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Rare byproduct of marine bacteria kills cancer cells by snipping their DNA:
Yale University researchers have determined how a scarce molecule produced by marine bacteria can kill cancer cells, paving the way for the development of new, low-dose chemotherapies.
The molecule, lomaiviticin A, was previously shown to be lethal to cultured human cancer cells, but the mechanism of its operation remained unsolved for well over a decade. In a series of experiments, Yale scientists Seth Herzon, Peter Glazer, and colleagues show that the molecule nicks, cleaves, and ultimately destroys cancer cells' DNA, preventing replication.
"DNA is one of the primary targets of anticancer agents, and cleavage of both DNA chains is the most potent form of DNA damage," said Herzon, professor of chemistry. "But few anticancer agents are able to directly cleave DNA. The discovery that lomaiviticin A is capable of this suggests it could be very useful as a novel chemotherapy, possibly at low doses."
The abstract and paper can be found here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday May 13 2014, @06:32AM
So, what does this have to do with cancer if the cytotoxicity is non-specific? How does letting loose Jack-the-Ripper inside your body makes the things better?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday May 13 2014, @06:51AM
lol, i think that is where they just say "well, it would be a low dosage". That kills everything. This seems to have very little to do with cancer.
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(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday May 13 2014, @08:04AM
My guess is that this substance is being considered as a cancer therapy perhaps because cancer cells multiply much more quickly than normal cells, and hence are affected more by toxins like this than normal cells are. All chemotherapy drugs are basically poisons, except that for various reasons they can kill cancerous cells somewhat faster than they kill normal cells, because cancerous cells have slightly different behaviour and properties that these drugs exploit. So with proper, regulated doses, the patient undergoing chemotherapy should at the end of the treatment have enough of their cancer cells destroyed while leaving enough of their normal cells intact for the patient to continue living. I'm not paying $32 to read the whole article, and I'm guessing that you haven't read anything but the abstract either, but I guess the scientists must explain further in the body of the article why they think it might work as a chemotherapy drug. It appears in the Yale University press release that is the first article link after all.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by turonah on Tuesday May 13 2014, @08:59AM
Unfortunately, it looks like the article is strictly looking at the difference in cytotoxicity between (-)-lomaiviticin A, (-)-lomaiviticin C, and (-)-kinamycin C, rather than explaining *why* it would be an effective treatment for cancer (if, in fact, it is).
This page, on the other hand, gives a pretty good overview of cytotoxicity as it's used for chemotherapy: http://www.patient.co.uk/health/chemotherapy-with- cytotoxic-medicines [patient.co.uk] (thanks, Google!). Apparently, hair, bone marrow, mouth, and gut cells also tend to divide rapidly (hence the hair loss, dry mouth, nausea, etc. that most patients suffer).
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday May 13 2014, @12:05PM
"How does letting loose Jack-the-Ripper inside your body makes the things better?"
Nobody tried to answer this yet?
The only problem with cancer cells is they reproduce out of control. Nobody would much care if they just quietly sat there and never grew, basically a "sit in" civil disobedience. The analogy is a cancer is more like a riot that doubles in mass every week or something. That begins to be a bit of a problem after a year or two of wild uncontrolled replication.
So just kill anything growing. If you're fat and overeating, presumably it would kill off your fat cells, what an interesting diet idea. Sucks to be a hair follicle but you don't need hair to live anyway. Other than blood (and you can get transfusions and marrow transplants later if necessary) there's not much in your body that needs to continually reproduce for you to stay alive. Your guts have some severe issues but you'd be surprised how long a human can live without food, especially if they start out stereotypically fat, and there's IV feeding, and just "blah" sugar water type stuff.
Of course, if you get a paper cut, and any cell that tries to grow and close the wound is killed, and your white blood cells that cure infections are dying out, this can all go downhill rather quickly.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday May 14 2014, @12:10AM
Fat cells do not multiply to eat up excess food intake - they simply balloon up to contain the extra mass. See what happens to people who have had liposuction or similar. When they get fat, they get fat everywhere except where they had fat cells removed.
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(Score: 1) by MozeeToby on Tuesday May 13 2014, @03:35PM
Virtually all cancer therapies rely on the fact that cancer cells are dividing out of control. If you could go into a cancerous human and kill every single cell that divides over a 24 hour period, you'd end up with a very sick person but one with very few living cancer cells. It's virtually certain that the damage occurs during the division process, the same way it does for radiation and current chemo treatments.
(Score: 1) by sbgen on Tuesday May 13 2014, @06:28PM
I **wanted** to read this article, the mechanism is of interest to me, Sad to say it is behind pay-wall, even inside from a university library (supported by taxpayers, including myself). The abstract says the article actually describes a pathway by which this chemical causes double-strand DNA breaks. There probably is data to indicate that the compound could be targeted to cancerous cells but I will have to read the paper first to say that. Essentially that will cost ~$30 for the library to get it for me.
Let me shake my head again at that wall and sigh for our future progress.
Warning: Not a computer expert, but got to use it. Yes, my kind does exist.