h a l f b a k e r yIncidentally, why isn't "spacecraft" another word for "interior design"?
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Cancer therapies attempt to kill or inhibit cancer cell
growth. In general, the strategy has been to look at the
features of cancer cells and try things that affect those
more than the rest of the patient. This strategy works
absolutely marvelously for antibiotics, because bacteria
have many
targets that do not exist in mammals, plants,
mushrooms or even those dark patches in the least
popular
work bathroom.
Predictably, there is no universal difference between
cancer cells and normal cells, hence no common target.
Sure, they have mutated DNA, but so do most cells. Just
bad luck on the regions. They like to grow, or at least
that's a dangerous feature. But then so do the cells that
are replacing skin. They run the full gamut of survival
strategies available.
But, a sizable majority like to play silly buggers with
metabolism. They're not interested in efficiency, and the
tendency to politely kill themselves is a tendency that's
weeded out by selection. For that reason, they distance
themselves from their own mitochondria, reduce the
total
amount and involve them in as little as possible. This is
because mitochondria are more than capable of killing
the cell if
they suspect any funny business. The cells still need
them
to make stuff, but they'd really rather they kept quiet
and
didn't interrupt the expansion plans up in management*.
Instead of an honest living, they prefer to gobble huge
quantities of glucose, pyruvate and glutamine. Strategies
to counter this are being tried, non-functional analogs of
glucose and pyruvate exist and both work similarly. The
greedy cells import them but they stop part way, yield
no
energy and then just, hang around. That's it. They
specifically concentrate in the target, then not much
else.
A shocking waste of an opportunity.
Deuterium, hydrogen's chunky isotope brother, is more
toxic to cancer cells than normal cells. That's because it
disrupts the careful rearrangement of chromosomes
during
cell division... something cancer cells do more than
most.
Lots of drugs target cell division, but do not concentrate,
or are actively excluded from cancer cells. So let's put a
whole lot of deuterium onto our sneaky fake metabolite.
I'm going with a deuterated version of 3-
bromopyruvate**.
But feel free to add deuterated 2-deoxyglucose and or
glutamine. Now you are specifically targeting a cell
division inhibitor to cells that are metabolically addicted
to
(one or more of) glucose, pyruvate and glutamine. The
majority of cells will care not a jot.
For added value, go the whole hog*** and tritiate your
metabolic analogs. Bioenergetic inhibition, cell division
inhibition and local, concentrated radiotherapy.
*Feel free to substitute a superior mitochondrial
metaphor,
like I say, the marketing dept. has been
under-performing.
**because it will preferentially hang around in the
unusually alkaline cancer mitochondria.
***a tiny touch of 2,4,dnp and ketone supplementation
should go further.
Tritium DNA damage
http://www.tandfonl...0/09553007314550481
[bs0u0155, Oct 26 2017]
[link]
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Can Deuterium be selectively irradiated? as an added unchecked cell growth limiter. |
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I think the various conditions that can produce
deuterium aren't really life-compatible. |
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This seems like quite a good idea. |
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Out of interest, does deuterium interfere with DNA-related things, by modifying the hydrogen bonds between paired bases? Presumably any effect is small, but I wondered. |
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Assuming there's a not-terribly complicated method of separating deuterium oxide from unoterium oxide, why not just drink the stuff ? and recycle. Some would be irretrievably lost to sweat, of course. [edit: 25%] |
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I think the point is to deuterate compounds that cancer cells are greedy for. |
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One other question, though - what's the rate of exchange of hydrogen (or deuterium) between things like glucose and things like water? Will your deuterium stay where it's meant to be? (I guess "yes" because tritium lebelling works.) |
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// what's the rate of exchange of hydrogen (or deuterium) between things like glucose and things like water? // |
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Sugars only weakly ionize in polar solvents, even though they're very soluble in water. As [bs] has pointed out, there's a plethora of explanations for the ionization of water, all of which account for the tendency of protons (or deuterons) to wander around without so much as a by-your-leave. |
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So in sugars, hydrogen atoms are quite firmly attached, hence the practicality of tritium labelling. But in water, the tritium nucleii can just bugger off any time they feel like it, which is a bit inconvenient. |
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//So in sugars, hydrogen atoms are quite firmly attached,// |
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....and follow known paths through metabolism. It would be
terrible if tritium were to concentrate within DNA. Tritium
decay beta particles have a very short range in water,
barely 1 cell diameter, so the global effects would likely be
minimal. Sadly, for any unfortunate cells, those events
could be quite catastrophic. <link> |
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"it disrupts the careful rearrangement of chromosomes
during cell division... something cancer cells do more than
most" |
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But, if now normal cells, do sloppy re-arraignment only
once, is that not still a problem? |
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Nice, the knife edge between stopping cancers, and making new ones. |
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If a specific spectral pattern can be measured, can the reverse be done? , ping that specific pattern with a designed electromagnetic radiation. |
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//Nice, the knife edge between stopping cancers, and
making new ones.// |
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The conventional therapies have very very significant
problems with this already. It's rarely mentioned because
it's assumed that the risk of dying of the cancer you have
outweighs the risk of creating a new one and then dying
of that. But consider that total body irradiation is still
used, often combined with drugs that are used because
they damage DNA. In a twisted way, that is an excellent
recipe for cancer. The rationale is that rapidly
proliferating cells, cancer/skin/blood cell precursors, are
much more likely to be replicating their DNA, and are
selectively vulnerable. |
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Targeting your anti-cancer system is a very attractive
proposition, if you are sure where ALL of it is you can just
chop it out/selectively irradiate it/inject it with
something like alcohol which is an example of a chemical
that's a brutal cell killer at 100% but just fine by the time
it diffuses and dilutes out. You can't always find and kill
all of it though. |
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So, it's much cleverer if you can somehow get the cancer
to self target. An example of this is to be found in some
thyroid cancers, the thyroid manufactures iodine-rich
thyroxine and cancerous cells derived from the thyroid
can be tricked with hormones into taking up all the iodine
they can get. The trick is to sneakily replace the iodine
with a radioactive substitute. The cancer (and remaining
normal) thyroid cells dutifully concentrate the iodine
within themselves, die and release the remaining
radioactive iodine. This dilutes rapidly and is excreted so
doesn't do too much damage, like mutating the DNA of a
few hundred million cells. |
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//But, if now normal cells, do sloppy re-arraignment only
once, is that not still a problem?// |
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There's a few features of long lived multicellular
organisms that do an ALMOST perfect job of solving this
problem. If DNA is damaged, it can be repaired good-as
new. Problem solved. The repair can also be bodged, but
the sloppy repair is in a section of DNA that doesn't
matter to that cell. Or, the sloppy repair can be in a
region that does matter to the cell, but the sloppy repair
is good enough and nothing happens. Or, the sloppy repair
happens in a critical part of DNA and now that bit doesn't
work. Cell doesn't care, it has a back up chromosome.
Now, if a lot of bad luck happens and some critical genes
get turned off, and some damaged genes make stuck-in-
the-on-position proteins there could be a problem.
Fortunately, cells often spot this and politely retire or kill
themselves. A replacement is usually arranged. If bad
luck prevails, this is avoided, then the cell could have all
the conditions to commence uncontrolled growth. Except
that cell is so specialized it can't remember how do do
that trick, such as the heart muscle cells or secretory
cells of the pancreas. If it can remember and does start
to divide, the immune system turns up and politely invites
them to discontinue living. |
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There's a few additional checkpoints on top of those, like
I say, the system is pretty thorough. |
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//sloppy re-arraignment // |
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They need a better lawyer? |
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