THE ANGEL OF LIFE (??)

Have I used this before?

Well, I don't care - it's a nice picture

 

Back in the 1970s, bubbling over with confidence after our successes in space, America declared war on cancer.  Forty year and many billions later, 15,000 American women will die of ovarian cancer this year.  Yes, there have been some wonderful successes, but we are still a long way from a biochemical moon landing.  In fact, for some cancers, at least, we have yet to reach a stable orbit.  Anywhere.

In the 1990s a gene named TP53 was all the rage.  TP53 codes for the protein p53, known in some circles as the Angel on Death.  P53 patrols the body, searching for defective cells.  When it finds one it may order the cell to die (apoptosis).  As such it is a vital tool against cancer.  If p53 is disabled, cancer may run wild.

Science writer Matt Ridley, in his book Genome: an autobiography of a species in 23 chapters was so enthusiastic that he predicted imminent victory in the cancer war.  About that same time p53 was declared “Molecule of the Year”, presumably because of its promise as a weapon against cancer.  So, what are we doing, a quarter-century later, still talking about p53’s potential?  I think most of you know what I think.

Here are two blogs on p53:

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-universal-cancer-cure-maybe-start.html

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2013/03/p53-apoptosis-cancer-and-babushka-dolls.html.

So why is this important?*  Well, a bunch of folks at UCLA have found that one way ovarian cancer fights off the Angel of Death is to induce the p53 proteins to get all balled up in little knots.  They have adapted a molecule used to combat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to unravel these ineffective little balls of p53.  When this molecule is introduced into a solution containing tiny ovarian cancers (in a culture dish, naturally), the tumors are attacked with great vigor.  So, hurray, I guess.  I’m not holding my breath.

I am feeling uncommonly cynical this afternoon, so I will comment on one thing further.  UCLA has given the patents on this discovery and its attendant technology to a bio-pharma concern recently started – by the head of the lab that did this work.

One more Ferrari on the streets of Los Angeles.

Read it and weep.  http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-scientists-test-new-strategy-that-could-help-fight-ovarian-cancer

*So why is all this underlined?  Ask the computer, not me.