While it is only a specific form of cancer, Mismatch Repair–Deficient Rectal Cancer, the New England Journal of Medicine reports that use of a monoclonal antibody has completely cured every test subject afflicted with it. While the many other forms of cancer are not so easily cured, this is exemplary of the approach that may well eventually enable all of them to be so completely cured.
The genetic defects that cause our cells to reproduce without functional purpose, creating runaway tumors that eventually consume us, are myriad and varied. For this one, a mechanism was found that re-enabled the bodies natural immune response of cell death for malfunctioning cells to terminate the cancerous cells. For all cancers, some similar mechanism remains to be found, some snippet of DNA or, as in this one, an antibody designed to enable apoptotic termination of malfunctioning cells, that will similarly cure each of them.
Vigilant Fox News shared this welcome bit of good news at an opportune time, as unceasing doom and gloom come at us from all sides, and I wanted everyone to take inspiration from this example of the good that will come from surviving our exigence. It is not obvious to most of us that life is extraordinarily wonderful today, because our attention necessarily focuses on hazards we must reckon, on harms we need to be aware of and negotiate, and, of course, all of us are doomed to die alone, in fear, and painfully, so we tend to keep our minds on avoiding these things and often take for granted the wonders of the present age that make life wonderful, indeed.
Most of us have never spent a night naked and exposed to the elements, bereft of technological miracles, hungry, cold, and terrified of the slavering monsters in the darkness. We do not have that baseline our ancestors knew all too well to compare to our comfortable pillowtop mattresses, central heating, and miraculous light switches that banish darkness at a whim. Having lived innawoods I have a bit of that perspective, and I can heartily recommend gaining a view of life from there, because it makes the blessings of civilization incredibly wonderful.
We mostly don't know just how awesome our lives are, because we have little experience of miserable suffering dependence on only what our own hands can wring out of wilderness, naked and alone, produces. While it's a good thing we are not reduced to such state, it is not necessarily good we are not well acquainted with our incompetence to build a heater, weave cloth, or construct a safe, warm home without the modern technology we enjoy. Knowing how desperate we would be without civilization creates urgent dedication to protecting it from the many perils it faces today, and civilization is far more fragile than we may suspect.
This bit of good news is, I think, a herald of more and better yet to come, if only we can emerge from the dire machinations of psychopaths, who are collapsing our financial system, wrecking our supply lines, and plunging us into global war, with a sound grip on civilization and the technological prowess yet extant. I hope you are as inspired by it as am I, so we can keep it.
Dear @valued-customer !
Do you live in a town like this?😃
There are neighborhoods similar to that, hereabouts. Lots of little valleys off the main river floodplains where the big farms are have been developed into neighborhoods in the last century, as folks with a bit of ambition carved out little pieces of paradise to retire in. Mostly it's much more mountainous here off the main floodplains than the site in your video.
Dear @valued-customer !
I want to see where you live!😄
Indeed there is so much doom and fear porn being pushed upon us that it’s important to be able to see the wonders and bright aspects of what is possible these days. Thanks for sharing the info here, there are lots of mechanisms that will benefit us like monoclonal antibodies that it’s giving me and many others hope!
Thanks!
You should post this in one of the STEM based communities.
Pretty cool though. I feel like most of oncology is run-away genetic processes whether that can be mediated through genes doing tumor suppression or promotion of apoptosis. Good find. I'd like to learn more comprehensively about epigenetic effects on cancer.
I'm unaware of any research on epigenetic affects on cancer, and I'm very sure there are some. That would be interesting to suss out.
Thanks!
Yeah I'm not sure there are either currently. I think a lot of these "unknowns" might be coming from our relatively limited understanding. If cancer is a "genetics" problem, and we see no change in the genome as a whole (I mean that in a single cell kind of way), then it has to be something impacting expression or hidden epigenomic changes. That's my limited intuition at least. I've done some transcriptomic analysis and it is incredibly difficult to interpret because proteins are malleable and have a ton of functionality. What it may do in this organ, is incredibly different than that organ.
I see that you are a scientist. What are your favorite topics of study?
I struggle to conceive of how cancer could reproduce uncontrollably without enormous epigenetic suppression of mechanisms that reliably meter growth, without being effected by genetic alteration. I have poor grasp of the specifics (of the immense variety of cells, cancers, and relevant regulatory mechanisms), but the necessity of metering growth in response to the variables relevant to the cell suggests something quite out of the ordinary would have to be going on to cause methylation very uncharacteristic of cells, that so broadly impacted many metrics necessary to functionality that is effected very robustly.
I am deeply in love with the biochemical dance of life. Epiphanies envisioning the ebb and flow of morphing proteins entranced me in my early youth, and when I donated clock cycles to a distributed computing protein folding project. I have an addiction to such beautiful orchestration of our wealth of earthly mineral and chemical bounty life is. However, I last worked as a biologist in 2001, so I'm really just an ordinary handyman today. As much as I love biology and science, I am intolerant of institutions, really pathologically so, and very much prefer fixing and building things for salty people to struggling to cope with institutional hierarchies in order to get my research done. I had enough when wrangling over $78 for a leatherman dropped in the drink with a bean counter during a population dynamics study I was recording collection sites and collecting genetic samples for. The federal government wouldn't reimburse my personal expense for it, and seemed unable to understand I needed to unhook fish before I could sample them. It wasn't listed in the grant, so I couldn't get one from the petty bureaucrat that had a firm grasp on my snarglies.
I built a wheelchair ramp a couple days ago, replaced a window and repaired a deck, and put on a spare for a little old lady with a flat tire yesterday. It may seem trivial, but I just enjoy the direct interaction with people, their immediate and easily understood needs, and being able to beneficially impact them in such a direct and personal way. I like the technologies and labors of building things, the sawdust in my eye despite my best safety squint.
So I'm not a 'real' scientist, but I feed my need for biological beauty by reading research incessantly, every day.
Nah man, I'm into all of it. Science is just cool because you get to chase the unknown and have a natural curiosity. I really want to have a farm someday where I can just take some time to build stuff and grow/raise my own food.
I've been going through the grind of being a first responder (firefighter/paramedic) and now I'm transitioning into a science space. I study neuroscience and to a lesser degree computational stuff. I really enjoy genetics, but I'm very much a student at this point. Still, I've gotten the chance to contribute to some really cool stuff in the biomedical space. Comparative/translational stuff and biochemistry have captured my attention lately, but I have to admit that I know very little about chemistry in general, so I'll likely be pursuing a year and some change of chemistry work after my graduation. I'm leaning heavy into the idea that I might pursue a life of poverty as a PhD, but at least I won't be caught in the drudgery of the corporate machine.
If it wasn't for that, I'd be absolutely happy in a trade job as long as I got some semblance of a work life balance.
Also, I might have so many questions for you lol. I just started doing some immunohistochemistry stuff the other day and I was amazed at the level of different organsims and techniques that were strung together for some of the staining process. It was really cool.