Sugar compound from deep-sea bacteria revealed to cause cancer cells to explosively self destruct through pyroptosis
Cancer cells go up in flames—thanks to this deep-sea sugar
Fiery?! Go up in flames? REALLY? I understand this is written for non scientists, .but this was written by the marketing department of Michael Bay's production company.
Each time a cancer cel explodes, a tiny Nicholas Cage leaps heroically through the air just ahead of the blast
Oh, but I was hoping for a tiny Tom Cruise on a little motorcycle
Do healthy cells also do this?
Hmmm I've seen this before it only ends 3 ways
Happy ending - we all live cancer free
Status quo - some jerk falsifies data or destroyed source material somehow all in order to prevent us from having nice things and pay more premiums.
Bad end - some sort of pandemic like where we all turn into cats.
Now that's sweet
I imagine this will be similar to chemotherapy.
As in, it technically affects all your cells, it just happens to affect cancer cells a lot more. In this case, because they try to absorb extra sugars in many cases.
As a chemist that makes me wonder why they dont wrap the platinum in sugar complexes
Edit: Nevermind, they have: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316670861_GLUT1-mediated_selective_tumor_targeting_with_fluorine_containing_platinumII_glycoconjugates
Yup, platinum chemo exists already too.
Still makes one feel really nauseated by the second time
because platinum sucks, and if you want to get real selective, you can tie together antibody and something like diphtheria toxin, but it's not chemistry anymore, that's firmly in biology ballpark
one of my guesses would be that platinum catalysis is expensive as usual, but recovery of the catalyst from living being would be much worse than equivalent lab seetup, so the cost would not justify.
Cancer cells often times lose their ability to perform oxidative phosphorylation. This means they can only rely on glycolysis as a sole source of ATP... This makes them EXCESSIVELY glucose hungry.
It's called the warburg effect. I'd have to read up on it and brush up on biochem, but that's the basic principle.
Essentially, cancer should soak up all the harmful sugar before it hits normal cells. This makes it even safer in theory than traditional chemo like methotrexate and such
Because they try to absorb extra sugars in many cases.
I have absolutely no medical knowledge besides a first aid course. Does that mean that, by not eating any sugars, I could starve cancer cells? So like during keto (I did that years ago before the boom) I actually could have starved a lot of cancer cells?
no because your liver makes sugars anyway. however there's a more limited, more targeted way to deplete blood of select aminoacids that some cancers can't make (asparaginase can be used this way)
it's one of these things that sound good and doesn't work. many such cases
Yes, certain cancer therapy benefits from a zero sugar, low but high quality carb diet. You'll slow the cancer a lot, and can help prevent it from coming back like that. You'll still need something to kill it though, because your body still produces and needs sugars.
And some are unaffected because they're part of something that can already make or requires sugars, like brain or liver cancers.
Kinda yeah, though it is better suited as part of a combination therapy.
What I want to know is why this compound acts this way on tumor cells and not healthy body cells. Im sure there is an explanation for that given the researchers are publishing its effectiveness, but I wish the article specified.
It's discussed elsewhere here, but to answer directly - as I understand it, cancer cells can only use energy from sugars. Cancer cells are also extremely energy hungry, since they spend so much energy growing. When a cell absorbs these particular sugars, it self-destructs in spectacular fashion.
It sounds like they're expecting cancer cells to absorb the vast majority of these sugars, leaving just a small amount for healthy cells. Which sounds to me like a kind of chemotherapy, but more effective and with weaker side effects.
(Not a biologist, most of this is over my head!)
article suggests a form of intense immune response, some sugars can trip these immune system tripwires rather easily. (look up meat allergy) the proper question is, how selective it can get and what are side effects
You’re assuming that the scientists have figured out why this happens, rather than just that it happens.
There’s plenty of science out there which consists of “oh, hey, look what I just noticed!“ And is just a lot of watching something happen without any explanation for it. That’s why scientists will continue to study this phenomenon until they figure it out. Probably so the company that is sponsoring them can profit from it in some way.
Pyroptosis is a fiery form of programmed cell death that helps the body fight infections and disease. Unlike regular cell death (apoptosis), pyroptosis is dramatic and explosive—cells swell, burst open, and release inflammatory signals that alert the immune system.
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\ Originally discovered as a defense against bacteria and viruses, pyroptosis has recently become a hot topic in cancer research. That’s because triggering pyroptosis in tumor cells can not only destroy them directly but also rally the immune system to join the attack, essentially turning the tumor into a signal flare for immune response.
Maybe it’s something to do with this.
From the research paper (behind the paywall) it appears they only tested cancer cells, shown below, and on mouse models. It's been awhile since I've studied this, so I don't know if the proteins involved are specific to cancer cells or not. If not I'd assume it would kill all cells. With the mouse models I assume they injected directly into the tumor for targeted treatment, but I didn't dive into it that deep.
Paper link: https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1096/fj.202500412R?saml_referrer
2.2 Cell Culture
Human monocyte-like THP-1 leukemia cells (THP-1, THP-1Asc-KO, THP-1Gsdmd-KO, THP-1-Null, THP-1-defCasp1, and THP-1-defNLRP3) [4, 21] were provided by Professor Li Sun's lab (Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China), and human liver cancer Huh7.5 cells were maintained in our lab. THP-1 cells and Huh7.5 cells were cultured in RPMI 1640 medium with 10% FBS, 100 U/mL penicillin, and 100 μg/mL streptomycin at 37°C in a 5% CO2 humidified incubator. All experiments were carried out with the same batch of cell lines between passages 2 and 8.
2.15 Xenograft Tumor Mouse Model
BALB/C nu-nu male mice, 4 weeks old, were obtained from Beijing Vital River Laboratory Animal Technology Co. Ltd. (Beijing, China). A total of 3 × 106 Huh7.5 cells were subcutaneously injected into the right fore flank of each nude mouse. The daily drug treatment began when the tumor size reached ~100 mm3 and continued for a further 2 weeks as follows: EPS3.9 (30 and 60 mg kg−1 d−1, intraperitoneal injection) dissolved in assisted solvent (PBS); Control groups were given the same volume of PBS. Body weight and tumor volumes were measured every day with a balance or with a vernier caliper. The tumor volume was calculated with the formula: 1/2 × [length × (width)2]. After treatment for 2 weeks, mice were sacrificed by decapitation and tumor tissues were collected for further analysis.
Not my thought, but coming from my wife:
Maybe because tumor cells use up more energy and with that the sugar?
Edit: just saw that it's already mentioned by another commenter
It's both amusing and a little disturbing that the term for killing the mice is "sacrifice." I'm now imagining a bunch of researchers dancing around the mice while ritually decapitating them.
The article didn't specify that it doesn't. It also doesn't say if it had to be injected right into the cancer or if there was another means of using it.
I imagine a lot of what we know now was learned after we realized the benefits of things. I’d give it a few years/decades for researchers to spend time to analyze the data and figure it out.
In the meantime, fuck cancer and hell yes to this deep sea sugar stuff!
It's possible they haven't discovered why yet.
So far, I've found two things.
But without any formal biochemistry training, I am missing a lot of prerequisite knowledge.
Is that high affinity above normal? Does it need to bind all five to enter the cell, or just any of them? Are those lipids, or that combination of lipids, exclusive to tumor cells? I have no info on any of these questions.
It's also entirely possible that it's attacking healthy liver cells too, just at a reduced rate due to cancer cells being resource hogs.
It’s probably using the metabolic pathways against itself since cancer metabolism and healthy cells metabolism are drastically different due to proliferation speeds.
Oh I have a torch at home that I've modified to use map gas to increase the effectiveness of the pyrolysis procedure. It cures every disease know to man kind, ever meat too, even mushrooms for us vegans.
It's too bad that curing patients is not a sustainable business model. Even if this did work we would only ever see it developed if you had to take it twice a month for the rest of your life in order to survive.
Edit: sorry, I just noticed this is in Uplifting News. So, let's be optimistic. Maybe global capitalism will collapse and governments will start trying to take care of people.
Even if so... If this is as effective and safe as it seems then it will get leaked to the public or reversed engineered and then made public. The original paper's abstract says "this active exopolysaccharide is ubiquitous among the genus Spongiibacter" which means it's accessible.
The repression of such a boon could not last long. History has proven the human spirit is nothing if not irrepressible. There are plenty of people capable and motivated enough to run what little information we already have all the way to a consistent home manufacturing solution. Its publication and distribution is another game entirely but I'd bet on the public there as well.
Take a look at the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective for some tangible encouragement. Knowledge is power. Together we can be powerful enough to create what we need to survive. Government buy-in encouraged but optional.
People don't magically stop getting sick just because you can cure them.
You're thinking too small. If we cure cancer, everyone can start smoking again. Asbestos is back in business. There are hundreds of industries that would take off immediately. W
The company that would truly suffer is the one that makes those little stickers in California.
I’m always a little skeptical of these claims.
But hey, if we figure out a way to do this in people safely, then cool.
I was wading in here to post exactly that XKCD.
We discover hundreds of new compounds that kill cancer cells every year. Perhaps we should only be posting in uplifting news when new drugs are found effective.
completely off topic, but you want to know how effective advertising is? every time i read a sciencific article about something exploding in a dramatic way, like this one, my mind goes 🎵 plop plop fizz fizz 🎵. how many years has it been since that damn ad?
The one my mind goes to is this xkcd https://xkcd.com/1217/
Yet another
<insert rare thing>
kills cancer cells. Hey y'all, cancer cells are your own cells, just mutated to grow when they shouldn't. This is not just one type of mutation. There are over 200 that they know of.https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/what-is-cancer/how-cancer-starts/types-of-cancer
There is no universal identifier for all cancer cells. Therefore there is nothing that naturally kills them all.
The only general cure for cancer is to understand the immune system so well you can fine tune it at your discretion, or create a synthetic immune system to do the same. Everything else is just a one off. Still valuable, but not what articles like to claim.