Cancer cells poisoned with sugar


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IT'S a heavy price to pay for a sweet tooth. Researchers have tricked glucose-eating cancer cells into consuming a sugar that essentially poisons them - it leaves a "suicide" switch within the cells open to attack.

"Most cancer cells rely almost exclusively on glucose to fuel their growth," says Guy Perkins of the University of California at San Diego. With Rudy Yamaguchi of Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, Perkins found the cells would take up a similar sugar called 2-deoxyglucose. But this sugar physically dislodges a protein within the cell that guards a suicide switch. Once exposed, the switch can be activated by a drug called ABT-263. This kills the cell by liberating proteins that order it to commit suicide (Cancer Research, DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-11-3091).

The approach could ultimately spell doom for several types of cancer, including liver, lung, breast and blood. In mice, the treatment made aggressive human prostate cancer tumours virtually disappear within days.

Yamaguchi and Perkins are now hoping to mount a clinical trial at UC San Diego.

News Source: NewScientist.com

Wooo!

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Always wonderful to hear news stories like this - I hope it works out to be an effective treatment for this terrible illness!

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Oh great, now we will live until we are 200 and have to work until we are 160. Life is going to suck if this treatment can keep us living well past our life expectancy. I hope that the treatment is successful and it can be used to treat people before they reach old age.

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I hope it is successful, it looks totally awesome, but methinks the drug companies will get upset about it as it will make them lose money on the patented drugs they have made already.

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It makes me happy and sad at the same time!

Sad, because I wish this would have been available to all that died due to it and of cause because of a relative of mine...

Glassed Silver:win

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Well I'm not much of a biologist, but it's my understanding that we store glucose for extended periods of time... thus you'd just die from slow starvation... if I'm wrong, tell me...

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And with the last several cures to cancer/aids articles ive read, this will most likely be the last most of everyone hears about it. Before people jump on me, I am not saying that the cures are being withheld , but it seems everyone gets excited and some terrible side effect is found and it leads nowhere.

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The more you learn, I never knew Cancer cells were so reliant on Glucose

Just about every cell in the body can use Glucose if I recall correctly.

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Just about every cell in the body can use Glucose if I recall correctly.

That is something that could pose a problem, what if this kills other cells? The problem with making drugs was never that you could not devise a drug to kill the bacteria/virus/cancer, but that you also made one that wouldn't kill the patient. Given that life on the cellular level is extremely similar, what kills a bacteria generally kills human cells and what kills cancer generally kills healthy tissue.

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That is something that could pose a problem, what if this kills other cells? The problem with making drugs was never that you could not devise a drug to kill the bacteria/virus/cancer, but that you also made one that wouldn't kill the patient. Given that life on the cellular level is extremely similar, what kills a bacteria generally kills human cells and what kills cancer generally kills healthy tissue.

My thoughts as well. A cancerous cell is still a cell that was originally a healthy human tissue cell. It may end up being used like chemotherapy, being applied to a target area in small doses. You may get sick and some healthy cells will die, but it may end up being more effective at actually stopping the cancer.

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