Cancer Vaccine Found?
- Thread starter VeX1le
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Yeah sadly it's not being cynical to say it's not going to stop all cancer's as each one has it's own little fun design to it.
hopefully though these three begin to get better and more efficient over time, as now we know where we can start. we now know that whatever they have done works against three diffirent types so now it's time to play Biomedical Jigsaw
hopefully though these three begin to get better and more efficient over time, as now we know where we can start. we now know that whatever they have done works against three diffirent types so now it's time to play Biomedical Jigsaw
a cancer vaccine would be wonderful but as we hardly know the causes of cancer i imagine it will be quite some time before any thing like that is commonplace.
No, actually he's actually got it right as far as the opinion of the cancer research community goes. Cancer is not caused by a single mutation, it can be caused by a mutation anywhere the regulatory regions which control cell life cycle. We can try and figure out which regions most often cause certain cancers and create "cures" which specifically target cells who show signs of mutations in these regions, but that's only one type of cancer we're targeting. There's hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of regions that when mutated could potentially cause cancer. We may find a "cure for cancer" but it will almost certainly be for only one or two types of cancers out of the many that could occur. If you're really lucky you might find a cure for all the cancerous cells which originate from a given type of cell, but I'll bet you it'd really bad for the normal cells of that type as well... ;DMasterSqueak said:
Also to spread some biology joy into your day here's a new theory from some recent research regarding cancer which was presented to me at one of the biology seminars I have to go to as part of my summer research job at college. =D
So you know stem cells? Those cells which can turn into any other type of cells in your body. One possible explanation raised recently for why people who have apparently been cured of cancer suddenly have a resurgence when they stop chemotherapy is that there might be Cancer Stem Cells which are not cancerous themselves but have been programed through mutations to produce cancerous cells. The bad side of this is that even if a "cure" which kills all the cancerous cells in your body may not cure you permanently. The bright side is that it's another avenue to fight the good fight. Creating drugs to attack Cancer Stem Cells if they do exist would increase the chances of recovering cancer patients tremendously. ^_^
Good thing you didn't actually say that. Cause then you would both be wrong.TaborMallory said:
Vaccines are weak, dead, or similar enough viruses that your body can form anti-bodies against the real deal when it comes knocking.
You take penicillin or other antibiotics to kill off bacteria.
All tumors are called neoplasm, with only malignant ones being call cancer. All neoplasm are the result of neoplasia, which does not always form into a neoplasm (leukemia and the like). I think you can all look up the terms to find out more if you want to.
Basically benign neoplasm are not at risk of spreading to other organs. Pre-malignant does not currently have the mass to spreed, but will sometime in the future. Malignant is capable of spreading in process known as Metastasis.
Viruses are plenty capable of causing neoplasia. Bacteria, not so much.
Ugh - the drug companies get more money from going public with the 'cure' and charging people for it than they do for speculating about cures and begging research grants. And even when the patents ran out and the drugs became generic, the pharmaceutical companies would still be coining money from new statins (anti-cholesterol drugs) they develop. Although cancer chemotherapeutics make up a large share of the global pharmaceutical sales, they are FAR out numbered by the painkillers and the antacids and the statins. FAR.Shapsters said:
As for the article, things like this are not exactly new, they just take a while to get from the academic journals to the popular media. ADEPT, CDEPT and GDEPT treatments, as well as photodynamic, photothermal and combination therapies are currently being developed and approved - the process for making ONE new drug and testing it involves, on average, four stages of clinical trials, 10 years of research and development and a TON of money - into the billions. This ensures, hopefully, that the drug is as safe and effective as humanly possible. The problem with this article is that it has been dumbed-down to the point where it hardly even makes sense *shakes finger at Yahoo* - the problem isn't that Yahoo posts bogus articles, it's that it thinks we're all so thick that we can't understand a detailed explanation of the issue at hand.
Sorry for the rant - in short, yes, it's possible to 'vaccinate' against cancer. No, it's not yet possible to reliably treat all types of cancer with one therpeutic agent. I wish it were, even if it would put me out of a job =P
Now, I'm not an expert on the subject. All I know is that a vaccine is used to kill or repel viruses. I also know that cancer is the abnormal growth of otherwise normal cells.manaman said:
I don't really know what you were talking about, but I'll take your word for it. Right now, I'm too lazy to research.
You could have at least read the article before totally ignoring it. What they're trying to do is get the immune system to "see" the cancer, which is difficult because cancerous cells are just really messed up human cells. It's also not really a "cure" yet, more of a treatment.letsnoobtehpwns said:
It's called a vaccine because it gets your immune system to "see" the cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine
And yes, you can have vaccines for diseases that aren't viral. Like cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_vaccine