March 19, 1982
Today Linda
would be enjoying her 39th wedding anniversary, if ovarian cancer
had not taken her away from us. Progress
in eliminating OVCA is being made almost daily, but there still is a long way
to go. Please consider donating to her
fund at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Canter:
It has
almost been ten years, but I still miss her as if it were yesterday. I know that many of you feel the same.
Somewhere in northern Mexico
A long time ago
Here is
another example of the unholy (or at least peculiar) alliance between Biotech
and Wall Street.
A tiny (3
person!) outfit out of San Jose, CA, has just announced a European patent on
what sounds to me like a damned good anti-OVCA vaccine. The outfit is called Anixa Biosciences; stock
market symbol ANIX, currently going at $5.40/share. As far as I can see, Anixa has never made a
profit – at least not in the last four years – and appears to not have had any revenue
in 2020! Do not regard this as a
stock-marketing tip!
But Anixa,
in company with several dudes from something called the Cleveland Clinic, has
produced and is attempting to market what appears to me to be a most valuable contribution to the task of
ridding the world of ovarian cancer. It
appears that there is a protein (with a ponderous name – see the link below)
that is expressed in the ovaries of pre-menopausal women. With menopause it goes away. However, with the onset of OVCA it comes back
and contributes to caner growth (I think).
Anyway, these San Jose/Cleveland people have developed a vaccine, to be
administered to post-menopausal females.
This vaccine induces the immune system to destroy the unnecessary and unwanted
protein, apparently thus inhibiting cancer growth. At least, that’s what I make of it. Here, read it for yourself:
For as long
as I can remember, and that is getting to be rather much, the phrase “it ain’t
rocket science” has been used to imply that some matter or other was relatively simple. Well, from now on I propose to use “it ain’t
cell science” for the same purpose. If
you tackle this article
https://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/6/57/eabh3184
you may agree.
(Remember that this blurb actually represents the original research boiled down into a form we ordinary folks hopefully can understand). Hell, all rocket science requires is a little physics, a lot of mathematics, and a whopping big computer. Cell science requires all that, plus a huge load of chemistry, a billion dollar electron microscope, and God-given faith that you can properly manipulate things you can’t see. If rocket science were trigonometry, cell science would be something like partial differential equations!
So, don’t
ask me what the article says cause I ain’t no rocket scientist. Translate it yourself.
