TWO INTERESTING NEWS ARTICLES

Linda prepares a (much younger) me for battle with the Cascades

The Economist is a superlative news magazine, but for most of us it can be a bit too much.  If you were to attempt to read its entire weekly print edition with anything like care you would have time for little else – unless you read at 1000 words/minute, which I don’t.  But if you harbor an intense interest in the internal workings of, say, Burkina Faso, you are stuck with the Economist. 

So, last week’s magazine featured two articles of interest here.  The first concerns some problems using the CRISPR gene-editing technique, which I have described previously.  In short, the CRISPR molecule, once unleashed, may whack the stretch of DNA you want whacked, but then go on to whack stuff you do not want whacked.  As you might guess, research is ongoing

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/07/19/the-safety-of-crispr-cas9-gene-editing-is-being-debated.

The second article really belongs with my More Fun with Biology blog.  It describes how some viruses act in concert to outwit the defense mechanisms that some bacteria erect against them.  Just what we need: wolf packs of virus!

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/07/19/viruses-that-attack-bacteria-have-evolved-to-collaborate.

By the way: these links may not work easily.  I think the Internet is suffering from a new-found zeal for privacy.  If they don’t work, try copy-and-paste.

NATURAL KILLERS

In Trondheim, Norway, 2004

NK stands for Natural Killer.  Although a B grade slasher movie leaps to mind when you first encounter this acronym, NK also can denote a type of immune cell.  Like the rest of the immune system, NK cells turn their back on cancer cells – unless they are tweaked.  It turns out that they CAN be tweaked, thereby producing things called CAR NK cells, directed to go after specific cancer cells.  As you certainly know by now, CAR stands for chimeric antigen receptor, as in CAR T, which we have discussed several times before.  Apparently CAR NK immunotherapy potentially has the advantage of being less toxic than with CAR T treatment – but much more work and many clinical trials loom in the future.

If you want to bone up on CAR T, you can begin here:

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2017/10/car-t.html

Here is a little about CAR NK:

https://www.nature.com/articles/aps2017125 

ASPIRIN TO THE RESCUE - AGAIN

My favorite picture from our wonderful trip to Egypt

It has been known for years that aspirin and some other analgesics have a positive effect where cancer is concerned; taking them is good. Steadfastly, however, our local “clinicians” refuse to advise you to use them; in fact, they advise against, for reasons I don’t fully understand.  Now there appears more evidence of the benefits from ingesting aspirin and other NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen.  Two massive studies involving nurses have shown that women with ovarian cancer who regularly took analgesics had a significant increase in “cancer-specific survival”, relative to women who didn’t.  The statistics appear quite remarkable to me, a statistical ignoramus.  Surprisingly – well, maybe not – taking analgesics before diagnosis made no detectable difference.  Also of note: using paracematol (Tylenol) didn’t help at all.

The why of this is not discussed, but probably involves reduced inflammation. 

Ask your friendly local doc about taking aspirin

https://www.cancertherapyadvisor.com/gynecologic-cancer/ovarian-cancer-aspirin-nsaid-use-better-survival-outcomes/article/782048/

MAJOR BATTLE IN THE TALCUM POWDER WAR

I think this is a wedding picture

1982

I guess I should be tired of the OVCA-J&J-talcum powder war, but I guess I’m not. (J&J stands for Johnson & Johnson, which you already knew.) Lord knows the war has been going long enough – years, plenty of years.  So far the plaintiffs (women with OVCA who used talc) have won repeatedly, and been awarded tens of millions of dollars in compensation.  However, J&J has appealed these decisions and, invariably, I think, got them reversed.  Note that these amounts (tens of millions of dollars), are a rounding error in J&J’s annual report.

Now, however, a jury in St, Louis has awarded an assemblage of 22 women, suing together – is this class action? – 4.7 BILLION dollars in damages.  That got J&J’s attention!  Its stock dropped 3% on the news.  J&J will appeal, of course.

It may not have escaped your attention that only the lawyers are getting rich because of this war.

So what do I think?  Glad you asked.

First, the mineral talc and the mineral asbestos form under similar conditions, and (I am told) sometimes in proximity to one another.  Asbestos is a known carcinogen.

J&J claims to have evidence that their talcum powder is totally asbestos-free.  That should be easy to determine, I would think.

Clinical trials testing whether or not talc use and ovarian cancer are linked have given mixed results.  I may be wrong here, but my impression is that the “no correlation” verdicts are the more reliable.  Clearly, this is the moment that the FDA should step in, run the definitive trial, and end the war, one way or another.  Why they haven’t done so is a mystery to me.

Asbestos fibers have been found in OVCA tumors.  They may have come from baby powder, but there are other ways to ingest asbestos.  Still, suspicion remains.

SO, my considered opinion is that, if J&J officials knew that their product was unsafe, but went on pedaling it anyway, they should be shot.

HOWEVER, if it turns out that talcum powder actually is carcinogenic, but J&J had good reason to believe otherwise, then the company – which distributes many useful products – should NOT be sued out of existence, as happened with Johns Manville before them.

AND THE BOTTOM LINE, if I were a woman I would immediately switch to J&J’s talcum powder substitute made of corn starch.  And if I owned J&J stock, which I don’t, I would urge the company to stop selling real talcum powder, safe or not.  Time the lawyers made an honest living.

I almost forgot to give you the link.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/13/628684038/jury-awards-4-7-billion-to-women-in-johnson-johnson-talcum-powder-suit

MORE ON GENE THERAPY

With Linda at the bottom of the Trollsteigen, Norway

I’m not sure there is anything entirely new in this article, but at the least it is an excellent summary of modern genome-based medical research.  Also, it comes from an article* published in Nature which alone makes it a big deal.  In a way, it reads like something of a (premature) victory lap, but with considerable justification.  Anyway, here it is

.

To read this article easily you will have to remind yourself of a few things:

(1)What a T cell is and does, and why it doesn’t help with cancer.

(2) What is meant by CRISPR, and how it is used to “edit” the genome.

(3) That CART refers to a T cell that has been engineered to recognize, and attack, particular cancer cells

(4) How viruses make their living (if you can call it that)

So, all of these items have been discussed in this blog.  A virus reproduces by penetrating the cell wall of some innocent bystanding cell and inserting its DNA.  The cell subsequently  cranks out multitudes of baby viruses, and then croaks.  Because they can do this, viruses have been used to deliver stretches of DNA to, say, cancer cells.  Actually, their main value has been to modify T cells into little cancer-killing machines.  A cell so altered is called CART, for chimaeric antigen receptor, T cell.  This works well, but is slow and expensive.  This article reports the successful re-programming of T cells not using virus vectors .  The trick is to mix just the right proportions of DNA, CRISPR, and T cells together, and then hit the mixture with just the right electrical current.  The work was performed at the U. Cal Medical School, in San Francisco.  I may be wrong, but I think the same folks developed CRISPR in the first place.  Anyway, this looks like a big step forward.  Way to go, gang!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180711131204.html

*As an old publication-counter, I was amused to see the author list on this publication.  The first named was the grad student who spearheaded the work.  The last named was the grizzled veteran in whose lab the work was done.  In between were 44 co-authors!  No wonder these bio-types amass such imposing resumes.

SNAKE OIL

Another of my favorite pictures

The kitten is Patches

As an adult, Patches was universally known as the World's Most Beautiful Cat

When I was a boy I was always poking my nose into adult publications, then running to my father to discuss my discoveries.  Like many other children I had an inexhaustible reservoir of enthusiasm, and was hopelessly gullible.  Thus often, when I breathlessly expounded my latest revelation to my dad, he would be forced to say something like “Well, Buck, think it through again.  This guy sounds like a snake-oil salesman to me”.    

“Snake-oil salesman”.  What a great phrase!  A snake-oil salesman is someone who wants to sell you something (snake oil) that he knows to be completely worthless.  Apparently when my father had been a boy there actually were such guys, pedaling elixirs from the back of their wagon.  This stuff contained alcohol, petroleum products, pig blood, mashed up onion, other stuff – and water.  Whatever its chemistry, it could grow hair, cure erectile dysfunction, eradicate cancer, and make the girls love you.  Of course, you had to drink the whole big bottle to realize these benefits – and by the time you did that the snake oil salesman was in the next state.

Well, there are still snake-oil salesmen about, but it’s getting harder to identify them.  Take, for instance, Photosoft and NGPDT.  An Australian small-cap biotech (Invion) is developing and testing a cancer cure that sounds too good to be true.  It is doing so in cooperation with a cancer research outfit based in Melbourne, called the Hudson Institute.  The way this works is simple: the patient consumes or is injected with a fluid based on chlorophyll.  For some reason this stuff congregates in cancer cells.  Then the patient is bathed in a special kind of light – NGPDT stands for next generation photodynamic therapy.  Somehow the right wavelength of light activates the chlorophyll, producing inflammation and death of the cancer cell.  Wow!

As far as I can see, both Invion and the Hudson Institute are legit.  Moreover, this photodynamic therapy has been shown to kill ovarian cancer cells – in vitro.  Furthermore, other uses of light to activate cancer-killing products are known; see, for instance, my blog

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2015/08/more-light-on-cancer.html

So, what’s with the snake oil?  Well, when you Google Invion, or Photosoft, you find, lurking about three articles down, an analysis by something called uSpike, which claims that it’s all a jug of snake oil, proffered by some shady characters out of China.  But, if you research uSpike you find that it doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy about its reliability either.  So, what the hell?

I guess that the lesson here is, we need the FDA, and we need to maintain a healthy level of skepticism.  Here is one article on Photosoft.  There are lots more.

http://inviongroup.com/photosoft-efficiently-destroys-ovarian-cancer-cells-in-vitro/

INFERTILITY AND OVARIAN CANCER

The Joyce sisters,

probably about 2010

I had not known that taking fertility drugs has been thought to be associated with an increased incidence of ovarian cancer, but apparently that is the case.  Now, however, a massive new study performed in Denmark has (purportedly) demonstrated that the drugs are not to blame; infertility itself, not the drugs, is implicated.  Geez!  Not a happy conclusion!  Cause-and-effect are unknown and under investigation.

https://consumer.healthday.com/cancer-information-5/ovarian-cancer-news-104/infertility-i-not-i-fertility-drugs-linked-to-raised-risk-of-ovarian-cancer-735459.html

ONE IN A MILLION

The Joyce sisters, ready for a night on the town   

I am “ONE IN A MILLION”!  Admittedly I don’t feel like that much of the time, but who am I to disagree with the NIH (National Institutes of Health)?  No less a personage than Dr. Francis Collins assures me that I am OIAM, so I guess I am.  And you can be, too.

Dr. Collins has again stirred the NIH pot and out has popped a new program, named “all of us”, and I have just joined.  The idea here is to collect health data, including blood samples and DNA, from one million Americans – all sexes, races, ages, and political affiliations and then, I presume, turn the data miners loose on it.  Correlations uncovered will be investigated by the people in white lab coats, and cures and or preventative measures extracted.  At least, that’s my guess.  For something like this to work the data set has to be huge – hence “one in a million”.

Anyway, I joined, and I hope some of you do, too.  Joining took me about 20 minutes.  Admittedly, I could have spent that time watching baseball on TV, but I’m glad I didn’t.  This allofus thing might be very useful.. 

https://allofus.nih.gov/