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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, 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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