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.
This is to blow off steam about a bunch of things, none very important. I have just read a paper on cancer stem cells authored by two gentlemen from the University of Delhi, Dr. Sanjay Katiyar and Mr. Sachin Khurana. I got it from “WebmedCentral.com”, which is a conduit for “open-access article(s) distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License…which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.” My question: is this a good thing?
ReplyDeleteThe article seems to be mainly a review, with nothing original. (As such it is good for me, but probably of vanishingly little value for active participants in the field.) The writing is decipherable, but atrocious. No doubt the motivation for writing it was academic promotion: either Dr. Katiyar is trying for tenure, or Mr. Khurana is angling for his Ph.D. The paper was “submitted” less than 24 hrs. before it was “published”. Clearly no native English-speaker ever had a go at it before it was sent in. In fact, there is no evidence that it was reviewed at all! Is it accurate? Probably, but how the hell do I know?
I feel sorry for all those scientists who didn’t grow up speaking English but have to publish in it anyway. It’s unfair, but that’s the way it is. They should be helped to write clear, accurate English. That’s what editors and reviewers are for. So, is WebCentral.com a good thing? I wonder.