Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Cancer Cure

Cancer Cure

Solomon - 10-9-2013 at 19:22

I recently developed an idea for using genticly modified flesh eating bacteria to only eat cancerous cells which would be identified via some kind of tag (like the recently developed radioactive nanoparticles)

Solomon - 10-9-2013 at 19:25

Is this feasable?

Variscite - 10-9-2013 at 19:41

Im not too well versed in these things, but explain further how the bacteria would identify the cancerous cells.

Finnnicus - 10-9-2013 at 20:03

Can we have some sort of research or paper about said "Radioactive nanoparticles" and their function here?
I assume these are used to 'tag' the cancer, but how?

Solomon - 10-9-2013 at 20:20

For more information on radioactive nanoparticles visit:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130521132229.ht...
In regard to how the bacteria would identify the cancer cells, it could be geneticly engineered to release a chemical that made it attack cells when in the prescence of radiation.

[Edited on 9-11-2013 by Solomon]

phlogiston - 11-9-2013 at 04:44

This is so far from humankind's current abilities that nobody will be able to answer your question ('is this possible?').

There are several major problems that need to be solved first:

- 'some kind of tag' to mark cancer cells has been the target of intense research for the past 50 years or more, without much success. This remains a huge problem to this date, mainly because all cancers are different, even in one person or even the cells within one tumor. A few minor successes have been reported, but a silver bullet remains to be found.

- We cannot at present modify bacteria to program such complex behaviour from scratch. At best, we can alter existing behaviour, but even that is difficult and fails more often than not.

An interesting idea, which perhaps could be done in the distant future, but it may not be the most effective means to cure cancers (if you can tag the cells perfectly, then with existing drugs there are already very effective means to kill those cells specifically. The problem is not the killing, the problem is the tagging).

Even if you could make it work, a problem with bacteria is that they cannot reach many locations in the body.

Fantasma4500 - 11-9-2013 at 08:14

if this is a potential cure for cancer, you might want to watch your back, or well perhaps that might not be needed..
the cancer 'industry' has as much as 160 BILLION dollars running around anually, and i think thats just in the US!!
there are several plants already known, apart from weed that have a good effect on cancer cells, but this information is withheld and possibly (very likely) people trying to grow this are silenced, aswell as the ones trying to inform people about it..
without this being too much ''conspiracy'', if you really did find a potent cancer cure, i wouldnt go loudly with it

please be beyond careful with who you talk about cancer cure with..

Solomon - 12-9-2013 at 23:21

I could understand your fear of giving such information online, but could you identify this super weed for me.

Fantasma4500 - 13-9-2013 at 03:36

no no no ... not as in patents and money.. as in governmental secrets that will need to be silenced before it downs the massive cancer-industry

Random - 13-9-2013 at 05:19

Even if we could beat cancer we would be far from immortal. Eventually our body would get beaten up by the environment. Just imagine horrible death caused by arthritic joints and damaged insides. Isn't cardiovascular disease thought to be caused by fre radicals acting on blood and blood vessels anyway?
Body as in biological creation is far from perfect.

In order to live forever you would have to beat some laws of nature. In the end we all are here doing natural selection, those with most desirable genetics often find partner and have kids. This is actually over time improving overall genetics of a population. It's still very primal and our problem is that we have human mind. One of most important things is to grow and reproduce looking from the view of nature. Why nobody knows. So now if we become immortal, what are you going to do? Given that most of the things in life are pursued for personal satisfaction such as sex or money. Which all ends up with us probably reproducing.

Nature doesn't want us to live forever, beating cancer won't make us immortal. But we still beat it sometimes and doing it halfway such as with chemotheraphy is a nice way to make money. Beating cancer completely on the other hand wouldn't be most profitable route. It wouldn't probably be good for long term when you think about human existence in the future.

Short term it would be pretty nice to prevent aging in general for yourself for example, not whole humanity. Sounds selfish, evil and unhumane though. But what choice would you have if you found a way to keep yourself like in your 20s forever?

[Edited on 13-9-2013 by Random]

phlogiston - 13-9-2013 at 06:28

From an evolutionary standpoint, I am not sure it would matter much:
Whether you live for a 1000 years or your offspring does, either way your genes remain in the pool.

In the very long run, however, the process of sex and procreation makes sure our genes get mutated and mixed in new combinations which is absolutely critical to adjusting our organism to the slowly changing environment. This is universally found in all domains of life, underlining its importance for long-term survival.

It is not inconceivable that we will find a way to become immortal or nearly so in the sometime in the future. Aging research is hot on the agenda's these days and with todays powerful techniques, it is not impossible that we will come to understand and modify aging processes. Our life expectance is a result of evolution, and there is, as far as we can currently tell, no reason that would prevent us from extending it. Alternatively, stem cell work suggests it may be possible to replace (parts of) our bodies over and over again (perhaps 3D printed with veins, nerves, etc).

phlogiston - 16-9-2013 at 04:30

a-little-bioengineering-e-coli-becomes-a-pathogen-fighting-superhero

Pulverulescent - 16-9-2013 at 05:22

Quote:

I could understand your fear of giving such information online, but could you identify this super weed for me.

It's cannabis ─ since 1937, demonised to the point of absurdity, a beautiful, tropical herb, so valued by the ancients it has been adapted, over millennia, to flourish practically worldwide.
But ultimately, if accident or disease doesn't claim you you'll succumb to the 'toxicity' of the air you breathe . . .

Mesa - 16-9-2013 at 15:02

Quote: Originally posted by Pulverulescent

Quote:

I could understand your fear of giving such information online, but could you identify this super weed for me.

Refs please.

Quote: Originally posted by Antiswat

if this is a potential cure for cancer, you might want to watch your back, or well perhaps that might not be needed..
the cancer 'industry' has as much as 160 BILLION dollars running around anually, and i think thats just in the US!!
there are several plants already known, apart from weed that have a good effect on cancer cells, but this information is withheld and possibly (very likely) people trying to grow this are silenced, aswell as the ones trying to inform people about it..
without this being too much ''conspiracy'', if you really did find a potent cancer cure, i wouldnt go loudly with it

please be beyond careful with who you talk about cancer cure with..

Refs please.

Conspiracy theories have no place on a scientific discussion board.

Back to the topic at hand:
Your idea is not new, it's been one of the many potential methods explored to effectively treat cancer. Bacteria is generally discounted in favor of viruses(yes, this is the correct pluralization) however. As was said previously, bacteria tend to be far too large to reach some parts of the body.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/2013-ne...
(Not the most reputable reference, but good enough to confirm my statements)
My brother's Ph.D thesis in molecular biology was in a field closely related to this.

Quote:

- We cannot at present modify bacteria to program such complex behaviour from scratch. At best, we can alter existing behaviour, but even that is difficult and fails more often than not.

Incorrect, protein tagging is a well explored area. It can be done at home for less than the price of a distillation kit, from isolation, to cloning, to transferring into a suitable host. 6-histidine tagging is the most common method used. I'm sure you have heard of the various experiments done on expressing luminescent proteins in monkeys(glow in the dark monkeys.)

The first artificial polymerase chain reaction(Cloning of DNA) was done by manually transferring the isolated segment of DNA between 3 waterbaths set at specific temperatures.

Random - 17-9-2013 at 02:44

How could you perform protein tagging at home?

sonogashira - 17-9-2013 at 04:57

Quote: Originally posted by Mesa

Quote: Originally posted by Pulverulescent

Quote:

But ultimately, if accident or disease doesn't claim you you'll succumb to the 'toxicity' of the air you breathe . . .

Refs please.

I messed up the quoting, but here are two reviews:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/09598049950...
http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/v3/n4/abs/nrc1046.html

[Edited on 17-9-2013 by sonogashira]

Mesa - 19-9-2013 at 21:32

Quote: Originally posted by Random

How could you perform protein tagging at home?

http://openpcr.org/

Pre-empting smartass replies regarding the price compared to a distillation kit; this is only one of the various models available to home lab's. I grabbed the first google result I happened to have my mouse over.

EDIT:

Quote: Originally posted by sonogashira

Quote: Originally posted by Mesa

Quote: Originally posted by Pulverulescent

But ultimately, if accident or disease doesn't claim you you'll succumb to the 'toxicity' of the air you breathe . . .

Refs please.

You forgot to remove the uncited [ QUOTE] tag I inserted, I'm used to typing out PHPBB code manually, when you edited it to portray my request in a way that was extremely out of context, you only deleted the end quote( [ /QUOTE]) tag.

[Edited on 20-9-2013 by Mesa]

[Edited on 20-9-2013 by Mesa]

Fantasma4500 - 20-9-2013 at 09:31

the problem with references in this context is, that its not really that easy to carry out well made experiments, as you might get terminated from the surface of the earth for trying to release factual research, and ... this is getting quite paradoxal, mesa..

i do recall seeing something pointing towards research has been done about a chinese plant thats capable of removing cancer very effectively, but even if i did read or find the article, it would probably be lost at this moment anyways

but just because the system opresses the facts, it doesnt mean theyre wrong, opinions does not de-factualize anything.. back in time the general understanding was that we were living on a massive cube

phlogiston - 20-9-2013 at 15:04

Quote: Originally posted by Mesa

Quote: Originally posted by phlogiston

- We cannot at present modify bacteria to program such complex behaviour from scratch. At best, we can alter existing behaviour, but even that is difficult and fails more often than not.

Incorrect, protein tagging is a well explored area.

Certainly, but protein tagging is completely irrelevant to the question as far as I can see.
The TS asked whether it was possible to modify bacteria such that they would migrate through the body, recognize cancer cells and then devour them, leaving healthy tissue alone.
I fail to see how you envision doing that with a protein tag.

Quote: Originally posted by Mesa

tagging is the most common method used. I'm sure you have heard of the various experiments done on expressing luminescent proteins in monkeys(glow in the dark monkeys.)

And this has very little to do with protein tagging. They just expressed GFP (a fluorescent protein) in monkeys. The only novelty of that work was that they were the first to do it in monkeys which had been unsuccesfull until then. While not particularly exciting technically, it is still an important breakthrough because it opens the way to certain experiments that only be done with non-primates before.
Please do explain how this work is related to protein tagging or, more interestingly, the question posed by the TS.

Solomon - 23-9-2013 at 15:50

Does anyone know where I can get flesh eating bacteria (isolation from lakes, online, etc...) The primary variety that I am intrested in is Aeromonas Hydrophlia.

[Edited on 9-23-2013 by Solomon]

[Edited on 9-23-2013 by Solomon]

JasonHerbalExt - 23-9-2013 at 18:26

I dont know...how is this bacteria genetically modified? And how does this bacteria identify the good cells or the cancer cells?

phlogiston - 24-9-2013 at 02:00

You can probably scoop it out of any lake in a warm climate.
The real questions are: 1. how are you going to identify these bacteria among countless other microorganisms? 2. How are you planning to culture these things safely?

brayight - 27-9-2013 at 02:44

It sounds like an interesting idea - as long as it doesn't end up targeting healthy cells as well.

Chemosynthesis - 27-9-2013 at 05:49

Bacterial replication rates and ability to exchange plasmid DNA as well as sex factors make their use very discouraged due to the severe risk of mutation. Given you're then having said bacteria seek out radioactive sources, I imagine that you'd see an increase in said mutations in part due to the errors in Uvr proteins. The other problem I see is that you trade off the lack of re-dosing due to replication with the problem of not being able to tailor a dose within a therapeutic index.

Too much bacteria will begin to target, at the very least, the normal tissue from which the cancer is derived. Much like a surgeon who must take some healthy tissue to ensure complete removal, chemotherapy errs on the side of caution and off-target effects to go after rapidly dividing tissue, which is the only broad spectrum indicator of cancer. This also effects GI tissue, hair, etc. Assuming perfect cancer targeting, what happens when the bacteria has no more cancer to target? It multiplied and then will most likely attack the next nearest binding affinity target, or target of the radioisotope ligand.

Also, wow at the thought that the "cancer industry" colludes to eschew the financial advantages to be had from the technology behind a cancer cure, and somehow has a cure hidden through government weapons satellites. I cannot imagine how most of my colleagues survive other than people just not appreciating their work. No one would be putting themselves into the dreaded perma-postdoc position prevalent in the biomedical sciences if there were a cure to propel them into emeritus status, Lasker awards, or even Nobel prizes. The couple laureates I know in passing also wouldn't mind taking a stab at tying with Linus Pauling.

I would hope that some of the conspiratorial of you would consider that every individual's DNA is unique, and that expression of our genes varies across different tissues. Consider the large number of histological terms for a tumor. Taken in combination with the fact that carcinogenesis can occur from an uncatalogued plethora of mutations due to the complexity of cell cycle checkpoints, differentiation, healing, and biological systems in general... and I would hope that it would become evident that "cancer" can require individualized treatments for best effect. We see this with pharmacogenomics, so why would it be any different in oncology? This becomes particularly evident in the small scale with the evolution of hormone independent cancers at advanced, invasive stage cancers.

[Edited on 27-9-2013 by Chemosynthesis]

Rich_Insane - 28-9-2013 at 10:29

Regarding the effectiveness of cannabinoids in treating certain types of cancer:

1) "Cancer Res, March 15, 2008 68; 1945"
2) "FEBS Letters, Volume 436, Issue 1, 25 September 1998, Pages 6–10"
3) " J Clin Invest. 2003;111(1):43–50:
4) " Cancer Res July 1, 2006 66; 6748"

And so forth. Just posted those because someone wanted a reference. Cannabinoids appear to target dysfunctional cells whilst leaving normal tissue untouched.

The problem with treating cancer is that cancer is not something that is brought on by some universal mutation. Some cancers are highly correlated with Ras/Raf kinase abnormalities, some are associated with overactive anti-apoptotic factors... Ideally, every cancer patient should be treated individually, hence the intense desire by the medical community to develop personalized oncological treatment.

One possibility would be the development of sets of affibody proteins that can be attached to bacteria or nanoparticles. These proteins bind selectively to cells with the faulty proteins of interest, minimizing collateral damage... The problem is how are you going to get the recognition moiety to work in tandem with a cytotoxic element?

Chemosynthesis - 28-9-2013 at 21:28

Another complication is that most of the membrane proteins that are easily targeted don't seem distinguishable other than by altered expression levels. Many times intracellular machinery is much more difficult to target due to the membrane's relative impermeability to antibody proteins or bacteria due to their size. This makes selectivity awkward.

Also, as I implied above not only is the mutation a concern, but racial/gender/age/progression all alter genome or transcriptome, further individualizing. Treatments are essentially carried out in large sample groups currently due to expense and relative infancy of pharmacogenomics. There are also problems with systemic administration of bacteria or antibodies since they tend to thicken blood, which can be a real concern if the potency is not high enough or the dose cannot be regulated.

Trotsky - 3-10-2013 at 00:34

tl;dr

I suppose if you were to determine that your cancer cells expressed some protein no other cells were expressing, you could create an antibody that targeted cells expressing that protein. Simple right? More like obvious. If it were simple it would have been done and we'd have individualized vaccines administered once someone was diagnosed and genes sequenced.

I suppose it might be possible to transfect an expression vector into the cancerous cells which would then express the specific protein your antibody would target.

That raises the question of how you'd ever manage to transfect this vector into all of the cancer cells.

You'd either have to do that or make it so that the cells already containing the vector would be stronger and more prolific and powerful so they'd spread and the native cancer cells would fade out, then you'd vaccinate and kill off the transfected cells rapidly.

Quite possibly you'd just end up with two different cell lines.

I have a few other ideas for using the tech in different ways but I don't have them fully fleshed out. The real problem is how you'd get the vector into all of the cancer cells. Perhaps a virus could somehow be used... injected into the area, it could infect the cancer cells preferentially be killed using a vaccine easily enough, and those cells, now implanted with the vector also start expressing a gene targeted by another vaccine.

Very complicated and I don't see an answer. I can't believe I didn't cure cancer in five minutes of contemplation on an internet forum...

morganism - 8-10-2013 at 12:58

I have been looking at this a lot lately, and it looks like the easiest way to do it, is to target the Krebs cycle of cell respiration, and just let the cells get back to respiration.

There are only a couple of cancer types that don't utilize glycolyzation.
(using sugars instead of ATP)

If you re-start the cellular respiration cycle of ATP production, then cancerous cells will re-express the targeting protiens that call in phages, and will be dissassembled by standard means.

To do this at home, search for : Liposomal Vit C
Then replace the ascorbic acid with citric acid, as it is more effective at creating ATP.

Best vid to explain the Krebs cycle is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXHpTHb1MQM

targeting with radio isotopes will also target any cell that has potassium isotopes in it....

phlogiston - 8-10-2013 at 14:36

That's nonsense, and it could be dangerous. Imagine some poor easily-influenced soul begins to self-treat him/her selve with citric acid for cancer. You could kill someone. Leave diagnosing and treating life-threatening diseases to professionals.

The only part that makes sense (although it is poorly worded to put it mildly) is that, indeed, nearly all cancer cells are thought to rely on glycolysis rather than the Krebs cycle for their energy production.

In fact, a lot of excellent research is carried out to try to exploit this fact to treat cancer.

However...

You can't simply 'restart' the Krebs cycle with high concentrations of vitamin C or citric acid. And even if you could, it would probably not kill the cancer cells or revert them into non-cancerous cells. The flux through the Krebs cycle is tightly controlled by many different mechanisms. It would go way too far to discuss here, but any book on biochemistry would go into some detail on this (for instance Stryer's 'Biochemistry').

BTW, Glycolysis also generates ATP, just like the Krebs cycle. The mechanism is different though.

This sentence is completely unintelligable:

Quote:

cancerous cells will re-express the targeting protiens that call in phages, and will be dissassembled by standard means.

Even if I think "creatively", I have absolutely no clue as to what you are even -trying- to say here.

Quote:

targeting with radio isotopes will also target any cell that has potassium isotopes in it....

Care to explain how exactly?
This is nonsense.

[Edited on 8-10-2013 by phlogiston]

FreeMirage - 12-10-2013 at 00:13

Ruthenium polypyridyl complexes do a splendid job of "tagging" cancerous cells.

http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/12/5/643.short?rss=1&...

Instead of trying to program a bacteria to eat these tagged cells, however, it's much easier to attach a functional group that's prone to radical cell-destroying reactions, expose the molecule to UV light once attached, and follow up with an antioxidant regimen (as Jesse Pinkman would put it: "Vitamin C, BITCH!"). It's called photo-reactive therapy and it's not very well-known about. Conspiracy!

Also, just because cannabis does a good job slowing down cancer doesn't make it a cure; it has however (along with Curcumin and Vitamin D) been implicated in preventing Alzheimer's disease. The only studies that disagree with this latter claim used THC analogues (big one used was HU210) as opposed to herbal cannabis itself. It certainly doesn't hurt though, if I were diagnosed with cancer I'd be hitting bongzilla like it owed me money.

To the OP, the problem with flesh eating bacteria is that they would probably cause sepsis (their waste material has to go somewhere) and they'd be hard to create. Doesn't mean you can't prove me wrong, though!

[Edited on 12-10-2013 by FreeMirage]

Pulverulescent - 12-10-2013 at 06:34

Quote:

. . . if I were diagnosed with cancer I'd be hitting bongzilla like it owed me money.

Riiiight! I, however, think prevention is the key ─ "it certainly doesn't hurt" . . .

Jmap science - 24-10-2013 at 15:08

Great flesh eat should good. What if you could make a virus to kill only the bad cells, or better yet the virus could reproduce in the cancer cell then kill it after a week or so. There for curing cancer after just throwing the culture in a water supply. Just like the descolata from speaker of the dead.
EMAIL: jmap2112@gmail.com

Give me credit if this works. Curing cancer could look good on a resume. LOL

Chemosynthetic - 12-11-2013 at 11:43

I lost my old password, but I would like to note that another name for photoreactive therapy is photodynamic therapy, and a lot of the work I have seen in it is hinging around new uses for dye compounds which absorb tuned light wavelengths from chromophores. Fascinating pharmacology.

methyl_ethyl - 30-12-2013 at 11:23

The thought of using targeted bacteria is likely a bit far off. Dealing with mutations in bacteria is a pain; even when certain genetic engineering steps have been taken care of to prevent DNA repair and recombination e.g. removal of the RecA gene amongst others. When dealing with bacteria; mutations are a pain, and monitoring mutations within a cell bank is not fun, in vivo this becomes even more of a problem. I certainly would not trust the technology available at this time in preventing a vaccination with radioactive flesh eating bacteria from going awry.

There is a wealth of targeted immunotherapies / monoclonal antibodies which either dump a cytotoxic payload once internalized to the targeted region of interest or utilize the bodies immune system to develop a specific immune response against cells which display the targeted antigen or what have you through ADCC, CDC, amongst other effector functions and biological pathways.

As stated previously each type of cancer has its own targets. If this was not the case "curing" cancer would be a much more facile process.

Using radioactivity as the mode of cell death is kind of passé as well, however widely utilized.

There are much better means of destroying cancer cells than flesh eating radioactive bacteria. Creating such a drug product would be virtually impossible from a safety perspective. I mean sure, you can reduce the virulance of certain bacteria in order to provide an immune response however in the OP's initial statements it sounds like they want to use the "flesh eating" properties of such a bacterium in order to provide some level of "anti-cancer response".

I personally think harnessing the bodies immune system is the optimal way of dealing with cancer, however if cytotoxic drugs are necessary they are usually attached to a targeted immunoglobulin via some bi-functional linker which is easily conjugated to specific amino acids on the immunoglobulin and which are cleaved / activated via some cellular process once internalized, thus reducing the likelihood of non-specific cytotoxicity.

Of course there are many possibilities

much_love

methyl_ethyl

[Edited on 30-12-13 by methyl_ethyl]

I Like Dots - 10-1-2014 at 18:17

"flesh eating bacteria" Is somewhat of a misnomer. The condition known as Necrotizing fasciitis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis) is not caused by a single bacteria, many bacteria are capable of this. Common bacteria like strep, and staph(god help you if you get drug-resistant staph).

We live with these bacteria in and on our body daily, they only cause these infections in severely immune-compromised individuals. So the problem would be suppressing the immune system (of an already compromised person) and infecting them with this bacteria. Now if the bacteria only ate cancer cells that's great, but it also opens up the body to deadly pathogens normally reserved for AIDS patients.

Baffled - 31-1-2014 at 08:23

I remember someone talking about cannabis, this might not be the right thread but here it is anyway, we wouldn't want one for any dissease would we?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19406952/

Bot0nist - 31-1-2014 at 09:36

I Like Dots, I recently had a case of drug resistance staph in my finger a while ago. I posted pics and descriptions in a thread about strep. It was painfull and took a long time to heal, and did cause some necrosis. I not sure if god helped me, but a regime of very expensive and strong antibiotics did help me. Took over a month for it to heal up though. It sucked.

Sorry for OT reply.

Enkii - 14-2-2014 at 09:13

a simple oggle search "34 medical links cannabis cures cancer" brings about some interesting results - ironic how GW pharma has patented naturally occurring chemicals (THC, CBD) which are both effective at inhibiting tumor cell growth

forgottenpassword - 14-2-2014 at 11:01

A "simple google search" of most things followed by 'cancer cure' will give 'interesting' results.
Pepper: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&ie=UTF-8&q=pep...
Mango: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&ie=UTF-8&q=man...
Seaweed: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&ie=UTF-8&q=can...
Etc etc. There are an infinite number of 'potential cures'.

One can 'confirm' any vague intuition with numerous scientific studies showing 'promising' results. Every one's a winner!
Find what you seek.

[Edited on 14-2-2014 by forgottenpassword]

Fantasma4500 - 14-2-2014 at 15:34

THC works against brain tumors

''They found that THC eliminated the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact.''

http://www.worldhealth.net/news/thc_initiates_brain_cancer_c...

there is a patent on curing AIDS aswell, but youknow ... there celebrities out there, that has been seen RECENTLY KISSING WITH SOME RANDOM PERSON!!
my mind is on an infinite loop of blowing apart, incredible news, ground breaking, ground SHATTERING - RECULTURALIZATING

Chemosynthetic - 14-2-2014 at 19:12

Oh, I forgot to mention that some of the problems facing PDT are lack of bioavailability or targeting, and pain during use. I have had the opportunity to watch procedures using it at work.