Cancer Gift

[jubei33]

You lost me at 'quickdraw', but I'm no good at CAD

Yeah, I'm told that a frequent issue after a battle with testicular or prostate cancer is premature ejaculation. Don't worry, understand that its been found to be psychological for the most part. Just relax and it should sort itself out.

Speaking of micro RNAs, did you know that some clever research has shown that increased signal from certain mirco RNAs in kinds of lung cancers can be attacked using antisense oligionucleotides and that these re-established normal regulation-control systems of mitochondria!? This led to selective apoptosis of the cancerous cells!!

[doofaloofa]

I did not know this

[jubei33]

Preposterous!!

Surely an 'overdrive activity champion' would have the time to read about the many advances showing that all cancers have alterations in their micro RNA expression and in general miRNA genes map to known areas of cancer causing mutations, especially those of tumor suppressor and oncogenes. Clearly there is some value to be seen in this information.

[Calin et al, PNAS 2002; Lu et al, Nature, 2005; Volinia & Calin et al, PNAS 2006; Landgraf et al, Cell 2007, MicroRNA genes map to cancer loci. Calin, G.A., et al.,2004. PNAS101:2999-3004 ]

[doofaloofa]

Dont talk to me about activity champion this, overdrive that, those feckers have given me a gimpy wrist!

[jubei33]

Dont talk to me about activity champion this, overdrive that, those feckers have given me a gimpy wrist!

Well, to be fair that is a lot of jerkin' it.

Any hoo, here's a skinny on using synthetic micro RNAs to attack non-small cell lung cancer cells. It fits neatly into a couple of paragraphs, but that sure was a lot of work for these guys. You better send them an email or two telling them you appreciate their hard work.

Abstract

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short single stranded noncoding RNAs that suppress gene expression through either translational repression or degradation of target mRNAs. The annealing between messenger RNAs and 59 seed region of
miRNAs is believed to be essential for the specific suppression of target gene expression. One miRNA can have several hundred different targets in a cell. Rapidly accumulating evidence suggests that many miRNAs are involved in cell cycle regulation and consequentially play critical roles in carcinogenesis.

Methodology/Principal Findings: Introduction of synthetic miR-107 or miR-185 suppressed growth of the human nonsmall cell lung cancer cell lines. Flow cytometry analysis revealed these miRNAs induce a G1 cell cycle arrest in H1299 cells
and the suppression of cell cycle progression is stronger than that by Let-7 miRNA. By the gene expression analyses with oligonucleotide microarrays, we find hundreds of genes are affected by transfection of these miRNAs. Using miRNA-target
prediction analyses and the array data, we listed up a set of likely targets of miR-107 and miR-185 for G1 cell cycle arrest and
validate a subset of them using real-time RT-PCR and immunoblotting for CDK6.

Conclusions/Significance:

Takahashi Y, Forrest ARR, Maeno E, Hashimoto T, Daub CO, et al. (2009) MiR-107 and MiR-185 Can Induce Cell Cycle Arrest in Human Non Small Cell Lung Cancer Cell Lines. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6677. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006677

[doofaloofa]

Are you hitting on me?

[jubei33]

Are you hitting on me?

Well, you're posting pictures of asses in my thread. Most people would think that thought's ass backwards. But look, if you really want to 'get into my pants' I'm a fussy, expensive date. You're going to have to raise the stakes in the cancer dept--viz. some insightful knowledge into new modes of clinical therapy, diagnosis, etc...

So more to the point, selective targeting of cancer cells. This is kind of the holy grail of cancer chemotherapy. Time will tell, however, if this is a viable therapy in vivo. (You can read most of these at the public library of science for free, by the way.)

miR-24 Regulates Apoptosis by Targeting the Open Reading Frame (ORF) Region of FAF1 in Cancer Cells

Abstract
Background: microRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate cognate mRNAs at the post-transcriptional stage. Several studies have shown that miRNAs modulate gene expression in mammalian cells by base pairing tocomplementary sites in the 39-untranslated region (39-UTR) of the target mRNAs.

Methodology/Principal Findings: In the present study, miR-24 was found to target fas associated factor 1(FAF1) by binding to its amino acid coding sequence (CDS) region, thereby regulating apoptosis in DU-145 cells. This result supports an augmented model whereby animal miRNAs can exercise their effects through binding to the CDS region of the target mRNA. Transfection of miR-24 antisense oligonucleotide (miR-24-ASO) also induced apoptosis in HGC-27, MGC-803 and
HeLa cells.

Conclusions/Significance: We found that miR-24 regulates apoptosis by targeting FAF1 in cancer cells. These findings suggest that miR-24 could be an effective drug target for treatment of hormone-insensitive prostate cancer or other types of cancers. Future work may further develop miR-24 for therapeutic applications in cancer biology.

Qin W, Shi Y, Zhao B, Yao C, Jin L, et al. (2010) miR-24 Regulates Apoptosis by Targeting the Open Reading Frame (ORF) Region of FAF1 in Cancer Cells. PLoS ONE 5(2): e9429. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009429

[doofaloofa]

i'm just scared. Scientist types have hurt me before
They start of all 'selective targeting of cancer cells' and it ends 'I'm biffing that cute lab technician...sorry'

[jubei33]

Oh, is that what this is---Are you trying to get a job?

...

What are your skills?

Do you have any experience with HPLC, particularly with high throughput systems/isolations from natural sources. We were looking at seaweed recently, or more specifically the bacteria that grow on it. We want to advance out ability to culture and entice certain kinds to produce new antibiotics and cancer drugs.

or there's always the bees, that's a project that's always looking for people.

[doofaloofa]

Skills...me strong like bull

The only high throughput systems I am familiar with are pigs and babies

I am a former bee keeper

And to get things straight I am totaly opposed to sexual harrasment in the work place

[jubei33]

Bee keeper, huh?
Any knowledge of handling and shipping dangerous cargoes, including plants and animals?

How about bees whose stings cause semi-permanent diarrhea?

We are also working on taking taxanes from species of yew trees. As a side project, we are working on transplanting these species, acclimating them to other varied environments. Taxanes, as you know, are under investigation in the treatment of many kinds of cancer. These are difficult to synthesize cheaply, because of how many chiral centers they generally contain, so a route would be increasing the available crop. This is a weak compromise, as the real money is in finding out how these chemicals inhibit the mitotic spindle and replicate that effect with a cheaper to produce chemical skeleton.

[doofaloofa]

Well I have transported hives a good bit, but never very far.

bee stings that cause diarrhea...nice. I got stung by a wasp yesterday and thats sore enough thank you!

As for Taxanes, are they in the nuts (realy specialised cones). I understand that nuts are poisonose, but the red flesh that surrounds them is quite tasty. I have a few european yews (T baccata) but they are only young. Very active in folklore and magic, the yew tree, and bows of coarse. I wasn't aware of thier prospects of curing cancer

How do you like this hypothesis. Some kind of cancer type cellular pathology creating the kind of zombie like symptoms we see in movies etc. Maybe with a viral vector...food for thought!

[jubei33]

Well I have transported hives a good bit, but never very far.

bee stings that cause diarrhea...nice. I got stung by a wasp yesterday and thats sore enough thank you!

As for Taxanes, are they in the nuts (realy specialised cones). I understand that nuts are poisonose, but the red flesh that surrounds them is quite tasty. I have a few european yews (T baccata) but they are only young. Very active in folklore and magic, the yew tree, and bows of coarse. I wasn't aware of thier prospects of curing cancer

How do you like this hypothesis. Some kind of cancer type cellular pathology creating the kind of zombie like symptoms we see in movies etc. Maybe with a viral vector...food for thought!

I'm not sure about the nuts, but the taxanes are usually extracted from the bark of the tree. Taxol, the first of these compounds to be noticed, was derived from the pacific yew. The problem was there weren't enough of them to mass produce the chemical without driving them into extinction. Nobody wants that, as there goes your source of not just one, but probably many other possible compounds. And there is the bow and arrow lobby that always wants its share too.

Fun as they might be, the problem I always with zombies is where they're getting their energy from. So they eat people, but they don't need to eat and they keep going. Sometimes you see them running full tilt in a movie, busting after the lead role or his mian love interest or some other douchebag..or they walk and walk and walk.

But as a viral vector, you have to think that transmittance is important and if the crop of available hosts is killed off, then there goes the viral epidemic, not enough hosts. Also, now lets say that this dude was a real couch potato, were talking total fatass, right? and he gets infected, there's no way that dude's muscles are going to be able to handle the marathon running zombie style. If he couldn't do it before, how would a viral infection enable him to compete in that way. It must be adrenaline, then, right, the adrenaline rush. So, if we have chemical systems running in the background, then we also must have energy and they must get their energy from somewhere. If its fat or the muscle then that's limited to how much they can acquire + how much store they have on them, which is not really all that much. I mean the liver only stores a few thousand calories on hand, and a body can only really store a limited amount of fat and maintain mobility.....

not all that scary. Now, diarrhea bees...

[doofaloofa]

Fun as they might be, the problem I always with zombies is where they're getting their energy from.

why Chi of coarse!

killer rabits v's diarrhea bees

[jubei33]

A friend and I once discussed animal gigantism with respect towards engineering. He said: “If you’re going to go to the trouble of making something it must be big, it’s more terrifying.” And he is right to some degree, but this route also creates problems that inherently limit the effect. Larger animals need larger amounts of food and are also more visible and prone to counterattack. A hypothetical mantis the size of a man would displace others of its flock by competition, thus limiting the population size even farther. This is also not mentioning the physical and technical barriers to such a feat. A singular natural oddity, a rarity, is less to fear than several thousand. I believe ordinary things can be just as terrifying given the right circumstances.

nice leepus.

More on zombie cancer virus:

Though several viruses have been implicated in causing cancer (HZV,EBV,etc), the problem with using them as a foil is what a tumor does. generally, the leach up all the available nutrients of a given area, just for the sake of growth. They're so good at it in fact, that generally the inside of these kind of tumors are hypoxic with respect to outer layers of tissue. This is a direct result of the ability of nutrients and oxygen to diffuse through tissues, which is described by fick's law of diffusion. This kind of diffusion is limited by distance, thus the further you are away from a capillary the less nutrients diffuse to you. So for zombies at least, this would be a difficult sell even if framed as 'eating people for more energy'.

why Chi of coarse!

You're fired. :)