NOT OC: LINDA'S 65th BIRTHDAY

This is the picture on the invitation to her 65th birthday party

Taken on our Mexico trip, 2010

Tomorrow is Linda’s 67^th birthday.  I know we all miss her as much or more than we did a year ago.  She was a rare blend of endearing qualities, more than I can easily describe.  Elsewhere I have said that she loved more people in this world than most of us will ever even know.  The reverse is true:  she was loved by swarms of people in return.  We were lucky to have had her around as long as we did.

I’m going to write something on her Fred Hutch web site.  If you knew her you will still miss her: please think about writing something yourself. 

Myrl

MORE ON CANCER STEM CELLS: The full extent of my ignorance revealed.

Say what you like about Bellingham weather.  At least it doesn't snow.

Back a few weeks ago I declared August a “Biology Free Month”.  I felt, with considerable justification, that I deserved a vacation – time away from biology, cancer research, and the continual distress and mortification of coming face to face with how much harder it is to learn things now than it was 50 years ago.  But then I broke my ribs.  I guess that was nature’s way of telling me to get back to work.  So, I have continued reading about cancer stem cells (CSC).  Here is what I think I have learned.  Really, the subject is both interesting and potentially very important.  You should care.  DON’T JUST LOOK AT THE PICTURE OF LINDA!  Read on.

The first thing to understand is: what the heck is a stem cell?  Apparently there are “embryonic  stem cells”, “adult stem cells”, and – maybe – CSC.    Unlike normal bodily cells, stem cells can both renew themselves and differentiate into other kinds of workhorse cells.  (No biologist would call them workhorse cells, but I think that describes them rather well.)  Like, take the liver, for instance.  The liver is composed of 10ⁿ cells – workhorse cells - that do whatever the liver does.  Eventually, each little workhorse dies, but new ones are created by whatever adult stem cell resides in the liver.  This stem cell not only can fashion new workhorses, it also can rejuvenate itself!  Thus, such cells are immortal, effectively.  These adult stem cells are specific to their appropriate organ, and are able to give birth to a limited variety of cells – they are” multi-potent”, in that they can change into more than one thing.   Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, are “pluri-potent” – they can change into anything at all (anything biological, of course.  They can't turn into a toaster-oven, for instance.)

  Cancer stem cells, the existence of which has not been verified to everyone’s satisfaction, are said to be similar to adult stem cells: they can create new cancer cells, as well as renew themselves. They may arise through mutation of other kinds of stem cells, or perhaps by mutation of ordinary cells.  Or both. However created, if one uses chemo, radiation, voodoo or a miracle to destroy the fast-proliferating cancer cells, CSC can renew them.  In the case of chemo, they don’t die because they are NOT fast-proliferating.  KEEP ON READING.  I’M ALMOST DONE.  Clearly, then, the best way to tackle a tumor is by going after its stem cells (provided, of course, that they exist.)  That doesn’t seem to be an easy task because, obviously, anything that kills cancer stem cells may screw up the other stem cells in the body.  It wouldn’t do to cure cancer but die of, for instance,  a moribund liver.  Apparently one can trick CSC into reproducing only themselves, and not the cancer workhorse cells that depend on them.  Actually, I think that is only a hope, not a process.  Anyway:  If they play the important negative role assigned to them, they deserve to be attacked forthwith.  Thank you for reading this far, and remember to call you congressperson and tell her or him that cancer research needs better funding.

Oh.  Remember the NOD/SCID mouse?  They turn up everywhere  when you read about CSC.  When cancer is finally conquered, any funding left over should be used to build a big monument to the NOD/SCID mouse.  Put it next to the Lincoln memorial.

NOT OC: ANOTHER UNUSUAL MOUSE

I have no idea what's going on here.

My last blog entry introduced the concept of “cancer stem cells”.  I have spent the day reading about them.  (My ribs hurt too much to do much else.)  As often has been the case over the past few months, I quickly found myself in over my head, trying to tread water in a deep puddle of thick, sticky biology.  I will keep trying, but I don’t expect to understand very much very soon.  Nevertheless I want to acquaint you with a creature I have just encountered.  As you know, mice are very important in cancer research.  We have previously encountered the transgenic glowing reporter mouse (blog entry for 7/9/12).  Now I have met the “sublethally irradiated nonobese diabetic severe combined immunodeficient mouse”.  Further on in the article he/she is referred to simply as a NOD/scid mouse.    All I can say is – poor little devil.  Two observations:  (1) Cancer research would be nowhere without rodents, and (2) Cancer researchers may be excellent scientists, but they show little aptitude for poetry.



CANCER STEM CELLS: Another enemy?

LINDA IN YORKSHIRE, 2000
The Wrath of Henry VIII

I had planned to make August a biology-free month.  As I have written before, my plan was to spend most of the month in Alaska and in the Rocky Mountains, the latter period utilizing my new (to me) camper van.  But now, stuck at home with three broken ribs, two cats and a bruised ego, I might as well try to do something useful.  It remains to be seen if what I am about to do actually is useful, but writing about cancer certainly is preferable to watching daytime TV.

In all the reading and thinking about cancer stuff that I have been doing, I guess I have been searching for a magic bullet – some key to the origin or survival of cancer that could be attacked effectively, eradicated  and – viola! – free mankind of cancer forever.  (Actually, of course, I have been thinking of womankind and ovarian cancer most of the time.)  I have become excited in turn by the possibility of designer drugs based on genomics, aspirin (!), shutting down the blood supply to growing tumors, nanoparticles, killer T-cells, miRNA, fiddling with the activity of mutant Myc genes, and lastly, telomeres.  You can track this evolving enthusiasm by starting at the beginning and reading all 61 of my previous blog postings; if you survive, you will understand.  Now I have a new enthusiasm – cancer stems cells.

You know what stem cells are; they are cells that can turn into other kinds of cells.  If a cell in your skin dies, its place can be taken by the division of another skin cell.  However, that skin cell cannot divide and produce a substitute for a muscle cell, or a bone cell, or anything else – except another skin cell.  It has lost what the biologists call, I think, “potency”.  By contrast, stem cells are “pluri-potent”, meaning that they can turn into (produce) several different kinds of cells.  Embryonic stem cells, the subject of much inflamed political rhetoric, can turn into anything –they are “totipotent”.  What about cancer cells?

Well, there is a train of thought – called the “cancer stem cell hypothesis” - that holds that tumors are sustained and allowed to grow by the presence of their own stem cells.  There is evidence that the recovery of a tumor after it is blasted by chemo (or radiation?) is enabled by the presence of these “immortal”cancer  stem cells.  Three studies summarized by the NCI Cancer Bulletin for August 7^th (are you getting it yet?) confirm this idea, which has been circulating for quite some time but apparently is not universally accepted.  So,if the CSC hypothesis is correct, it would seem that we could cure cancer if only we could devise some sort of biochemical trickery to cause the cancer stem cells to croak.  No doubt this wouldn’t be simple; recall my Babushka doll analogy of a few blogs back. 

Stay tuned.  I have plenty of time on my hands so I will labor to get up to speed on this topic.  In the meantime: I know that some people reading this blog know vastly more about biology and cancer than I do.  How about “Commenting” if something I say is confusing, contradictory, or dead wrong?  I would appreciate it.

NOT OC: WHAT I LEARNED ON MY CAMPING TRIP

Garden in the village of Somewhere on Thames

The queen of England and the queen of my heart

Some of you know that I planned to spend most of August tooling around from campground to campground in my new camper van.  So why am I at home so early?   I will tell you.

The first week of August went well.  I visited the Kellys, in Cordova, where we  caught a few fish, ate many fine meals, and generally just relaxed.  Even the trips to and from were tolerable.  I find that it helps to carry a cane; people (as, TSA people and flight attendants) coddle you to an amazing degree.  I’m sure it’s mostly that they don’t want you dying on their hands, but it comes over as solicitous respect.  Whatever, I’ll take it.

Then a few days after arriving home I took off again in my van, bound for SE Idaho, where I joined about 15 or so fellow members of the Anza Desert State Park Paleontology Society  (hereafter the  Paleo group) for an extended look at the Paleozoic.  It went well at first, and we all had fun.  Here are some things I learned about camping with my little van:

              If you make coffee using a percolator,  buy coarse-ground coffee.

              If you do use a percolator, do not travel with it assembled or the rattle will drive you nuts.

  Before beginning a trip, assemble all your maps and store them in a convenient place.  When you    have used one, put it back – don’t simple pitch it somewhere. 

You may think you know how to get to someplace without checking the map (which you have lost), but you probably don’t.

If you are old enough to have lost some of your eyesight and most of your agility, don’t walk around after dark.

Which brings me to why I am home, instead of in Montana:.  One evening near the end of the period I meant to spend with the Paleo group I sat dozing in my folding chair until well after dark.  Then, when stumbling toward the van, I stubbed my toe on something, pitched forward onto a pile of rocks, and fractured three ribs.  Also, I broke my glasses and turned my right forearm into coarse hamburger.  I have camped all over two continents for over 50 years without serious injury.  I wonder what was different this time?

Anyway, after two full days of unpleasant highway driving I am home.  I stopped at the emergency room in LaGrande, Oregon – without a doubt the most pleasant emergency room experience of my life. I left LaGrande with an X Ray, a brand new tetanus shot, another shot (pain meds),  two prescriptions, and a half-inch stack of official paper.   So here I am at home, filled to the earlobes with pain medication and looking forward to an indefinite period (“oh, it will take a few weeks”) of being useless.  But that won’t stop me from writing this blog; I have two NCI Cancer Bulletins to digest.