this may just be a minor annoyance.
I'd like to mention an idea that's surfaced time and time again related to CRF's. If the CRF theory is correct, there must be genes that code for them. It is said by genomic researchers that there are about 20,000 genes but all of these are believed to code for enzymes, cell structures, hormones, and sundry other molecules. No accounting has been made of how many genes are required to "form" a typical multicellular organism--that is, how many CRFs does an organism need to develop properly. Many would argue that tissues and organs mostly "flower" into existence and that there may not be a tedious step-by-step developmental program that's followed by the genome. I think the opposite. Although chemotaxis and other signals may guide development of a complex multicellular organism, I don't think evolution would leave it up to such error-prone mechanisms. I would look into the possible role of so-called selfish DNA in development.
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