TINY CLOTS OF HARMLESS MUTATIONS

LINDA AND MY MOM, 1982

Dr. Francis Collins, head of NIH, could write about the chemistry of floor wax and make it interesting.  He writes a regular blog; many of you would benefit from subscribing to it.  Just Google NIH and go from there. 

In his current blog (below), Dr. Collins describes some NIH-supported research involving study of non-cancerous pockets of mutated human tissue, using cadavers.  As you almost certainly know, cells duplicate their DNA when they divide.  Since human DNA consists of over three billion base pairs, the chance for error is significant.  We have evolved some clever mechanisms for detecting and repairing these mistakes, but sometimes some survive.  These are what we term mutations.  We all have them.  Lots of them.  And yet we are walking around, in rude good health, living our lives.  Clearly, not all mutations are bad.

The work that Dr. Collins describes shows how some somatic mutations “seed” small clots of similar – abnormal –  cells.  Clots, but not tumors. 

I don’t see a direct connection of this research to our primary goal – to cure cancer.  But I am sure that the more basic bio-stuff we learn the closer to that great finish line we are.  I am willing to pay taxes to further that goal.  Just don’t spend my money on border walls or weapons for Saudi Arabia!

If you read Dr. Collins’ blog (and you should), you might be amused by clicking on some of the internal “blue passages” (links).  They will provide you with a small taste of the world the cancer biologists operate in.  Thank God this stuff is filtered through people like Francis Collins before it reaches the rest of us.

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/06/18/study-finds-genetic-mutations-in-healthy-human-tissues/

Useful molecular garbage bags

Linda and Murphy, the Prince of Darkness

Clemson University is the second largest university in South Carolina, and the hardest to get into.  This does not place it in the top dozen universities academically, however, nor even the top hundred.  You usually associate Clemson with ferocious football teams and pretty cheer leaders, not with scientific research.  Nevertheless . . .

One of the most desired results in the battle against ovarian cancer would certainly be a means to detect it early.  I have written about this many times, but with precious little good news to report.  Thus it is with an internal “whoopee” that I can report that Clemson scientists may have made a breakthrough.  You probably know that cells excrete little “garbage bags”, called exosomes, which they require the bloodstream to eliminate.  Well, these Clemson folks seem to have determined that, in early OVCA victims, these exosomes contain scraps of telltale RNA and other stuff that give the presence of tumor, or even incipient tumor, away.  If so, and if a feasible test can be developed, this would be a huge step forward.  Read their little ditty for the details.

https://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/clemson-researchers-prisma-health-doctor-collaborate-on-development-of-screening-tool-for-ovarian-cancer/

SOME CLEVER NANOTECHNOLOGY

My Linda

Now here is a fascinating article, brought to us by Dr. Francis Collins by way of his NIH blog.  The work he describes was done by some exceedingly smart people at U. Wisconsin-Madison.

First: you know what “nano” means, right.  When used in measurement it means one-billionth of a meter.  That’s, like, small.  For example, one nanometer is about how much your fingernails grow every second. 

A number of times we have mulled over the potential for using CRISPR Cas technology to cure disease.  One significant speed bump in doing this is that the vital package has to be delivered by virus.  As I perceive it, you find or engineer a virus to specifically target a particular kind of cell, making sure aforehand that it doesn’t also carry something like, say, the Black Death.  (I think you just kill it.)  Then you stuff the virus with your CRISPR death machine, and inject it in huge quantities into the blood stream.  This works well for some types of cancer, but it is significantly prone to negative side effects.

Well, the Wisconsin folks seem to have shown that you can substitute nanoparticles for the virus.  They can enclose the CRISPR apparatus in a nanoparticle that is only 25 nm in diameter.  The exterior of the little ball consists of some substance that won’t dissolve in the bloodstream.  It (the surface) also is studded with peptides that will glom onto a particular kind of cell – specifically the ones you are hoping to alter.  Once the little nanoparticle finds the correct cell and becomes attached, it is allowed to pass through the cell wall into the cytoplasm.  However, the exterior of the nanoparticle is composed of something that dissolves in cytoplasmic goo.  The CRISPR apparatus is thereby released, to find its way to the nucleus and do its thing.

Sounds good to me.  Works in a Petri dish, and on mice.  Let’s be optimistic.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwDrHwHHPvwSLqbBlgnC

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A CANCER-FIGHTING DIET?

                         Linda and Carolyn as little kids in Kalamazoo

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We eat all sorts of stuff – although, for myself with my newly detected diabetes, I eat (and drink) damned little of what I really want to eat (and, especially, drink).  Our cells take most of the stuff we put on our bodies and convert it into molecules they need to survive; this is called cellular metabolism.  Cancer cells to some extent have special metabolic needs.  Thus, one would think, it might be possible to starve the little bastards to death.  Well, maybe so, as explained in the link below. 

Apparently cancer cells have a powerful need for the amino acid methionine.  We (living critters) essentially operate on 20 amino acids, which are the organic molecules that are strung together to make proteins.  Nine of these we humans can’t manufacture for ourselves, hence must acquire from food.  One of these is methionine, which is particularly abundant in food I like – meat and eggs.  So, now it has been shown that a bunch of poor cancer-ridden mice improved dramatically on a low methionine diet.  So, who knows?  Of course, as you would suspect, more work has to be done.

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2019/targeting-cancer-metabolism-low-methionine-diet?cid=eb_govdel

MAGNETISM STRIKES AGAIN!

On Sabbatical, Evanston Illinois

Back in the days when I first got into rock, earth and paleo-magnetism I went to a meeting where a guy put magnetotaxic bacteria through their tricks.  It just had been discovered that a certain type of bacteria secreted magnetic particles – the mineral magnetite, I think – inside their cell walls.  They used these little particles to interact with the earth’s magnetic field – to deduce the direction of “down”.  It appears that their source of nutrition was stuff that was found at the bottom of murky ponds.  If you reversed their polarity they would turn around and swim UP.  It was pretty amusing, watching the poor little devils swim frantically in one direction, then suddenly whip around and wiggle in the opposite path.  I remember I thought it was kind of mean.

Well, it seems that these little magnetic creatures may have some use in medicine.  Specifically, they can be used to guide cancer-lethal nanoparticles to where they can do some good, by fiddling with an external magnetic field.  Sounds like it might work.

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/09/12/teaming-magnetic-bacteria-with-

nanoparticles-for-better-drug-delivery/

I wrote about another use of magnetism in oncology recently:

https://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2019/08/cancer-death-by-magnetism.html

SOME BAD BUGS

Linda and Viv Hailwood

on a beautiful hike, in the Yorkshire Dales

This has little to do with ovarian cancer, but it reports a potentially important advance in medical knowledge, so I thought I would share it.

You probably are aware that the human body is host to literally trillions of little critters – microbes, often bacteria – that together play an important role in how we function.  I have written about such stuff several times, beginning five years ago with this masterful essay:

https://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2012/11/microbes-maketh-man.html

Since that time there has been considerable interest in our microbiome; in fact, NIH has given it its own Human Microbiome Project, some results of which Dr. Collins, NIH Director, writes about in the link given below.

Dr. Collins article concerns Parkinson’s disease.  Apparently there is no cure (as yet) for Parkinson’s, but a drug called L-dopa can relieve its symptoms.  However, L-dopa doesn’t work well for everyone.  It turns out that some people have a gut bacterium, with the pleasing name Enterococcus faecalis, which consumes L-dopa.  For such folks the standard treatment for Parkinson’s doesn’t work.  Naturally, the diligent folks at NIH are working on a way to frustrate E. faecalis.  Bless their efforts

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/06/25/gut-dwelling-bacterium-consumes-parkinsons-drug/

TYPES OF OVCA

Linda and friend, on Santorini

This is a brief, simple discussion of the types of ovarian cancer, and their symptoms.  Every woman under the age of 90 should read it.

https://news.yahoo.com/3-main-types-ovarian-cancer-212823727.html

ANGIOGENESIS AND MICRO RNA

Linda at the end of a very hard hike

I have long been interested in these things called Micro RNA.  In fact, I wrote about them seven years ago:

https://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2012/06/microrna-potential-break-through-or.html

At the time I seem to have hoped that they might provide a means to swiftly eradicate ovarian cancer.  Well, of course, they didn’t.  But now arrives welcome news of a promising miRNA study.  Before you read about it, you might profit by reading the link above, to brush up on your basic biology.

Well, anyway, some diligent researchers in Virginia seem to have shown that a certain miRNA has the welcome property of stifling angiogenesis in tumors.  Angiogenesis, as you will recall, is the process of growing blood vessels, needed to allow new tissue to survive.  As tumors by definition are fast-growing blobs of tissue, they have a great need for efficient angiogenesis.  A particular brand of miRNA appears to deny them that.  Read about it in Dr. Collins’ NIH blog:

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/09/05/using-microrna-to-starve-a-tumor/

PAIN

Linda in a happy time

One of the thoroughly detestable attributes of cancer is that often it – and  therapy designed to cure it – come complete with considerable pain.  Bone pain is distressingly common, as is mouth pain associated with oral cancer.  Another unwanted complication is chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy.  The world would be significantly better off without these unpleasant realities.

Well, medical science is making good progress in understanding the nuts and bolts of pain, and dealing with it.  The opioid epidemic has set back progress significantly, however.

Anyway, read this little NCI summary. It is easy going, and informative.   God grant that for you it turns out to be useless information.

I think Linda’s long battle with ovarian cancer was relatively pain-free, but I can’t be absolutely sure.  She was so deeply conscious of the feelings of her care-givers….  And she was so damned brave!

God, how I hate cancer.  Especially ovarian!

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2019/cancer-pain-new-approaches?cid=eb_govdel