PREVENTING METASTISIS

If I were to sprawl out on the sand this way now - it would take four people to get me back on my feet!

Johns Hopkins University is in Baltimore.  Despite that disadvantage it has one of the best medical research facilities anywhere.  One of the biggest frogs in that large pond surely must be Dr. Denis Wirtz.  Dr. Wirtz is vice provost for research and director the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center for JHU.  He also has several other appointments and titles.  To verify that Dr. Wirtz is a big cheese I entered his name in Google Scholar, and got 12,500 hits.  (For comparison, I entered my own name – and got 498 hits.   And I worked pretty hard for a long, long  time!)     

One of Dr. Wirtz’s colleagues is Dr. Hasini Jayatilaka, a post-doc.  Dr. J is smart, gorgeous, and female.  Together Drs. W & J have published results of a study performed on animals (mice, almost certainly) that gives promise of a new weapon in the war against cancer.

Background in a nut shell:  When folks die of cancer it almost always is from a metastasis; only about 10% of cancer victims are done in by the primary tumor.  Apparently cancers secrete certain proteins that tell cancer cells to detach themselves from the main mass, make their way into the blood stream, and float off to do mischief elsewhere.  These proteins are “Interleukins”; members of a family that has many functions, mostly benign.  However, two of them act as signals to trigger metastasis.  It appears that Drs. W & J have identified two drugs already in existence that, in effect, clog up the receptors on a cancer cell and prevent the Interleukin signal from doing its job.  So – still not a cure, but a damned promising step forward none the less.

Trumps budget includes big cuts for medical research.  It probably is DOA.  Write your Congress persons to make sure.

Here is the link:  https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-05-cellular-cancer-ability.htm

ARTIFICIAL OVARIES? Oh, come on!

Linda and Carolyn, 1951

I can't resist using this picture over and over again

Do you know how 3-D printing works?  Well, if you don’t, tough luck – I’m not about to explain it.  My ignorance of the nuts and bolts of 3-D printing is profound.  All I think I know is that it is possible to store information about some object in a computer, and for that computer then to guide a machine that squirts out some kind of malleable substance in such a way as to duplicate the original object.  If you know more than that, don’t laugh.  I know more Egyptology than you do.

I do find this NIH article mind-blowing:

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/making-artificial-ovaries

As you will see if you click on this link, it is possible to construct ARTIFICIAL OVARIES (!) – ones that actually work.  It turns out that an ovary is merely a scaffolding designed to hold and protect things called ovarian follicles, each of which contains a blob of protoplasm which, when called into action, develops into an egg.  One egg is produced each menstrual cycle.  Somewhere I read that your average ovary contains about 400,000 such follicles.  That, in passing, amounts to a hell of a lot of menstrual cycles.

So, anyway, this team from Northwestern University took some mice, removed their ovaries, then installed 3-D printed artificial ovaries (made of what?), seeded these ersatz ovaries with mouse follicles, and turned the little boy mice loose on them.  Sure enough, several later gave birth.  (Did you know that baby mice are called “pups”?)

The Northwestern team plans to experiment with larger animals, and speculates that their work may be helpful to humans someday.

I am a bit skeptical, however.  It appears that the ovarian follicles, not the ovary itself,  are the crux of the matter.  So, say a woman has her ovaries removed for whatever reason, and then later wants to conceive.  They may be able to build her several crackerjack ovaries using 3-D printing, but where are the follicles going to come from?  No doubt they have thought of this and will tell us in due time.

MUSCAT?

Serious and sophisticated, at 14

Well, we don’t need to worry about ovarian cancer any more.  They have it all figured out, in Oman!  Or so reports the Muscat Daily News.

http://www.muscatdaily.com/Archive/Oman/Ovarian-cancer-Signs-symptoms-and-all-you-need-to-know-for-prevention-and-cure-50zl

I found this bit of “news” in my daily Google summary of news about OVCA.  Its reportage underlines the fact that Google doesn’t do quality control; that’s up to you (me).  A fair bit of the stuff the Google program tosses at me is pure crap.  Also, much of it is repetitious - half a dozen riffs on the same tune.  But I’d be up the familiar creek if it weren’t for Google Alerts, imperfect though it may be.

The funny thing is, if you read this Muscat Daily article you will be impressed.  It is a fair introduction to ovarian cancer.  Nothing you faithful readers don’t  already know, of course, but overall pretty good.

SIX YEARS

Linda and Ella

Linda died six years ago today.  Here is an excerpt from her obituary.

Linda died May 22, of ovarian cancer.  She was 65.

Linda was the light of my life and the joy of my existence for over 30 years.  She was an unfailing source of support, love and good humor to her enormous circle of friends.  She was a skilled, compassionate and caring physical therapist who genuinely loved her patients.  Her reservoir of love was always overflowing; she loved more people in this world than most of us will ever even know.

A soft and gentle light has gone out.  The world will be a darker place.

http://getinvolved.fhcrc.org/site/TR/PersonalFundraisingPages/General?px=1148821&pg=personal&fr_id=1573 

 

SNEAK ATTACK FROM THE IMMUNE STSTEM

On Carolyn's front porch

Eureka, CA

More proof, if more proof be needed, that Intelligent Design is hokum.  Or, if not hokum, then well designed by the Designer to look like hokum.  As a committed, life-long agnostic I am morally bound not to be certain of anything.  But anyway…

It seems that some people, when afflicted by certain diseases, produce antibodies that attack and destroy the very drug needed to cure them.  This is illustrated by the example of a poor little boy suffering from a rare condition called Pompe’s disease.  This betrayal of the body by its own immune system can be counteracted in some instances, but not all.  Fortunately, it’s not common/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/health/immune-system-drugs-monoclonal-antibodies.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_sc_20170516&nl=science-times&nlid=69247603&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0  

STOCKS AND DRUGS, DRUGS AND STOCKS

Even this crow would not buy FFF*

But I might

Man, Wall Street and the Pharma industry are joined at the hip!  ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncologists) is holding its annual meeting, and stock-advice companies (Seeking Alpha, The Motley Fool, etc.) are scouring the abstracts for tips.  If, for instance, Fumblefingers Fharma announces that its latest gazillion-dollar drug is doing well in a stage 2 trial, some outfit is sure to suggest that you jump into its stock with both feet.  Fumbelfingers stock (symbol FFF*) may jump as a result – but is damned likely to collapse once phase 3 trials reveal that it has unfortunate side effects: hair loss, tooth blackening and inverted eyeballs, for instance.  Take my advice, based on cruel experience – don’t buy FFF unless you have money to burn.

That leaves most of us out.

Here, for example:

  http://www.businessinsider.com/r-immunogen-drug-moving-ahead-in-single-agent-combination-trials-2017-5?r=UK&IR=T

*  I made FFF up, of course.

Mother's Milk & Cancer

Linda and a Stalcup baby

From an unlikely source (Yahoo Style + Beauty) comes news of another potential weapon against cancer – breast milk.  Apparently a compound found in breast milk has been shown to kill cancer cells selectively, in mice.  More trials are underway.  One can but hope

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/breast-milk-latest-cancer-treatment-161252298.html  

MOTHERS DAY: and other stuff

Linda and her Mom

Probably 1981

What better day than Mother’s Day to remind you that having babies is highly desirable, not only emotionally and economically, but by reasons of improved health as well.  Fertility (consummated) helps protect women from OVCA – and the more kids, the better.  We males miss out on the health thing, but benefit from the glow of parental pride.   My daughters took me to see a Canadian crow yesterday – my birthday – and I experienced the glow.  To think that, having grown up with the likes of me around, they still turned out to be such fine young women!

Here is something I wrote previously about childbirth and ovarian cancer.

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2015/11/have-more-babies.html

USEFUL?

Linda and George

                                                                That was a fun trip

I don’t know whether to file this under “Myrl’sBlog” (serious cancer-related stories) or “Frivolities” (essentially everything else).  So maybe I’ll put it in both places.

If you click on the link below you will get a dictionary of cancer-related terms, compiled recently by the NCI.  It contains over 8,100 entries!  I find it mildly disturbing that our cancer warriors find themselves confronted with a foe so complicated that it takes that many terms simply to describe it.  But maybe I should see it as the warriors understanding their foe so well that they can name its separate parts.  Anyway, the question remains: what are you going to do with all this information?  Damned if I know: maybe someday it will come in handy.

https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms?expand=U