This looks promising.
Fox News: Instead of killing off cancer cells with toxic drugs, scientists have discovered a molecular pathway that forces them to grow old and die, they said on Wednesday.
Cancer cells spread and grow because they can divide indefinitely.
But a study in mice showed that blocking a cancer-causing gene called Skp2 forced cancer cells to go through an aging process known as senescence — the same process involved in ridding the body of cells damaged by sunlight.
If you block Skp2 in cancer cells, this process is triggered, Pier Paolo Pandolfi of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues reported in the journal Nature.
And Takeda Pharmaceutical Co’s experimental cancer drug MLN4924 — already in early-stage clinical trials in people — appears to have the power to do just that, Pandolfi said in a telephone interview.
The finding may offer a new strategy for fighting cancer.
“What we discovered is if you damage cells, the cells have a built-in mechanism to put themselves out of business,” Pandolfi said. “They are stopped irreversibly from growing.”
For the study, the team used genetically altered mice that developed a form of prostate cancer.
In some of these, they inactivated the Skp2 gene. When the mice reached six months of age, they found those with an inactive Skp2 gene did not develop tumors, while the other mice did.
I’ll bet if this treatment ever makes it to market it will be wicked expensive. Do you think comparative effectiveness provisions in the Democrats’ health care bill will ever allow average Americans to receive this treatment?
Let’s see. I bet your question doesn’t Congress and their insurance coverage:-)
Seriously, this is very, very goods news. Chemo is so destructive. It saves lives but certainly takes its toll. Medicine today is awesome.
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I am an oncology nurse and while this sounds wonderful, I need more info. Chemotherapy is very hard on the body, however it does save lives as well. The thing with chemo is that it cannot differentiate between healthy cells and “cancer” cells, so it’s effect is on both. So, this new medication, does it differentiate between the two? Or is it going to cause all of the rapidly dividing cells to “grow old”?
Fascinating news, I hope so. I would love to be out of a job
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My friend worked for Chevron at one of the gas stations when he was 16 and is now 31. He got leukemia and has been fighting it for several years now. Of course he can’t sue or do anything because of Prop 65 in California. I’m going to pass this article on to him and see what he thinks. I’ve had several family members pass from cancer and I always look for new treatment news that could help because it is so close to home for me.
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I’ll keep him in my prayers. I have a few friends with cancer, too and we lost my aunt last year to cancer. It’s vicious!
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