Cure to Cancer... accidentally found!??

[Symphonic]

This is incredible! Apparently while researchers were trying to figure out how to protect pregnant women from Maleria, they discovered that the maleria protein attacks 90% of cancer types. Basically, it's a vaccine armed with a toxin inside the maleria protein, and once it embeds itself into the cell, it releases the toxin and kills the cell.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...-a6693601.html

Scientists might have accidentally made a huge step forward in the search for a cure for cancer — discovering unexpectedly that a malaria protein could be an effective weapon against the disease.

Danish researchers were hunting for a way of protecting pregnant women from malaria, which can cause huge problems because it attacks the placenta. But they found at the same time that armed malaria proteins can attack cancer, too — an approach which could be a step towards curing the disease.

Scientists have combined the bit of protein that the malaria vaccine uses to bury into cells and combined it with a toxin — that can then bury into cancer cells and release the toxin, killing them off.

The scientists have found that in both cases the malria protein attaches itself to the same carbohydrate. It is the similarities between those two things that the cure could exploit.

The carbohydrate ensures that the placenta grows quickly. But the team behind the new findings have detailed how it serves the same function in tumours — and the malaria parasite attaches itself to the cancerous cells in the same way, meaning that it can kill them off.

Scientists said that they had been searching for a long time for a way to exploit the similarities between the placenta and the tumour.

"For decades, scientists have been searching for similarities between the growth of a placenta and a tumor,” said Ali Salanti from University of Copenhagen. “The placenta is an organ, which within a few months grows from only few cells into an organ weighing approx. two pounds, and it provides the embryo with oxygen and nourishment in a relatively foreign environment. In a manner of speaking, tumors do much the same, they grow aggressively in a relatively foreign environment.”

The process has already been tested in cells and on mice with cancer, with the findings described in a new article for the journal Cancer Cell. Scientists hope that they can begin testing the discovery on humans in the next four years.

The biggest questions are whether it'll work in the human body, and if the human body can tolerate the doses needed without developing side effects,” said Salanti. “But we're optimistic because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumors in humans.”

In the tests on mice, the animals were implanted with three different types of human cancers. It reduced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma tumours to about a quarter of their size, got rid of protstate cancer entirely in two of six mice and kept alive five out of six mice that had metastatic bone cancer compared to a control group all of which died.

"We have separated the malaria protein, which attaches itself to the carbohydrate and then added a toxin," said Mads Daugaard, a cancer researcher at Canada's University of British Columbia and one of the scientists that worked on the research. "By conducting tests on mice, we have been able to show that the combination of protein and toxin kill the cancer cells."

[Independent voter]

I hope so but it seems like every year they announce a new cancer cure. Lots of people dying from cancer every day.

[Natrii]

Sadly Cancer has mostly likely had a cure for 10 years now. The industry of making drugs to treat is is to good to release a cure. Big Pharma Money>Human life.

[Azadina]

Great if it works! I just wonder what side effects it will have..

[Deleted]

So are you saying I can continue smoking without any side effects?

[Lava Bucket]

This is not a new approach to treating cancer. For years now, my team has been studying modified antibodies that find and attach to cancer cells and then deliver a toxic payload. It's promising, but it takes more than a few animal studies before it can be considered effective.

[tj119]

It's a load of bullshit. All a money grab, sell products that create cancers in humans and sell fake "cures" at ridiculous prices. Why would doctors and people profiting from cancers treatments ever allow that nearly 100billion dollar business be cured.

[Deleted]

"A cured patient is a lost customer" There seems to be a new cure every other week so i will celebrate when several patients are actually cured.

[Hexian]

Sadly Cancer has mostly likely had a cure for 10 years now. The industry of making drugs to treat is is to good to release a cure. Big Pharma Money>Human life.

The tinfoil hat is strong with this one.

[Puremallace]

Isn't this how that movie "I am Legend" started?

[Zogarth]

Sadly Cancer has mostly likely had a cure for 10 years now. The industry of making drugs to treat is is to good to release a cure. Big Pharma Money>Human life.

How does that sit together with the GOVERMENT FUNDED healthcare research in most of the developed european countries=

[Underverse]

Sadly Cancer has mostly likely had a cure for 10 years now. The industry of making drugs to treat is is to good to release a cure. Big Pharma Money>Human life.

This isn't true. Don't get me wrong, I have no love for big pharma, but having worked in an academic cancer research institute, I can safely say that there is currently no cure.

[Venant]

Sadly Cancer has mostly likely had a cure for 10 years now. The industry of making drugs to treat is is to good to release a cure. Big Pharma Money>Human life.

Its good news for the people who will sell this tech to some big pharma concern that will suppress the technology.

[Nynax]

Sadly Cancer has mostly likely had a cure for 10 years now. The industry of making drugs to treat is is to good to release a cure. Big Pharma Money>Human life.

Its a nice conspiracy theory, but those idea always ignore two things.
1. That multiple people at multiple levels of the company all have an inhuman level of greed and zero empathy for others .
2. That big companies have big fears about missing out on new developments. All it takes is one company to decide to market it and make BIG $$ FAST, leaving out all the rest. And any company would be afraid of NOT being that guy if they really had the cure. Not to mention the potential PR boost, and that literally every other drug you make will see a huge boost in sales as they trust you more and endlessly into the future.

[Lava Bucket]

It's a load of bullshit. All a money grab, sell products that create cancers in humans and sell fake "cures" at ridiculous prices. Why would doctors and people profiting from cancers treatments ever allow that nearly 100billion dollar business be cured.

Wrong. We aren't sold products that cause cancer. We develop cancer from exposure to environmental carcinogens (there are a few suspected carcinogens in some foods, like charred meats, but this hasn't been proven). Genetics can also play a role in our predilection for developing certain kinds of cancer. The biggest money in pharma is not curing diseases but treating conditions that are not life-threatening. Perhaps you've heard of Viagra?

This leads to the industry pursuing what I would consider to be "secondary targets" while things like better antibiotics (which make almost no money) to help combat resistant strains of bacteria are underfunded. Also, as drugs have been in the market longer, they go off patent and get picked up by generics manufacturers. This greatly reduces the profits of the company who discovered the drugs, so there is no incentive to "not cure cancer."

There is every incentive to develop new and better drugs to treat diseases that affect a lot of people. The profit motive mostly works in the pharma industry (Source: 20 years of experience in the pharma industry).

[Reeve]

Sadly Cancer has mostly likely had a cure for 10 years now. The industry of making drugs to treat is is to good to release a cure. Big Pharma Money>Human life.

Sadly, the cure for neither cancer, nor paranoia induced conspiracy theories, has been found.

[Underverse]

This is not a new approach to treating cancer. For years now, my team has been studying modified antibodies that find and attach to cancer cells and then deliver a toxic payload. It's promising, but it takes more than a few animal studies before it can be considered effective.

The difference is in the ligand being bound, and also possibly internalization of the Ab/toxin. It seems to me that the major discovery isn't really the method, but the carbohydrate that is present on 90% of cancers. It will be interesting to see whether this protein is endocytosed. I have a feeling it isn't though.

Of course, this approach has the same problem that all therapies targeting membrane proteins on cancer cells have - tumor heterogeneity. My prediction is that even if it works to stop the growth of cancer, a few cells will survive and remission will occur with enough time.

[Kasierith]

Ahhhh the cancer conspiracy nutjobs... yet again demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of how a competitive market works. Too lazy to even tab over to see what the highest selling drugs ever are.

While interesting, this isn't exactly dealbreaking. Three kinds of cancer in non-human subjects is a long, long way to go from a cure for cancer. I see this as more of a stepping stone along the way, and how drug research advances based on the discoveries here are far more interesting than the sparse possibility that this is "the answer."

[Cyberowl]

The tinfoil hat is strong with this one.

You can't deny that Big Pharma is buying promising patents and lets them rot to keep it away from the market.

[Kasierith]

You can't deny that Big Pharma is buying promising patents and lets them rot to keep it away from the market.

I can deny that there's no incentive for drug companies to compete with other drug companies.