My “Eureka” moment. A cure for cancer.

[Peter Dow]

Suggesting a scientific approach and method for the medical treatment of tumorous cancer.

 

Summary

 

A scientific approach and method for the medical treatment and cure for tumorous cancer disease is suggested and described.

 

The desired performance characteristics of suitable types of biological agents and pharmaceutical drugs and an appropriate method of employing those agents and drugs for the treatment and cure of cancer is described.

 

Caution

 

Neither the selection of specific agents and drugs, nor the determination of the optimal treatment regimes are described herein because the details for how best to implement the author's general approach and method to cure cancer still require further research by the scientific and medical community which it is hoped this scientific paper will inform and inspire.

 

So the reader should be cautioned that the author does not herein publish detailed suggestions for oncologists to prescribe for their cancer patients which pills to pop when. The author is a scientist who is trying to find a cure for everyone one day, not a doctor who can cure someone today.

 

Invitation to informed discussion

 

This is claimed to be a realistic scientific paper, not a snake-oil-style cure-all claim. This may not be obvious to everyone because I am an amateur independent scientist, neither employed as a scientist, nor published in traditional scientific journals.

 

I have published widely on the internet on mostly non-scientific topics and I am accustomed to debating my ideas on-line and so Im quite comfortable inviting replies perhaps as helpful comments and criticisms from fellow scientists and I can also take questions from any cancer specialists, doctors or other informed parties who take an educated interest in such matters.

 

Approach and method

 

One type of biological agent and 3 types of drugs are utilised in 2 distinct treatment phases, perhaps with an intermission between phase 1 and phase 2 of the treatment to review that the goals of phase 1 treatment have been reached before moving on to phase 2.

 

Treatment Phase 1

 

It is proposed that phase 1 use a mild anaerobic biological agent (with the suggestion that this is mostly likely to be a selection of a mild, treatable, non-drug-resistant anaerobic bacteria, sourced from a well-characterised laboratory specimen) with which the cancer patient is purposefully infected and 1 type of drug, matched to be a known effective treatment capable in high doses of eliminating the selected bio-agent from the body or in small doses to moderate the intensity of the infection.

 

During phase 1 treatment, after purposeful infection with the known mild anaerobic bio-agent, the anti-bio-agent drug is administered but only sufficiently to moderate and limit the intensity and systemic effects of the intended mild infection on the patient yet not overly administered to the point that the bio-agent is destroyed in-vivo before it has it has completed the designed treatment objectives of phase 1 treatment.

 

In phase 1 of treatment, the expectation would be that the patients own immune response will be fighting the bio-agent and so the course of the infection must be monitored and bio-agent and drug doses continuously adjusted to maintain a mild infection.

 

The objectives of phase 1 treatment

 

The bio-agent is selected with intention that the infection should establish itself in any anaerobic cores of cancer tumours and be supervised there while the infection attacks and in due course kills those cancerous body cells in any and all anaerobic tumour cores in the patients body.

 

The mild anaerobic bio-agent is selected and managed in-vivo so that it cannot be active, only dormant, in most of the aerobic environments of the body which are routinely supplied with oxygen via the blood, and so an appropriate selection and controlled bio-agent should not harm typical body cells so long as the infection is constrained to be mild with limited systemic effects on the body.

 

The selected bio-agent is not intended to harm those cancer cells which are growing and dividing in an aerobic environment whether in peripheral parts of all tumours or in aerobic tumour cores which are have grown their own blood supply vessels.

 

The dangers of a failed phase 1 treatment

 

Too much bio-agent

 

Inappropriate selection of a drug-resistant bio-agent, neglecting to moderate the intensity of the infection with sufficient drugs or a patients weak immune system failing to eliminate the infection at the conclusion of phase 1 of treatment could lead to a run-away infection causing serious and life-threatening infection or death.

 

Too little bio-agent

 

Administering insufficient bio-agent, over-use of drugs or a particularly active immune system could lead to the bio-agent failing to establish itself in all anaerobic tumour cores and a failed attempted phase 1 treatment leaving viable anaerobic tumour cores which would inevitably wreck the hopes for a successful outcome to any attempted phase 2 treatment.

 

Treatment phase 2

 

It is proposed that two types of pharmaceutical drug are employed in phase 2 treatment and let's call them type H drugs ("H" for Halt cell division! ) and Type K drugs ("K" for Kill diving cells).

 

Type H drugs - Halt cell division!

 

At this time, the author does not know if type H drugs are ever used in medicine or indeed are even yet known to medical or biological science. However, this author does not want to wait for that research to be done but rather feels that a Eureka moment must be seized and acted upon and the time to publish is now.

 

Administered on their own, type H drugs are apparently useless medically and apparently harmful so such type H drugs may not have been developed and produced for medical purposes and so may never be available to use medically until someone explains what such drugs could be used for. One of the main points of this paper is to make the case for producing type H drugs so that if they are not now available, the pharmaceutical industry can get busy making them available! What is described here is what H-type drugs are supposed to be able to do.

 

Type H-drugs utilise and are intended temporarily to saturate the normal cell-signalling pathways which instruct normal cells not to divide. Normal cells with the exception of cancer cells pay heed to such cell to cell signals and it is the defining characteristic of a cancer cell that it ignores such signals not to divide and keeps on dividing regardless.

 

The purpose of administering a H-type drug is to temporarily overload the normal signals and order an artificial system-wide cessation of all normal cell division in the body. Accordingly, normal cells which frequently divide - skin cells, intestinal wall cells, immune response cells, bone marrow cells, reproductive organ cells etc are tricked into stopping dividing temporarily, so long as the H-type drug is administered.

 

Type-H drugs operate in a pharmaceutically reversible way and when the H-type drug clears from the body then the normal body cells which have dutifully followed the artificial signals and temporarily ceased dividing then go back to their normal operation without any permanent damage to the cell.

 

Clearly, the administration of type-H drugs weakens the body systematically which depends on routine cell division and for so long as type H remains in-vivo then harm to the body's health will accumulate.

 

Type-H drugs don't do the body any good on their own. Not only that, but for the purpose of treating cancer, type-H drugs do nothing directly to cancer cells either which are oblivious to the cell signalling pathways which type-H drugs are designed to stimulate.

 

Type K drugs - Kill dividing cells

 

In order to understand the utility of type-H drugs one has to consider their medical use in conjunction with Type K ( Kill dividing cells ) drugs. Type K drugs are known to medical science. They have been used to try to treat cancer but the problem with them is that they tend to kill all dividing cells, not just cancer cells.

 

OK, well the smarter reader will see by now where we are going with Type H drugs. After administration of a Type H drug which suspends normal cell division but does not affect cancer cell division, the administration of the Type K drug is now a no-brainer. The dividing cancer cells get killed by the Type K drug. The normally dividing cells don't get killed by the Type K drug because they are no longer dividing thanks to the administration of the Type H drug.

 

After the dividing cancer cells have died all that remains to be done is to clear the Type K drug from the body while the Type H drug is still in operation. Then later it is safe to discontinue the Type H drug at which point the body will resume normal cell division, free from cancer.

 

The dangers of a failed phase 2 treatment

 

The patient will be rendered vulnerable to infectious disease because of the predictable effect of the Type H drug which will prevent parts of the immune system from responding to infections. Worse case of course is that an opportunist infection may kill the patient.

 

If the Type H drug is not as effective as intended, if the dose is too low, if it is too quickly cleared from the body then the Type K drug will kill normally dividing body cells as well which cripple multiple body functions which depend on dividing cells and worst case kill the patient.

 

Without a successful phase 1 treatment which has previously killed anaerobic tumour cores, phase 2 treatment will only kill cancer cells dividing in aerobic environments leaving any and all remaining viable anaerobic tumour cores to provide an inexhaustible supply of cancer cells into the aerobic parts of the body. Phase 2 on its own cannot cure cancer; only after a successful phase 1 can it do that.

 

Conclusion

 

The Type H drugs are the biggest uncertainly in the author's mind but if they can be sourced and can work as described then conceptually this looks like an excellent scientific approach and method for the cure of tumorous cancers.

 

Credits

 

Thank you to all those from whom I have learned so much.

 

Dedication

 

This cure for cancer paper is dedicated to my mother who lives still and to the memory of all my friends and relatives who have died from cancer for whom this cure is too little and too late.

 

This cure for cancer paper is also dedicated to Condoleezza Rice who has inspired me to understand that I may not be able to control my circumstances as a scientist without employment as such but I can control how I react to my circumstances. Condi's mother also died from cancer and she has participated in Race for the Cure events.

 

 

Prizes.

 

I do not want the Nobel Prize for Medicine or indeed any Nobel prize so long as Sweden remains governed as a kingdom. I want nothing from the Swedish King nor from any King nor Queen.

 

I am a republican and only wish to receive prizes, awards or recognition while living or posthumously from republics or at least from non royal institutions which find themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of operating as I do inside a country currently governed as a kingdom.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Peter Dow

[John Cuthber]

This

"The bio-agent is selected with intention that the infection should establish itself in any anaerobic cores of cancer tumours and be supervised there while the infection attacks and in due course kills those cancerous body cells in any and all anaerobic tumour cores in the patients body." Is wishful thinking.

You might as well say there's just one stage to the treatment.

You take a drug

 

"The bio-agent drug is selected with intention that the infection interaction should establish itself happen in any anaerobic cores of cancer tumours and be supervised there while the infection drug attacks and in due course kills those cancerous body cells in any and all anaerobic tumour cores in the patients patient's body.

 

If such an organism as you propose actually existed, that would be great.

​But it won't- because it would be rather silly for it to make that choice.

[CharonY]

Indeed. Also most definitely speculations.

[Arete]

The proposal kind of reminds me of South Park's underpants gnome plan:

 

In that it completely glosses over how one would discover or develop a chemotheraputic or biological agent which can recognize and specifically attack cancerous cells without affecting non-cancerous cells, especially given the multitude of cellular malfunctions and damage types which can lead to unregulated cell growth.

 

The revolutionary part of such a treatment would not be the administration of such an agent, but its development - which seems to rely on the assumption that one can expoit the Warburg effect to produce a specific therapuetic agent to attack cancers. Glycolysis inhibitors are currently being researched as anti-cancer chemotherapeutics: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16892078 but the big caveat is that while glycolysis is elevated in aggressive cancers, it still exists in normal cells, and less aggressive cancers don't necessarily display strong Warburg effects. The net result being that even if you developed an agent which only attacked cells with elevated glycolysis levels, it would still attack normal cells, and it may not attack all types of cancer cells.

 

In addtion, the OP's "aerobic/anarobic" split between cancerous and normal cells appears to be somewhat misinterpreted. It refers to the mechanism of intracellular energy production - where as "anaerobic" bacteria are those adapted to hypoxic enviroments.

 

The "second" phase - which seems to suggest that by ceasing all cell division in the human body aside from cancer cells, and then killing all dividing cells seems fatally flawed on 2 levels. A) Cell replication is critical to human survival. If you ceased all cell division in a human, you would kill the person. B) Cancer cells are human cells. If you were able to cease the division of all human cell lines, you'd stop the division of cancer cells too.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Arete

[Bignose]

So, firstly I want to say that it is good to be thinking about such things. It is appreciated and necessary work.

 

That said, the above is really not terribly helpful.

 

All of the above approaches as well as many others have been tried, are being tried, and so on. And most importantly, they are being tried in a scientific way -- that is, investigating efficacy and side effects and comparing to placebo, and so on.

 

To put it another way, I don't see what good just writing about some magic substance that kills cancer cells actually does. We've been looking for that for over 100 years. Or, more accurately, we've been looking for 100 years for something that kills cancer that also doesn't kill the person, because lots of things kill cancer cells. The real value is in actually doing science to find that substance.

 

If you do want to write something meaningful, you need to be reading the articles on the cutting edge of cancer research, so you can form good opinions on what may be the most promising. And then write opinion pieces helping to solicit resources for research.

 

Also, as a last piece of advice, the "prizes" section of the paper is really unnecessary, and it makes the entire paper read as little more than an ego stroke. I would drop it from future revisions.

[Moontanman]

I follow this stuff mainly because I am a cancer survivor and the fear of it returning is always at the edge of my mind but the OP was just horse feathers. This on the other hand makes at least some sense...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130605190158.htm

Nontoxic Cancer Therapy Proves Effective Against Metastatic Cancer

June 5, 2013 — A combination of nontoxic dietary and hyperbaric oxygen therapies effectively increased survival time in a mouse model of aggressive metastatic cancer, a research team from the Hyperbaric Biomedical Research Laboratory at the University of South Florida has found.

 

 

[Peter Dow]

This

"The bio-agent is selected with intention that the infection should establish itself in any anaerobic cores of cancer tumours and be supervised there while the infection attacks and in due course kills those cancerous body cells in any and all anaerobic tumour cores in the patients body." Is wishful thinking.

When waiting at the bus stop, I can wish that my bus would turn up soon. That's wishful thinking too. Wishful doesn't necessarily mean unrealistic.

 

You might as well say there's just one stage to the treatment.

Wrong.

 

You take a drug

 

"The bio-agent drug is selected with intention that the infection interaction should establish itself happen in any anaerobic cores of cancer tumours and be supervised there while the infection drug attacks and in due course kills those cancerous body cells in any and all anaerobic tumour cores in the patients patient's body.

I can conceive in principle of a drug which becomes toxic only in an anaerobic environment but such a drug would only kill cells in that anaerobic environment. So such a drug would be good against anaerobic cores of tumours, as would the anaerobe bio-agent, but equally unable to distinguish between normal body cells and cancer cells in an aerobic environment. You'd still need another stage to the treatment to tackle the cancer cells in the aerobic environment.

 

Although I can conceive of the principle of an anaerobically cytotoxic drug, I am not familiar with any examples of such whereas anaerobic micro-organisms are well known in life sciences.

 

If such an organism as you propose actually existed, that would be great.

​But it won't- because it would be rather silly for it to make that choice.

There is no "if" about it. Anaerobic organisms do exist and anaerobic respiration is an excellent evolutionary choice for anaerobic environments. As it happens anaerobic bacteria evolved before aerobic bacteria because there was not a lot of free oxygen in the early atmosphere. Your basic aerobic bacteria didn't evolve until bacteria which could do photosynthesis started pumping lots of free oxygen into the atmosphere and aerobic respiration became a viable evolutionary "choice" for aerobic bacteria and animal life which also depend on aerobic respiration to get going.

 

Over 99% of the bacteria in the gut are anaerobes.

 

Now, not all will be natural bio-agents, performing a useful biological function for the host animal, but some will be.

 

Just because an anaerobic microorganism is not currently functioning as a natural bio-agent, but on occasion as a disease-causing organism, that doesn't mean it can't be conscripted to operate as an artificial bio-agent.

 

So the candidate species of anaerobes are out there. The subtlety will be in picking the most appropriate organism and strain of said organism to function as the best artificial bio-agent for this medical treatment.

 

The proposal kind of reminds me of South Park's underpants gnome plan:

 

In that it completely glosses over how one would discover or develop a chemotheraputic or biological agent which can recognize and specifically attack cancerous cells without affecting non-cancerous cells, especially given the multitude of cellular malfunctions and damage types which can lead to unregulated cell growth.

I was more explaining than glossing but maybe you need me to explain it again?

 

In phase one, all cells situated in anaerobic environments can be attacked and devoured by the bio-agent. It so happens that it is specifically cancer cells which happen to find themselves inside an anaerobic core of a tumour. As with house buying there are three factors which specifically identify cancer cells in anaerobic environments - location, location and location.

 

In phase two, all cells which are dividing are killed by the chemotherapy. It so happens that in phase 2, the only cells which are dividing are cancer cells because all normal body cells have working cell division control mechanisms which the Type H drug has temporarily usurped during phase 2 treatment to switch normal cell division off.

 

Think of phase 2 like a general who wants to put down a rebellion of misbehaving soldiers. What he does is to order all his soldiers to form ranks and then he shoots all those who don't form ranks. The Type H drug orders all cells to stop dividing. Non cancerous cells obey the order. Cancerous cells do not obey, keep dividing and then the Type K drug kills the dividing cancerous cells.

 

 

The revolutionary part of such a treatment would not be the administration of such an agent, but its development - which seems to rely on the assumption that one can expoit the Warburg effect to produce a specific therapuetic agent to attack cancers.

 

 

I never mentioned "the Warburg effect" in my OP. Strictly or obligate anaerobic bio-agents would attack all cells in an anaerobic environment only because that's the only environment in which they have energy to do anything. In devouring cells in such anaerobic environment the specificity of anaerobe against devoured cell has nothing directly to do with how, if at all, the cancer cell is respiring. Indeed, a dead cancer cell which is not respiring at all could equally well become food for an anaerobic bio-agent.

 

If you ask me to comment on the Warburg effect I would quote this from Wikipedia, Warburg Effect.

 

The Warburg effect may simply be ... an adaptation to low-oxygen environments within tumors,

 

 

 

Glycolysis inhibitors are currently being researched as anti-cancer chemotherapeutics: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16892078 but the big caveat is that while glycolysis is elevated in aggressive cancers, it still exists in normal cells, and less aggressive cancers don't necessarily display strong Warburg effects. The net result being that even if you developed an agent which only attacked cells with elevated glycolysis levels, it would still attack normal cells, and it may not attack all types of cancer cells.

 

You are barking up entirely the wrong tree. The bio-agent attacks anything it finds in an anaerobic environment. Some cancer cells just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get munched.

 

 

In addtion, the OP's "aerobic/anarobic" split between cancerous and normal cells appears to be somewhat misinterpreted. It refers to the mechanism of intracellular energy production - where as "anaerobic" bacteria are those adapted to hypoxic enviroments.

 

 

Wrong again. Sigh.

 

There are plenty of cancerous cells in oxygenated environments suitable for aerobic respiration. Such cancer cells are immune from the bio-agent and must be tackled in phase 2 treatment.

 

 

The "second" phase - which seems to suggest that by ceasing all cell division in the human body aside from cancer cells, and then killing all dividing cells seems fatally flawed on 2 levels. A) Cell replication is critical to human survival. If you ceased all cell division in a human, you would kill the person.

 

 

Cell replication is critical to multi-cellular organisms in the longer term. However short periods of no cell division ought to be tolerable.

 

 

 

B) Cancer cells are human cells. If you were able to cease the division of all human cell lines, you'd stop the division of cancer cells too.

 

No the method in phase 2 is to employ what I have named as "Type H drugs" which only act using the mechanisms for controlling cell division which are intact in normal cells but are faulty and unresponsive in cancer cells. So cancer cells don't stop dividing when they receive the Type H drug's artificial signals which mimic natural signals to stop dividing. That's the key characteristic of cancer cells - they don't stop dividing when the body tells them to stop dividing. They keep dividing and that's when they step out of line and can get clobbered by the K type drug.

 

 

So, firstly I want to say that it is good to be thinking about such things. It is appreciated and necessary work.

 

That said, the above is really not terribly helpful.

In your opinion.

 

 

All of the above approaches as well as many others have been tried, are being tried, and so on. And most importantly, they are being tried in a scientific way -- that is, investigating efficacy and side effects and comparing to placebo, and so on.

Hopefully that is true. Certainly this quote from Wikipedia looks in accord with the approach in my OP.

 

Bacterial treatments

 

Chemotherapeutic drugs have a hard time penetrating tumors to kill them at their core because these cells may lack a good blood supply. Researchers have been using anaerobic bacteria, such as Clostridium novyi, to consume the interior of oxygen-poor tumours. These should then die when they come in contact with the tumour's oxygenated sides, meaning they would be harmless to the rest of the body. A major problem has been that bacteria do not consume all parts of the malignant tissue. However, combining the therapy with chemotheraputic treatments can help to solve this problem.

 

This quote does not provide detail equivalent to my OP's description of the chemotherapy approach I would recommend for the phase 2 treatment. My OP did give credit to those from whom I have learned so much.

 

 

 

To put it another way, I don't see what good just writing about some magic substance that kills cancer cells actually does.

 

 

I believe you are being unfair to compare my approach and method to "magic".

 

We've been looking for that for over 100 years. Or, more accurately, we've been looking for 100 years for something that kills cancer that also doesn't kill the person, because lots of things kill cancer cells. The real value is in actually doing science to find that substance.

 

 

I have explained how my approach kills cancer cells and not normal body cells, in both phase 1 and 2.

 

 

If you do want to write something meaningful, you need to be reading the articles on the cutting edge of cancer research, so you can form good opinions on what may be the most promising. And then write opinion pieces helping to solicit resources for research.

 

 

What I have written is meaningful though perhaps not to you.

 

Also, as a last piece of advice, the "prizes" section of the paper is really unnecessary, and it makes the entire paper read as little more than an ego stroke. I would drop it from future revisions.

 

 

No. I simply can't trust those royalist not to award me something when I am dead and can't say "No thanks". I really need to have my republican principles on the record now.

 

I follow this stuff mainly because I am a cancer survivor and the fear of it returning is always at the edge of my mind but the OP was just horse feathers. This on the other hand makes at least some sense...

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130605190158.htm

 

 

From that article, this quote is misleading.

Solid tumors also have areas of low oxygen, which promotes tumor growth and metastatic spread.

 

 

 

Actually the low oxygen cores of solid tumours do not directly promote tumour growth and metastatic spread as the quote might imply.

 

The direct effect of low oxygen is to make it more difficult for the tumour cells in areas of low oxygen to get enough oxygen to divide anything like as quickly and efficiently as the peripheral areas of solid tumors which have access to high oxygen levels.

 

The way those areas of low oxygen promote tumour growth is indirectly because such low oxygen areas of tumour are highly resistant to many anti-cancer therapies, such as chemotherapy which directly target the characteristic rapidly dividing cancer cells but are ineffective against non-growing, non-dividing cancer cells in low oxygen areas.

 

So the low oxygen areas whilst not growing particularly are not being killed off by conventional anti-cancer therapies either and it is those persistent lumps of cancer cells which provide reservoirs of cancer cells when killed peripheral cancer cells peel off like the layers of an onion to reveal a new growing layer which now gets oxygen and can grow and flake off to metastasize new tumours elsewhere.

 

So I'd be suspicious of a hyperbaric oxygen treatment on its own. Hyperbaric might theoretically work to a degree to saturate solid tumours with oxygen, if the patient could stay in the tank long enough to promote solid tumour cores to start growing rapidly all the way through and quickly before they grow too much then immediately hit the growing cores with a conventional chemotherapy. However, that sounds like a very risky and cumbersome method which I am not recommending.

Edited October 10, 2013 by Peter Dow

[Bignose]

I believe you are being unfair to compare my approach and method to "magic".

I think it is fair since you don't actually name a drug. You describe the effects the drug is supposed to have, sure, but not the drug itself.

 

[begin sarcasm]

 

Hey, I just invented the P drug. It kills HIV and AIDS. Hey everybody, I just solved AIDS!

 

Hey, I just invented the [math]\aleph[/math] drug. It kills the virus that causes the cold. Hey everybody, I just cured the common cold!

 

Hey, I just invented the [math]\textbf{niner}^{derp}[/math] drug. It makes ugly people attractive. Hey everybody, I just cured ugly!

 

man, that was easy. I should probably get to inventing more drugs...

 

[/end sarcasm]

 

I'm sure you're going to tell me how these are different than your H & K drugs, but I don't see it. You just named what these supposed drugs are supposed to do, as did I.

 

I don't think I did anything meaningful. And I'm sorry, but I don't think you did either.

 

Meaningful work are the people who are actually discovering, creating, and testing drugs. Some of which actually do some of the things you named here. That's why I wrote you should be reading the research papers... Instead of just naming drugs with letters, you might actually learn something and maybe even might think of something that can actually help.

[Arete]

In phase one, all cells situated in anaerobic environments can be attacked and devoured by the bio-agent. It so happens that it is specifically cancer cells which happen to find themselves inside an anaerobic core of a tumour. As with house buying there are three factors which specifically identify cancer cells in anaerobic environments - location, location and location.

 

Apologies. I assumed it was a misinterpretation of what was meant by the term anaerobic in relation to cancer, because of how flawed the idea that your "therapeutic" agent would generate infect all cells in anaerobic environments is. You do realize, the bacterial agent you refer to: Clostridium novyi is a causative agent of gangrene, right?

 

Anaerobic bacteria are a major class of infectious agents simply because large regions of the human body offer them prime, anaerobic environments for them to infect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_infection

 

Why not just come up with a bacterium that can identify and attack cancer cells directly, and not evolve to become pathogenic, and simplify the whole problem ?

 

There are plenty of cancerous cells in oxygenated environments suitable for aerobic respiration.

 

Indeed - that was one of my points. Your treatment 1 will be ineffective.

 

I also demonstates my original point - you are confusing anaerobic/aerobic cellular respiration with aerobic/anaerobic environments. They are not the same thing, and have lead to the above fatal flaw in your entire proposal.

 

Cell replication is critical to multi-cellular organisms in the longer term. However short periods of no cell division ought to be tolerable.

 

Unfortunately, no, it wouldn't be tolerable. For example, the replacement of digestive system epithelial cells needs to be constant so that your stomach acid and gut flora don't erode the walls of your digestive tract - even 48 hours would be catastrophic. Blood cell replacement is continuous. Even a short period of no replacement would likely send your patient into renal and liver failure. Without the replacement of macrophage cells, your patient would have effectively no immune system. Lung cells are replaced every 2 weeks - etc. Even if your patient were to survive such a treatment long enough for your as yet unknown "stage 2" drugs, they'd be likely to suffer permanent damage from the shut down of cell division.

 

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.genet.41.110306.130244

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bjh6NyYszxQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA357&dq=organ+renewal+rates&ots=n8AnZoU9FR&sig=C4xFEiKV9z2yhhgJLrd-7cixdJA#v=onepage&q=organ%20renewal%20rates&f=false

 

 

 

"Type H drugs" which only act using the mechanisms for controlling cell division which are intact in normal cells but are faulty and unresponsive in cancer cells.

 

Do you know of such a drug? or any of the other "agents" your proposing to use? If not, you may as well be proposing magic.

 

It's akin to me saying "All we need to do to enable interstellar space travel is to invent the warp drive. You can leave the money and awards over there, please."

 

 

 

man, that was easy. I should probably get to inventing more drugs...

 

Don't forget to snub the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for being dirty monarchists.

Edited October 10, 2013 by Arete

[Ringer]

In addition to dying due to halting cellular division, you have also killed your patient by killing all of their internal flora.

[Spyman]

Prizes.

 

I do not want the Nobel Prize for Medicine or indeed any Nobel prize so long as Sweden remains governed as a kingdom. I want nothing from the Swedish King nor from any King nor Queen.

 

I am a republican and only wish to receive prizes, awards or recognition while living or posthumously from republics or at least from non royal institutions which find themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of operating as I do inside a country currently governed as a kingdom.

The country of Sweden is not ruled by the Swedish king and the Nobel prizes are neither awarded nor paid by the king or the government.

 

"Today, Sweden is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy form of government and a highly developed economy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden

 

"According to the 1974 Instrument of Government, the king's duties are solely of a representative and ceremonial nature."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden#Political_system

 

"The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet is a body at Karolinska Institutet which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

 

The Nobel Assembly consists of fifty professors in medical subjects at Karolinska Institutet, appointed by the faculty of the Institute, and is a private organisation which is formally not part of Karolinska Institutet."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Assembly_at_Karolinska_Institutet

 

"The Nobel Foundation (Swedish: Nobelstiftelsen) is a private institution founded on 29 June 1900 to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. The Foundation is based on the last will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Foundation

Edited October 10, 2013 by Spyman

[John Cuthber]

When waiting at the bus stop, I can wish that my bus would turn up soon. That's wishful thinking too.

 

 

There is no "if" about it. Anaerobic organisms do exist and anaerobic respiration is an excellent evolutionary choice for anaerobic environments. ... blah.

No it isn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking

 

And There's no point telling me that anaerobic bacteria exist because we all know that.

What doesn't exist is the bacterium you want.

The one that only eats cancer cells.

And the reason it wouldn't exists is because it would then die out.

As I said, that would be rather silly of it.

 

Basically, what you have said is

"First we treat the patient with some magic stuff, then we use some other magic stuff, finally we use some magic stuff".

Logically faultless; but completely useless.

 

Spyman, thanks for the interesting info on the Nobel Foundation, but I don't see it being relevant to this thread.

[Ophiolite]

Spyman, thanks for the interesting info on the Nobel Foundation, but I don't see it being relevant to this thread.

It is, in my opinion, very relevant. Peter has declared he would not wish to receive the Nobel prize because Sweden is governed as a Kingdom and he further implies that the Nobel prizes are directly related to this "royal governance". Spyman has demonstrated the incorrectness of Peter's thinking. This calls into question Peter's overal thought processes in terms of logic and rationality. This supports the reservations based on the speculation itself.

[Spyman]

Spyman, thanks for the interesting info on the Nobel Foundation, but I don't see it being relevant to this thread.

I think that correcting an error in the OP is relevant and important, even if it does not concern its main claim.

 

If false facts are left unchallenged then other people who read this thread might believe they are true.

 

I am sorry if this brought the thread off topic, that wasn't my intention.

[Greg H.]

Tell you what. Go take your idea to a major pharmaceuticals company. Since the cure for cancer would literally be worth billions of dollars, they should jump all over this. Forget the paltry sums associated with the Nobel Prize. Cash in my friend, buy a small island, and drink little fruity umbrella drinks for the rest of your life.

 

Assuming your idea isn't basically snake oil, of course.

[Peter Dow]

I think it is fair since you don't actually name a drug. You describe the effects the drug is supposed to have, sure, but not the drug itself.

 

[begin sarcasm]

 

Hey, I just invented the P drug. It kills HIV and AIDS. Hey everybody, I just solved AIDS!

 

Hey, I just invented the [math]\aleph[/math] drug. It kills the virus that causes the cold. Hey everybody, I just cured the common cold!

 

Hey, I just invented the [math]\textbf{niner}^{derp}[/math] drug. It makes ugly people attractive. Hey everybody, I just cured ugly!

 

man, that was easy. I should probably get to inventing more drugs...

 

[/end sarcasm]

 

I'm sure you're going to tell me how these are different than your H & K drugs, but I don't see it. You just named what these supposed drugs are supposed to do, as did I.

 

I don't think I did anything meaningful. And I'm sorry, but I don't think you did either.

 

Meaningful work are the people who are actually discovering, creating, and testing drugs. Some of which actually do some of the things you named here. That's why I wrote you should be reading the research papers... Instead of just naming drugs with letters, you might actually learn something and maybe even might think of something that can actually help.

Type K drugs are well known as traditional chemotherapy drugs.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy

 

I am not naming one of those in particular because I don't have a preference for one of those well known drugs over the others.

 

Type H drugs may not be available at all right now, I don't know, and on reflection, it doesn't have to be one single drug to perform the entire "Halt cell division!" role. If a number of such type H drugs were necessary, perhaps one drug for each of the many signalling pathways the body uses to stimulate cell division, but given in combination as one "type H drug" dose that could work too. ,

 

Now, even though I can't name any of the specific type H drugs right now - maybe no-one can - it is still meaningful to define the role of type H drugs. Yes you are entitled to question if the intended role is a realistically achievable goal, would any drug ever be able to do what type H drugs are defined as capable of doing?

 

I say "yes" it is a realistic expectation and if you don't believe me then maybe a professional pharmacologist will convince you?

 

Possibly you don't know enough about the way drugs work in general to get a feel for what it is realistic to expect new drugs to be able to do, hence your sarcasm, but it is misplaced and although amusing, those who know pharmacology will be laughing at you, not me.

Edited October 11, 2013 by Peter Dow

[Ringer]

Type K drugs are well known as traditional chemotherapy drugs.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy

 

I am not naming one of those in particular because I don't have a preference for one of those well known drugs over the others.

 

Type H drugs may not be available at all right now, I don't know, and on reflection, it doesn't have to be one single drug to perform the entire "Halt cell division!" role. If a number of such type H drugs were necessary, perhaps one drug for each of the many signalling pathways the body uses to stimulate cell division, but given in combination as one "type H drug" dose that could work too. ,

 

Now, even though I can't name any of the specific type H drugs right now - maybe no-one can - it is still meaningful to define the role of type H drugs. Yes you are entitled to question if the intended role is a realistically achievable goal, would any drug ever be able to do what type H drugs are defined as capable of doing?

 

I say "yes" it is a realistic expectation and if you don't believe me then maybe a professional pharmacologist will convince you?

 

Possibly you don't know enough about the way drugs work in general to get a feel for what it is realistic to expect new drugs to be able to do, hence your sarcasm, but it is misplaced and although amusing, those who know pharmacology will be laughing at you, not me.

Alright then, since you have a better idea about how these things work than we do, please do tell how you will modify these bacteria to only attack cancer cells. Not just the 'anaerobic' thing, but the specific mechanism that can be used to recognized the anaerobic environment, if you are using a drug, bacteria, or virus and what mechanisms they will use to disrupt the cancer without killing the internal flora of the patient. Though I may not know as much about it as you, I am familiar with cellular biology and metabolism so feel free to use big words.

 

Also, How do you propose to halt ALL cellular division of healthy cells, again I would like to hear the specific metabolic pathways and proteins that one would disrupt to halt cell division and not kill the person.

[Peter Dow]

Arete

Apologies. I assumed it was a misinterpretation of what was meant by the term anaerobic in relation to cancer, because of how flawed the idea that your "therapeutic" agent would generate infect all cells in anaerobic environments is.

Apology accepted. Possibly I would not have been misunderstood if I had stuck to using the term "hypoxic" for the environment and "anaerobic" for the bio-agent selected to function in tumour cores with an inadequate oxygen supply for human cell aerobic respiration.

 

I don't see any flaw in the idea that a suitably selected anaerobic micro-organism would thrive, flourish and grow at the expense of all human cells in anaerobic parts of the body.

 

Are you suggesting that the flaw is in the therapeutic merit of encouraging an anaerobic infection where before there was none? The therapeutic merit is that the body already has successful defences against anaerobic infections but none against the cancerous tumours this phase 1 of treatment would be infecting. In addition, medicinal drugs are available to control anaerobic infections. So the merit is in replacing a foe we can't defeat (dormant or quiescent cancer cells inside tumour cores) with a foe we can defeat (anaerobic bacteria).

 

 

 

Arete

You do realize, the bacterial agent you refer to: Clostridium novyi is a causative agent of gangrene, right?

I referred to a quote from Wikipedia - Experimental Cancer Treatments - Bacterial Treatments which yes mentioned "Clostridium novyi".

 

Yes I can read your Wikipedia reference but do you realize that your own Wikipedia reference distinguishes between the natural Clostridium novyi which causes gangrene and the bio-engineered NT strain which is less toxic which has been researched as a cancer treatment?

 

 

Arete -

Anaerobic bacteria are a major class of infectious agents simply because large regions of the human body offer them prime, anaerobic environments for them to infect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_infection

And routinely reside in the body, for example as gut flora, harmlessly and not causing any infectious disease.

 

I think you would find your own quoted Wikipedia article most relevant

 

Wikipedia - Clostridium novyi-NT - Potential Therapeutic Uses in Cancers

 

Arete

Why not just come up with a bacterium that can identify and attack cancer cells directly, and not evolve to become pathogenic, and simplify the whole problem ?

Because the fallacy of a bacterium which can identify and attack cancer cells irrespective of the oxygen saturation of the environment in which cancer cells find themselves is not simplifying the problem but rather is making the problem a whole lot more complicated.

 

Arete -

Indeed - that was one of my points.

Well then one of your points was a point I had already pointed out in my OP and so was redundant to this discussion.

 

Arete -

Your treatment 1 will be ineffective.

No, phase 1 of the treatment will be effective at achieving phase 1 treatment goals, namely to eradicate from anaerobic tumour cores all viable cancer cells, whilst leaving cancer cells in aerobic periphery or rims of tumours unaffected.

 

Phase 1 does what it sets out to do, no more and no less.

 

Arete -

I also demonstates my original point - you are confusing anaerobic/aerobic cellular respiration with aerobic/anaerobic environments. They are not the same thing, and have lead to the above fatal flaw in your entire proposal.

I'm not in the least confused and if you need me to make it even more crystal clear to you then I will do my best to explain. My entire proposal is not flawed. The flaw is in your misunderstanding.

 

Arete

Unfortunately, no, it wouldn't be tolerable. For example, the replacement of digestive system epithelial cells needs to be constant so that your stomach acid and gut flora don't erode the walls of your digestive tract - even 48 hours would be catastrophic.

Those are medically manageable dangers, which could be managed using known drugs which can reduce the production of stomach acid and other known drugs which can sterliize the gut flora. We won't need anaerobic bacteria for phase 2 treatment.

 

One can live quite happily without a fully functioning digestive system for 48 hours or longer if needs be.

 

Arete -

Blood cell replacement is continuous. Even a short period of no replacement would likely send your patient into renal and liver failure.

Now you are being silly. Blood cells circulate for about 100 to 120 days.

 

Arete -

Without the replacement of macrophage cells, your patient would have effectively no immune system.

Macrophages live for 6 to 16 days.

That's long enough to kill rapidly dividing cancer cells. There are options if a longer phase 2 treatment is required.

 

For example, isolating the patient in a sterile environment is one option to avoid infection for longer than 16 days.

 

Another option for slower growing cancers would be implement phase 2 treatment in bursts, say one week of treatment followed by one week of no treatment to allow the immune etc systems to recover then alternating treatment weeks with recovery weeks until the cancer was eradicated.

 

 

Arete -

 

Lung cells are replaced every 2 weeks - etc. Even if your patient were to survive such a treatment long enough for your as yet unknown "stage 2" drugs, they'd be likely to suffer permanent damage from the shut down of cell division.

No, the cessation of all cell division in the body is tolerable for short periods if it is managed appropriately. Clearly there are dangers in shutting down cell division but I mentioned those in my OP.

 

 

 

 

In addition to dying due to halting cellular division, you have also killed your patient by killing all of their internal flora.

When, in phase 1 while moderating the bio-agent, or phase 2, to defend the intestinal wall while its cells are unable to divide?

 

Either way, a patient doesn't die from short periods without internal flora - nor from longer periods if the vitamins the flora make for the body are supplemented artificially.

 

It's not beyond medical science to keep a sample of patient flora alive in-vitro and use it to repopulate the patient's gut flora after treatment, is it?

The country of Sweden is not ruled by the Swedish king and the Nobel prizes are neither awarded nor paid by the king or the government.

 

"Today, Sweden is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy form of government and a highly developed economy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden

 

"According to the 1974 Instrument of Government, the king's duties are solely of a representative and ceremonial nature."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden#Political_system

 

"The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet is a body at Karolinska Institutet which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

 

The Nobel Assembly consists of fifty professors in medical subjects at Karolinska Institutet, appointed by the faculty of the Institute, and is a private organisation which is formally not part of Karolinska Institutet."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Assembly_at_Karolinska_Institutet

 

"The Nobel Foundation (Swedish: Nobelstiftelsen) is a private institution founded on 29 June 1900 to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. The Foundation is based on the last will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Foundation

Well I live under the jackboot of UK rule so I know very well how innocent civilians can be tortured, arrested and jailed on the whim of the kingdom's officers whilst all the time the population is brainwashed to believe that this is some kind of "democracy". Anyway, this is for another topic, or another more political forum perhaps.

 

I just wanted to put my politics on the record for posterity. It wasn't an attempt to pick Sweden out as a worse kingdom than any other kingdom. No offence meant to the people of Sweden who have my sympathies and best wishes for a republican future if they can obtain one.

 

 

 

John Cuthber -

No it isn't.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking

Well it is indeed possible to wish for more than the bus service realistically will provide but let's not get too deeply into that now.

 

John Cuthber -

And There's no point telling me that anaerobic bacteria exist because we all know that.

What we don't all know is what your point of confusion is and the point of me explaining what everyone ought to know as an answer to your poorly specified questions may eventually prompt you to explain whatever it is you misunderstand.

 

John Cuthber -

What doesn't exist is the bacterium you want.

Well my approach and method wants a suitable anaerobic bio-agent and I have suggested a selection of the best anaerobic bacterium looks good for that, without ruling out other anaerobic organisms entirely.

 

John Cuthber -

The one that only eats cancer cells.

And the reason it wouldn't exists is because it would then die out.

As I said, that would be rather silly of it.

Oh I see, you mean a fictitious bacterium which turns its nose up at any other food source which is not a cancer cell? I've not imagined such a beast though I think Arete suggested that finding such a beast would be "simpler" if I understand Arete correctly.

 

No, no, the anaerobic bio-agent just consumes everything it can in the hypoxic core of tumours where it can thrive and not much anywhere else where it can't.

 

It just so happens that what food source for the bio-agent which is to be found inside the hypoxic cores of tumours is dead and dormant cancer cells, is all.

 

John Cuthber -

Basically, what you have said is

"First we treat the patient with some magic stuff, then we use some other magic stuff, finally we use some magic stuff".

Logically faultless; but completely useless.

No what you've said, is that anything John Cuthber can't put a proper name to must be magic. By your faulty reasoning your own birth must have been magic since you were not named until you had been born.

Tell you what. Go take your idea to a major pharmaceuticals company. Since the cure for cancer would literally be worth billions of dollars, they should jump all over this. Forget the paltry sums associated with the Nobel Prize. Cash in my friend, buy a small island, and drink little fruity umbrella drinks for the rest of your life.

 

Assuming your idea isn't basically snake oil, of course.

Tell you what, let's assume that major pharmaceutical companies have the internet and the staff are allowed at work to browse this forum, shall we? Edited October 11, 2013 by Peter Dow

[John Cuthber]

Unless they decide to award a Nobel prize for talking gibberish like this

"What we don't all know is what your point of confusion is and the point of me explaining what everyone ought to know as an answer to your poorly specified questions may eventually prompt you to explain whatever it is you misunderstand."

, you can stop worrying.

 

This

"No what you've said, is that anything John Cuthber can't put a proper name to must be magic. By your faulty reasoning your own birth must have been magic since you were not named until you had been born."

isn't rational, it's a strawman.

 

I'm not concerned about the organism having a name- we can call it Peter: it will never know. But I'm concerned that it's only defined by having the property of eating cancer cells (and not other anaerobic bits of the body) in spite of the fact that such behaviour would be suicidal.

It is pretty much by definition, non-existent.

 

"Tell you what, let's assume that major pharmaceutical companies have the internet and the staff are allowed at work to browse this forum, shall we? "

Good idea, because i'm sure that some of them will appreciate unintentional comedy too.

[Peter Dow]

Ringer

Alright then, since you have a better idea about how these things work than we do, please do tell how you will modify these bacteria to only attack cancer cells.

 

Oh my approach doesn't require "modifying" bacteria. My OP didn't mention "modification" of bacteria to do anything other than what comes natural to bacteria.

Yes it is true that a bio-engineered less-toxic strain of Clostridium novyi - the so called "NT" strain - has been mentioned in quotes during the discussion in this thread - and I don't have any evidence to dare to dispute the researchers use of NT strain as better suited to the native stains for any such bacterial treatment of cancer tumours.

If strictly or obligate anaerobic bacteria are used for this they could only ever attack organic material of any kind which is situated in hypoxic areas of the body where they can come to life from the inactive spores.

Ringer

Not just the 'anaerobic' thing, but the specific mechanism that can be used to recognized the anaerobic environment,

 

The "anaerobic thing", as you put it, is everything. The approach uses strictly or obligate anaerobic micro-organisms which are deactivated when there is oxygen in their environment.

 

 

If you want specifics - Wikipedia - Obligate anaerobe

Ringer

if you are using a drug

 

 

3 types of drug are used. 1 type in phase 1 and two types in phase 2.

 

Ringer

bacteria,

 

 

Phase 1 may imply the selection of an anaerobic bacteria to use as the bio-agent.

 

Ringer

 

or virus

 

 

I haven't mentioned using viruses so I don't know where you got that from?

 

Ringer

 

and what mechanisms they will use to disrupt the cancer without killing the internal flora of the patient. Though I may not know as much about it as you, I am familiar with cellular biology and metabolism so feel free to use big words.

 

 

In phase 1, the bio-agent needs to infect, kill or consume those cancer cells it finds in anaerobic environments in which it thrives and human cells do not and the precise mechanism the bio-agent uses to do that will be species dependent.

 

In phase 2, the K type drug, as a tried and tested chemotherapy drug, kills the dividing cancer cells, but thanks to the H type drugs, leaves be the normal cells which are temporarily no longer dividing.

 

The killing of the internal flora is not required during phase 1 as indeed the bio-agent will likely have the same requirements for life as the patient's internal flora.

 

The killing of the internal flora in phase 2 might be a medical management requirement to protect the intestinal wall from the flora while the gut wall cells are temporarily unable to divide and reinforce themselves because of the action of the type H drugs.

 

Ringer

 

Also, How do you propose to halt ALL cellular division of healthy cells,.

 

 

How? Using what I have described as "type H drugs".

 

Ringer

again I would like to hear the specific metabolic pathways and proteins that one would disrupt to halt cell division and not kill the person.

 

 

 

Specifically the metabolic pathways and proteins that would be disrupted are those which usually control cellular division of cells. The type H drugs work by interfering with the control mechanisms which the body uses to stimulate or start cell division at certain times and under certain conditions and to suppress or stop cell division at other times and that interference would be designed to jam the control mechanism so as to stop cell division so long as the drug is in the body.

 

Many types of cancer cells divide regardless of the body's control mechanisms - such cancer cell division isn't started selectively so it can't be stopped either naturally by the body's control mechanisms or artificially by pharmaceutical drugs.

 

So I presume growth factor metabolic pathways and proteins would be suitable targets for disruption by the type H drugs.

 

Wikipedia: Growth factor

 

So for example, typical normal cells will wait for the appropriate growth factor to attach itself to the corresponding growth factor receptor on the cell's surface before initiating cell division.

 

Many types of cancer have cancer cells which will divide regardless of whether there is the appropriate growth factor attached to the cancer cell's corresponding growth factor receptor or not.

 

One obvious approach the drug developer could take would be to design a type H drug which mimics the growth factor receptor's shape and thus will selectively bind to the corresponding growth factor. If there is a lot more of the type H drug in the extra cellular fluid than there are cell growth factor receptors then the growth factor would be mopped up and leave none free in the extra cellular fluid to be available to bind to the cells' growth factor receptors, thus preventing normal cell growth from being initiated.

 

The person is not killed as I have explained to Arete because the cessation of normal cell division is temporary and the patient's health managed and once the H type drug has cleared from the body the usual control mechanisms for cell division can resume their normal operation.

Edited October 11, 2013 by Peter Dow

[Bignose]

Now, even though I can't name any of the specific type H drugs right now - maybe no-one can - it is still meaningful to define the role of type H drugs. Yes you are entitled to question if the intended role is a realistically achievable goal, would any drug ever be able to do what type H drugs are defined as capable of doing?

I'm not complaining about the possibility of any of the drug existing, as unlikely as it is. I am complaining that your thinking just saying you wish such a drug existed is meaningful.

 

The analogy given by another poster of wishing there was a warp drive and then thinking that just the wishing means something. It doesn't.

 

I am saying that real science is done by people who wish for something AND THEN also actually investigate how to make it happen. What is scientifically meaningful is reporting on drugs that one may think has the properties you're looking for, and also reporting on what actually happens when the drug is used. What is scientifically useful is, you know, actually doing science. Forming hypothesis, testing those hypothesis against experimental results, and repeating.

 

In short, you stopped on just the very first step (and expected that it might be worthy of prizes). The first step is needed, it is necessary. But it isn't all that meaningful until the next many steps are take too.

 

It is an old adage "you don't win a race in the first step, but you can lose it". I am saying that if you just stop here, you're going to lose the race -- because you've stopped and expected a medal to be draped over your shoulders when the rest of the racers are still moving forward.

 

Again, the imagination to think of such ideas is needed. But all you've got at this point is a story. There is nothing scientifically meaningful. And as this is a science forum, you see how many people have issues with that you've written.

[CharonY]

As already mentioned, the main criticism of OP is that it lacks specificity as well as novelty. The use of bioagents for cancer control has been under investigation for well over a decade or so. OP does neglect all the issues with using them in a clinical setting as well as their general limitations (e.g. that it only works, if at all on certain types of solid tumors).

In research throwing ideas around is really the cheap part. Over a coffee you will easily collect a few dozens of them.

It only gets interesting if you manage to identify challenges and strategies to overcome them. And no, declaring that there will be something without any specifics is not worth a damn.

Edited October 11, 2013 by CharonY

[Ringer]

Oh my approach doesn't require "modifying" bacteria. My OP didn't mention "modification" of bacteria to do anything other than what comes natural to bacteria.

 

Yes it is true that a bio-engineered less-toxic strain of Clostridium novyi - the so called "NT" strain - has been mentioned in quotes during the discussion in this thread - and I don't have any evidence to dare to dispute the researchers use of NT strain as better suited to the native stains for any such bacterial treatment of cancer tumours.

 

So you had a Eureka moment that you deserve a prize for because you brought someone else's idea to this forum? Since you're not modifying the bacteria because it already exists for the reason you want to use it for how is that novel?

 

If strictly or obligate anaerobic bacteria are used for this they could only ever attack organic material of any kind which is situated in hypoxic areas of the body where they can come to life from the inactive spores.

Here's the problem, the reason we need a circulatory system is because the majority of your internal system is hypoxic to the extent that cells don't have enough molecular oxygen to use is cellular respiration.

 

The "anaerobic thing", as you put it, is everything. The approach uses strictly or obligate anaerobic micro-organisms which are deactivated when there is oxygen in their environment.

So they have no specificity other than 'there's no oxygen let's kill everything'? That seems like it would kill your digestive system way before it killed anything else.

 

If you want specifics - Wikipedia - Obligate anaerobe

Thank you, but I know what an obligate anaerobe is.

 

 

In phase 1, the bio-agent needs to infect, kill or consume those cancer cells it finds in anaerobic environments in which it thrives and human cells do not and the precise mechanism the bio-agent uses to do that will be species dependent.

This is not a mechanism, at best this is an overview.

 

In phase 2, the K type drug, as a tried and tested chemotherapy drug, kills the dividing cancer cells, but thanks to the H type drugs, leaves be the normal cells which are temporarily no longer dividing.

This is not a mechanism, at best this is an overview.

 

The killing of the internal flora is not required during phase 1 as indeed the bio-agent will likely have the same requirements for life as the patient's internal flora.

 

The killing of the internal flora in phase 2 might be a medical management requirement to protect the intestinal wall from the flora while the gut wall cells are temporarily unable to divide and reinforce themselves because of the action of the type H drugs.

So your answer to this problem is, 'yeah, it will definitely do damage, but someone else can take care of that'? Also, how will the bio-agents not kill the internal bacteria? It's a hypoxic environment and they are not targeting anything specific.

 

 

 

How? Using what I have described as "type H drugs".

That might as well say, 'with fostacamiticas drugs' because it has the exact same amount of specificity.

 

Specifically the metabolic pathways and proteins that would be disrupted are those which usually control cellular division of cells. The type H drugs work by interfering with the control mechanisms which the body uses to stimulate or start cell division at certain times and under certain conditions and to suppress or stop cell division at other times and that interference would be designed to jam the control mechanism so as to stop cell division so long as the drug is in the body.

This is not a mechanism, at best this is an overview.

 

 

Many types of cancer cells divide regardless of the body's control mechanisms - such cancer cell division isn't started selectively so it can't be stopped either naturally by the body's control mechanisms or artificially by pharmaceutical drugs.

Well, if that were true then naked mole rats should get cancer. Because the currently held idea is that cancer is halted by a control mechanism in the body.

 

So I presume growth factor metabolic pathways and proteins would be suitable targets for disruption by the type H drugs.

 

Wikipedia: Growth factor

I'll go ahead and assume this was a joke, because I'm sure you know that saying growth factor metabolic pathways is pretty much the same as saying cellular division pathways. I'll assume you also know that since I said specific pathways I meant EXACTLY what proteins will this interact with on what SPECIFIC pathways and using what EXACT mechanism. Will it be inhibition of an enzyme, and if so what kind of inhibition. Will you halt the transcription of certain proteins, and if so what methods will you use and what proteins will you halt? etc. etc. etc.

 

Since you know all that I'll assume you are more specific below.

 

So for example, typical normal cells will wait for the appropriate growth factor to attach itself to the corresponding growth factor receptor on the cell's surface before initiating cell division.

This is not a mechanism, at best this is an overview.

 

Many types of cancer have cancer cells which will divide regardless of whether there is the appropriate growth factor attached to the cancer cell's corresponding growth factor receptor or not.

 

One obvious approach the drug developer could take would be to design a type H drug which mimics the growth factor receptor's shape and thus will selectively bind to the corresponding growth factor. If there is a lot more of the type H drug in the extra cellular fluid than there are cell growth factor receptors then the growth factor would be mopped up and leave none free in the extra cellular fluid to be available to bind to the cells' growth factor receptors, thus preventing normal cell growth from being initiated.

This is not a mechanism, at best this is an overview.

 

The person is not killed as I have explained to Arete because the cessation of normal cell division is temporary and the patient's health managed and once the H type drug has cleared from the body the usual control mechanisms for cell division can resume their normal operation.

You know that every blood cell isn't replaced on the same day right? It is a continuous process. Do you expect the patient to be completely cured in a week?

[Arete]

I don't see any flaw in the idea that a suitably selected anaerobic micro-organism would thrive, flourish and grow at the expense of all human cells in anaerobic parts of the body.

 

 

Most of the human body is an anaerobic environment. The reason large tumors are referred to as anaerobic is not because there is no air there, it because there is limited blood supply – leading the cells switching to glycolic respiration. You still appear to be conflating respiration with environment.

 

Are you suggesting that the flaw is in the therapeutic merit of encouraging an anaerobic infection where before there was none? The therapeutic merit is that the body already has successful defences against anaerobic infections but none against the cancerous tumours this phase 1 of treatment would be infecting.

 

 

This is a flawed generalization – bacterial infections range from trivial to fatal. You can’t generalize that all bacterial infections are easily treated, because many are not. Given you’re still being very vague about precisely what bacterial agent you’re proposing to give the patient a widespread infection of, you can’t simply dismiss the impact of such an infection as negligible. Additionally, if the immune system can trivially take care of the infective agent, it would be rapidly isolated and eliminated from the body - therefore unable to "seek out" and eliminate tumors.

 

This is your proposal, which you assumedly posted on a discussion forum to receive feedback on. You can’t arm wave away limitations of the application.

 

 

Yes I can read your Wikipedia reference but do you realize that your own Wikipedia reference distinguishes between the natural Clostridium novyi which causes gangrene and the bio-engineered NT strain which is less toxic which has been researched as a cancer treatment?

 

 

1. You state explicitly that you as yet undefined agent will not be engineered.
2. The use of an otherwise highly toxic agent in small doses to treat a specific form of cancerous growth doesn’t support the assertion that it would work in a generally applied sense at all – in fact the opposite. As a similar example, we can also use small, highly targeted doses of radiation to treat tumors. If you applied radiation, or highly toxic bacterial infections, or countless other therapies to the whole human body, you would unequivocally kill the patient.

    

    

 

And routinely reside in the body, for example as gut flora, harmlessly and not causing any infectious disease.

 

 

Inside the digestive system is actually not inside the human body. That should be covered in an anatomy 101 course.

 

Because the fallacy of a bacterium which can identify and attack cancer cells irrespective of the oxygen saturation of the environment in which cancer cells find themselves is not simplifying the problem but rather is making the problem a whole lot more complicated.

 

 

Given the agent you’re proposing here is still a hypothetical, mythical beast, why not just propose a bacteria with optimal properties? Your proposal works in a hypothetical reality where the vaguely defined therapies you propose actually exist. Why not propose a hypothetical therapy with fewer obvious limitations?

If you had of started with " A bacteria with properties x, y and z might be effective in the treatment of tumors. Do people think such a bacteria exists and if so, how would you isolate it?" instead of "Assuming a bacteria with properties x, y and z exists, I have developed a revolutionary cancer treatment" the discussion may have been a bit more collaborative and likely a more productive way of exploring the concept, which as CharonY points out, is not novel.

 

No, phase 1 of the treatment will be effective at achieving phase 1 treatment goals

 

 

Simply because you say so?

 

 

 

The flaw is in your misunderstanding.

 

 

Well, along with a number of other posters who have clearly “misunderstood” your proposal, I am a biologist by profession. If we are all misunderstanding your points, it is because they are unclear.

 

Those are medically manageable dangers, which could be managed using known drugs which can reduce the production of stomach acid and other known drugs which can sterliize the gut flora. We won't need anaerobic bacteria for phase 2 treatment….One can live quite happily without a fully functioning digestive system for 48 hours or longer if needs be…. Blood cells circulate for about 100 to 120 days.

 

 

Again because you say so? You’ve provided no evidence that ceasing cell division entirely wouldn’t kill a patient before your hypothetical treatment took effect.

 

We know that even mild reductions in cell division have massive harmful side effects

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0020710184900266

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0142%2819961001%2978:7%3C1359::AID-CNCR1%3E3.0.CO;2-G/abstract

 

 

Now you are being silly. Blood cells circulate for about 100 to 120 days.

 

Being flippant and condescending is unbecoming. I have not called you any names and taken the time to critique your proposal, without calling it "silly". Besides, if you eventually want to be considered for things like Nobel Prizes, you'll need the proposal to be peer reviewed. You'll be expected to take much more vigorous critique than you'll get on a discussion board considerably more graciously than you have been.

 

Here you seem to have missed the point. Regardless of the lifespan of blood cells, they are being continuously replaced. From the instant you stop their division your patient’s blood cell count begins to crash. They’d be long dead before 100 days, even if you only stopped blood cell division and not every organ in the body.

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0140673692907955

 

 

Macrophages live for 6 to 16 days.

That's long enough to kill rapidly dividing cancer cells. There are options if a longer phase 2 treatment is required.

 

For example, isolating the patient in a sterile environment is one option to avoid infection for longer than 16 days.

 

1. Macrophages don’t generally attack cancer cells. http://www.news-medical.net/health/Macrophage-Function.aspx
2. Again macrophage division in continuous - a patient would be long dead before the cell count approached zero.
3. Maintaining a completely sterile environment for immuno-compromised patients, let alone patients with zero immunity is non-trivial.
4. There are several complications which arise from being immuno-compromised. Ironically, one of those is a highly elevated risk of spontaneous cancer development. http://jncimono.oxfordjournals.org/content/1998/23/1.short

 

No, the cessation of all cell division in the body is tolerable for short periods if it is managed appropriately.

 

Again, we’re supposed to just take your word for it? I disagree with your assertion, and you’ve provided no evidence to support it – the claim that complete cessation of cell division would not kill a patient is rather extraordinary and requires substantial support.

 

Additionally, it’s a red flag that there are no citations in your original proposal, and all of your subsequent posts use popular articles as citations, rather than peer reviewed literature.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Arete

[DogLady]

We already have therapies that require the cessation of cellular division - most notably bone marrow grafts, where a person is given enough chemotherapeutic drugs to shut down (i.e., kill off) a cancer patient's bone marrow so a graft will take. This is in no way an easy or safe procedure. The patient can die from his normal bacterial flora, which is nigh on to impossible to eradicate. Whether it is gut flora, skin flora, or intranasal flora, any of it can kill us if our naturally dividing cells (bone marrow cells including immune system cells, and skin cells) are shut down. It can take only a few hours for one of our normal flora to spin a fatal infection.

 

We have two main systems of rapidly dividing cells in our body. Shutting down the division of our bone marrow and immune system cells would eliminate the ongoing battle it has to keep infection from overwhelming our body. Shutting down the cell division of our skin and mucus membrane cells (the other main system of rapidly dividing cells in our body) would eliminate their ability to function as a physical barrier, which is the other method our body uses to keep our normal flora from killing us.

 

As well, we have had many people suffer from the elimination of their normal gut flora. Most often this has occurred in patients that had to be on high dose broad spectrum antibiotics during a severe illness or trauma. Replacing their flora can be difficult. They suffer from C. difficile infection, pseudomembranous colitis - both conditions difficult to treat. Even with probiotic bacteria and 'poop' transplants they often don't have a ready return to normal bowel function.

 

And that's just the infectious risks. Stopping cell division in the bone marrow also leads to rapid development of anemia and bleeding problems, because of the inability to continually make red cells and platelets. In the skin and mucous membranes, sores and ulcers, both very painful, develop rapidly with the cessation of cell division.

 

All of these are know risks associated with components of your proposal. You would need to over come these risks for your plan to be considered a realistic option to treat cancer.

 

Clarissa