DO YOU APPRECIATE ALL I DO FOR YOU?

Linda, looking uncharacteristically gloomy, in Oxford

I think she was tired

You don’t properly appreciate the things I do for you.    Not only do I keep abreast of the evolving cancer world, ponder all I am equipped to ponder, then distill for you a biochemical cocktail you can imbibe, and even enjoy – I also wade through a lot of crap on your behalf.  This has been especially true lately since I subscribed to Google Alerts and asked them to “alert” me to articles that mention ovarian cancer.  Google, wise though it is, makes no attempt at quality control – that is left to me.  The result is that I examine many articles each week, at least 50% of which are irrelevant to our interests.  The remaining 50% breaks down into 30% of material that probably is important but that I don’t understand, 10% articles that I like, can understand, and report upon, and 10% of unadulterated crap!  I had intended to give you an example of the latter, but the publisher – the West Valley (Phoenix) Journal evidently noticed how bad it was and scrubbed it.  It appeared to be a translation, probably from the Swedish, into Lithuanian, then into English, both translations having been performed by computer algorithms.  Honestly, I have never seen anything funnier and more pathetic in print since I stopped reading geology journals.  How I wish I could show it to you, but it is gone.

However, in the same “Alert” came news of some work at MD Anderson (Houston) that is worth passing on.  If you watched Sixty Minutes last night /1/11/15) you may have gained the impression that MD Anderson is a medical clip joint, devoted to squeezing money out of desperate cancer victims.  It isn’t:  MD Anderson is one of the most highly respected research hospitals in the United States, if not the world.   This isn’t the first time that 60 Minutes has pissed me off.  Maybe I’ll stop watching it (again.)

Anyway, this news release is interesting to me partly because it involves use of micro RNA molecules as cancer-fighting agents.  I have been keen on miRNA ever since I learned about the work of Monish Tewari (read my blog for 10/20/13.)  Dr. Tewari was employed by Fred Hutch at that time, and attended seminars with the group I was attempting to assist; subsequently he transferred his activities to his home state of Michigan.  Monish works with micro RNA molecules (miRNA) which I would attempt explain for you were it not that this damned new lap-top keeps skipping all over hells half acre, putting text in the wrong place, or erasing entire painfully constructed paragraphs!   I have written about miRNA before: check my blog for 6/8/12, for instance. 

Well, it seems that something called the 3q26.2 “amplicon” is an important player in some kinds of cancer, including ovarian.  An “amplicon” arises when a stretch of DNA is “amplified” – that is, duplicated.  This can be done artificially, in a lab, but it also occurs in nature.  For an example, if a stretch of DNA should read “abcdefg” but instead reads abcdbcdefg, or abcddcbefg, or even adcbbcdefg – an amplicon has arisen.  Apparently 3126.2 is  “upregulated”, and implicated,  in some cancers and can be attacked with miRNA569, one of our micro RNA friends.  And that is all I am going to write, because – if this computer mutilates any more text I swear I will toss it into the street! 

Here is the web address:  http://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com/targeting-microrna-may-benefit-some-patients-with-ovarian-and-breast-cancer/article/391213/ 

Tonight is the college football championship game.  Go, Ducks!