Cure for cancer may not be impossible
Obama promised it, Russia has been working on it; rich and innovative societies have been reaching towards it for years but there’s still cancer and the disease was discovered in 1775.
While the effort to find a cure is global, the tiny country of Israel has a multipotent attack strategy that provides insight into the future of cancer-curing efforts. A few of their tactics are explained as follows.
For one, they’re changing the focus of leukemia cures.
Leukemia kills more than 24,000 Americans per year.
The Nature Genetics page Treatment-specific changes in gene expression discriminate in vivo drug response in human leukemia cells by Meyling H. Cheok et al confirms, “These data indicate that lymphoid leukemia cells of different molecular subtypes share common pathways… [and] changes in gene expression are treatment-specific.”
Basically, various leukemia cells respond to treatments similarly, due to genetic similarities, but gene expression can change depending on alterations in treatment.
Currently, leukemia treatments have the same base: chemotherapy, steroids, and stem-cell transplants. However, according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, more individualized treatments may yield better results.
Researcher Rio Gazit commented to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all treatment for leukemia. That’s why we need tailor-made models to fit the treatment to the disease.”
They’re also targeting the exact source with cancer treatment, even though that site can be microscopic.
Although chemotherapy and surgery can affect the entire body, tumors can originate from tiny nanometer particles. According to Targeted cancer therapy (Abstract) by Charles Sawyers, cancer formation can be quite complex and it’s tumors’ “microenvironment” that dictates whether or not the cancer spreads.
Targeting only the cancerous cells, instead of looping in healthy ones with the treatment, could not only stop it at its source, but Dr. Dan Peer at Tel Aviv University thinks it will take less of a toll on a cancer patient’s overall physical health.
Peer thinks the key is RNA — ribonucleic acid that gives instructions to DNA. Overriding that delivery system could get the cancer treatment to the right place, even if it’s only a nanoparticle.
Re-educating special mutant cells will add to the care available for more personalized manifestations of cancer as well.
Most people have the protein p53, which prevents tumors from forming. However, some people have a p53 mutation that makes the body more susceptible to cancer and less accepting of treatment drugs. For these mutations, reminding the p53 gene what it’s actually for (stopping tumors) could prevent a lifetime of cancer dealings and its effects.
Dr. Varda Rotter et al at the Weizmann Institute have found a few molecules that could effectively “re-educate,” as she calls it, the mutant p53.
They’re also working to rehabilitate non-malignant cells to keep tumors from spreading.
The way tumors develop is referred to as “recruitment” by many medical journals. Tumors “recruit” new cells and blood vessels to allow the tumor to circulate and expand its reach, according to Angiogenesis and Tumor Metastasis by Bruce R. Zetter, Ph.D.
Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science theorizes that healthy cells can be reprogrammed to defend the body against the tumor the same way a tumor can reprogram a cell to attack the body.
However, problems don’t always stop after the cancer is cured.
There can be lifelong problems that deeply affect post-treatment life, such as irreplaceable lost tissue, loss of limbs, and others. Scientists are working to replace the damaged areas.
Dr. Jacob Hanna, also at the Weizmann Institute, thinks the key to replacing damaged body parts is stem cells, which can grow, divide, or become other cell types. It’s a safe model because the tissue transferred to the patient is from their own body.
In the work Isolation, Characterization, and Use of Stem Cells from the CNS by Fred H. Gage et al at the UCSD medical school, the way a “multipotent stem cell” works is a subject “of great interest” in the future of replacing damaged tissue for all diseases -- not just cancer.
With these strategies among others, the idea of curing cancer sounds less like proverbial hope and more like a possibility the class of 2018 may get to see.