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Cancer Resistant Mouse Provides Possible Cure

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue May 09, 2006 02:18 PM
from the one-of-many-recent-possibilities dept.
Biotech Science
Evoluder writes to tell us that scientists at Wake Forest University have found a "cancer resistant mouse" and bred it to make a small army of cancer resistant mice. When transplanting blood from one of these mice to a normal non-resistant mouse they are able to provide "lifetime cancer protection". From the article: "The cancer-resistant mice all stem from a single mouse discovered in 1999. "The cancer resistance trait so far has been passed to more than 2,000 descendants in 14 generations," said Cui, associate professor of pathology. It also has been bred into three additional mouse strains. About 40 percent of each generation inherits the protection from cancer."
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[+] Cancer Resistance Technique Moves To Human Trials 168 comments
TaeKwonDood tips us to news that a new cancer resistance treatment is going into clinical trials after being quite successful at eradicating cancer in mice. Researchers discovered that certain white blood cells called granulocytes from cancer-immune mice were able to cure cancer in other mice. Now, doctors are putting out the call for healthy granulocyte donors in order to test how well it works on humans. The article quotes lead researcher Zheng Cui saying, "In mice, we've been able to eradicate even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors. Hopefully, we will see the same results in humans. Our laboratory studies indicate that this cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans."
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  • Cancer resistant... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chabil Ha' (875116) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:20PM (#15295686)
    but mortally susceptible to the common cold.

  • I for one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:21PM (#15295702)
    will skip the line you expected here and get right to the point: INVINCIBLE MICE ARMY?!?

  • Nice, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:22PM (#15295707)
    Will this cure cancer in rats? Because, EVERYTHING causes cancer in rats!

  • Delicious (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:23PM (#15295712)
    I'll take a carton of cigarettes and a shot of mouse blood.

  • Reference (Score:5, Informative)

    by btavshan (699524) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:29PM (#15295796)
    See PNAS, vol. 103, no 20, p7753-7758. VERY interesting work.

    • Re:Reference (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2006, @03:14PM (#15296247)
      Do you try to pronounce this PNAS as a word or always have to spell it out? In conversation, I mean.

  • Fringe benefits? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rmerrill11 (308424) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:30PM (#15295807)
    Hmm... now curing cancer is nice and all, but if/when applied to humans, does this mean they can smoke cigarettes w/o ill effect, clean up nuclear waste with their bare hands, or travel in space for extended duration w/o ill effect?

    How good is this really?

    (Assuming this is true, it is a wonderful step.)

  • Cylon? (Score:4, Funny)

    by tokki (604363) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:31PM (#15295820)
    So the mouse is a cylon?

    I mean, a'doy. Dr Baltar already figured this out. It cured President Rosylin's cancer, after all.

  • Another cure??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pedrito (94783) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:33PM (#15295834) Homepage
    The media is quick to call things like this a cure. The fact remains that, with some exceptions, men are not mice. Back in the late 90s, angiogenesis inhibitors (a class of drugs that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels, needed by tumors to provide nourishment as they grow) were being tested with amazing success in mice, preventing the spread of almost every form of cancer. It was hailed as the coming cure.

    Some angiogenesis inhibitors have proven to be very helpful in treating cancer, but they are not a cure. They aren't nearly as effective in humans as they were in mice, it appears.

    I'm always skeptical (and you should be too), when you hear about something that isn't even in clinical trials, as a possible cure for some disease people get. People simply don't respond the same as mice.

    That said, this does look promising as an avenue, but I wouldn't go out and take up smoking just yet.
    • They say that if you turn up with cancer you'd be well advised to be a mouse, since the treatments work so much better.

    • Re:Another cure??? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 31415926535897 (702314) <wpgabriel@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:48PM (#15295981) Journal
      People simply don't respond the same as mice.

      I have always held the same skepticism with regard to studies like these as reported by the media for this very reason. What I always wonder about is how many things we miss because mice (or rabbits, or monkeys, etc.) don't respond to them but humans would. I don't know if there is any good answer to this, because we don't want to start testing random crap all willy-nilly on humans, but sometimes I just wonder if we've already passed up that miracle cure.

      Perhaps someday we'll have powerful enough computers that we can simulate everything, including synthesis of a new drug for your specific form of cancer that your body will respond to. Of course, 'perhaps someday' will probably be long after I die of whatever cancer I'm going to get.

      • Re:Another cure??? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Pedrito (94783) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @03:22PM (#15296319) Homepage
        ...but sometimes I just wonder if we've already passed up that miracle cure.

        It's possible that a cure is out there in some plant in the Amazon, or as some bacteria found at the bottom of oceans. But there is no "one" cure for cancer. Cancer works in various ways which means there are various ways to kill it. Pharmacology has come a long way in the past 30 years. These days, it's very targetted. You pick a way you want to attack the cancer, and then you create a drug that does it.

        For example, there's a protein called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Cancer causes the release of VEGF around the tumor that in turn, mediates the growth of new blood vessels around the tumor allowing it to get nourishment and grow. So there are several manners that you can try to prevent this. One manner is to try to prevent the creation and release of VEGF in the first place. Another is that you can "competitively inhibit" VEGF by creating a protein that "looks" like VEGF and binds where VEGF normally binds and causes blood vessel growth, except that your particular strain of protein doesn't actually trigger the growth. But by binding where VEGF normally does, you're inhibiting the VEGF from being able to bind and eventually it will be disposed of.

        There are other proteins involved in cancer and other drugs are involved with these proteins. So there are a variety of ways of attacking cancers. The most amazing work along these lines has taken place in the last decade and it's getting better all the time. I suspect it won't be long (a few decades maybe) before cancer is a thing of the past.

    • Re:Another cure??? (Score:5, Informative)

      by macklin01 (760841) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @03:28PM (#15296385) Homepage

      Part of the problem may be the difference in lifetimes between mice and humans, as well as problems in detecting small tumors.

      Anti-angiogenic therapy leads to a hypoxic tumor microenvironment (the tissue surrounding the tumor), which can, in turn, lead a tumor to fragment into smaller tumors. (This has been predicted in mathematical/computer models and verified in some experiments and clinical evidence.)

      In a mouse, those small tumors may not have time to grow large enough to detect, whereas in a human, those fragments have more time to do so, leading to recurrence. Or the small tumors may preferentially grow away from the low-O2/low-glucose region to invade nearby tissues.

      Other, slow time-scale interactions may also not come into play for short mouse lifespans but may be important on human lifespans.

      Of course, the genetic differences are there, too. The problems with the mouse model have always been interesting. -- Paul

  • Good Idea/Bad Idea (Score:4, Informative)

    by kbonapart (645754) <lashan_lynnNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:34PM (#15295847)
    Okay, let's think about this for a second.

    A cancerous cell is one that doesn't know when to quit. It is outside the normal cell cycle, and not listening to every cell's built in death trigger. Forvige my lack of specific biology terminalogy.

    So these mice are "cancer-resistant"? When exposed to carcenigous, do they ignore them? When exposed to massive ammounts of UV light, do they tan but not burn? Do they burn but not get skin cancer? If you clogged thier lungs with cig smoke, would they develop a cough but not cancer?

    How the frak does this work? Are the little mice cells just really tuned into thier death trigger? When a cell mutates enough that it doesn't listen to it's death trigger, it is a cancer. Are these mice just impervious to cell mutation?

    If so, wouldn't that make them an evolutionary dead end? Cancer, while bad, is a by-product of evolution. If cells weren't allowed to ever mutate again, would that spell the end of mice evolution? And if we impart that "cancer-immunity" to we humans, would that spell the end of evolution?

    By all means, someone correct what I have wrong. Biology was never my strong suit. (Nor is spelling)

    • Re:Good Idea/Bad Idea (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Golias (176380) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:49PM (#15295986)
      The end of evolution is only a Bad Thing if you consider the capacity to adapt to your environment to be some kind of moral win.

      Humans, like a very small few other species, have the capacity to adapt our environment to suit us, rather than the other way around. No need to go through all that painful natural selection when we can build central heating, agriculture, and wheelchair ramps.

    • Re:Good Idea/Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)

      by BoredWolf (965951) <jakew.white@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:54PM (#15296039) Journal
      It's all in the title of the article... The white blood cells "recognize specific patterns on the cancer cell surface", and flag/attack them as they would any other foreign body. Biology wasn't my strong-suit either, but I would venture a guess that by knowing what sort of mechanism would lead to the white blood cells identifying cancerous/precancerous cells as a risk, the response could be adapted to work similarly (if not identically) in humans. Cancer is not a by-product of evolution, it is a result of malfunctioning cells which replicate uncontrollably. This is generally not a product of 'evolution' as you and I would think of it, but by some sort of damage to the cell which caused it to malfunction. It isn't so much a "death trigger" as replicating without purpose; when you no longer need skin cells at a certain location, and some mutated cell keeps replicating malfunctioning cells, you've got cancer. If your immune system cannot recognize something as a threat, it cannot respond to it, which appears to be the current predicament with cancer in humans.
    • If so, wouldn't that make them an evolutionary dead end? Cancer, while bad, is a by-product of evolution. If cells weren't allowed to ever mutate again, would that spell the end of mice evolution?
      Mutations during meiosis are not cancer, so no cancer doesn't mean no evolution.
    • A better question is could this cause autoimmune problems? If it makes the immune system more sensitive could it increase you chances at Lupus, MS, and or arthritis?
      That is why I really hate biology. It is too complex. We need to to do a complete redesign! We need more isolation of functions and batter fault tolerance.
      Sounds like a good open source project.

  • Take heed, Slashdotters! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guppy06 (410832) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:34PM (#15295850) Journal
    "The cancer resistance trait so far has been passed to more than 2,000 descendants in 14 generations"

    If you cure cancer, you get laid.
    • "If you cure cancer, you get laid."

      If a guy was somehow determined to be "cancer-resistant", imagine how many women would want to procreate with him so that their children would be immune to cancer. The guys that could be declared "cancer-resistant" could have women lining up down the street waiting for the guys to knock them up!

  • Lifetime cancer protection (Score:5, Funny)

    by markov_chain (202465) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:39PM (#15295902) Homepage
    they are able to provide "lifetime cancer protection"

    I see, so the protection lasts right until they die... from cancer. I think Aleve can do this just as well :)

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Paladine97 (467512) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:40PM (#15295915) Homepage
    Richard Gere is all smiles and breathing a sigh of relief.

  • BBC article . Structure of important enzyme . (Score:4, Informative)

    by zymano (581466) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:45PM (#15295958)
    Telomerase structure has been identified.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4698264.stm [bbc.co.uk]

  • Not quite a reliable claim (Score:3, Funny)

    by NevarMore (248971) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:55PM (#15296046) Homepage
    "... able to provide "lifetime cancer protection"."

    The article fails to mention that 'lifetime' can be greatly affected by the neighboring reptile obesity study.

  • Eh, probably not Earth-shaking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SB9876 (723368) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @03:08PM (#15296183)
    As exciting as this sounds, it's probably not going to lead to a pancea for cancer in humans. We've cured cancer in mice several times over since the 70s. The problem is that mice are a short-lived species that has very little innate resistance to cancer. After all evolution is not going to have an organism waste lots of energy repairing DNA damage and having pools of immune cells constantly checking for mutant cells if the organism is just going to get eaten by a cat in an average of a few months after birth.
        By contrast, humans are a very long-lived animal species. Our bodies already have a large number of cancer-prevention mechanisms that simply aren't present in mice. Take for example telomeres. The telomere ends of chromosomes shorten with each cell replication other than gamete formation. All your cells have what is known as the 'Hayflick limit' where the telomeres get too short, the chromosomes become unstable and the cell dies. Although this mechanism is probably one of the contributors to human aging, it also does a very good job of eliminating many tumors. Most of your tumors hit the Hayflick limit and simply die off before they can present a threat to you. Virtually all human cancers either mutate so as to find a way to reactivate the telomerase that re-lengthens the telomeres or manages to find a way to preserve their telomere ends through chromosomal recombination. Mouse cells, by way of contrast, have huge telomeres which never get short enough to act as this sort of cancer-prevention mechanism.
        As a result human tumors are much 'tougher' than mouse tumors. The average mouse tumor wouldn't stand a chance in a human. Any tumor that manages to thrive in a human has had to jump a host of hurdles and checkpoints that no mouse tumor does in order to simply survive.
        The problem is that many of these cancer cures in mice already exist in humans naturally. Some of these cures (such as this one, most likely) are simply reactivation of vestigial anti-cancer systems in the mice that have atrophied for the above-mentioned reasons. Others are cancer treatments that attack weaknesses in mouse tumors that are simply irrelevant in human ones. I suspect that this super mouse is simply being more human with regards to cancer and that the end result is that we'll rediscover something our bodies already do.

  • In Related News... (Score:3, Funny)

    by carrier lost (222597) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @03:17PM (#15296274) Homepage

    ...mice begin smoking filterless cigarettes with wild abandon.

    MjM

  • A cancer-resistant mouse! (Score:5, Funny)

    by NereusRen (811533) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @03:33PM (#15296433)
    Fantastic! I am very excited about this development. Will there be an ergonomic model released to prevent me from getting RSI, too? Perhaps a cancer-resistant trackball is in order.

    ... oh. Nevermind.

    • Re:Beware. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EGSonikku (519478) <petersen.mobile@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:27PM (#15295777)
      Er, gives us a soul? I wasn't aware that the 'soul' was part of our DNA sequence, care to enlighten us heathen atheists as to what scientiffic observations led you in this direction? Also, if my soul is damaged, can I get a transplant donor soul?

    • Re:Beware. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drwho (4190) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:40PM (#15295918) Homepage Journal
      Scientists should be wary about trying to genetically modify humans with the knowledge gained from these experiments.


      Thinking of a "cancer gene" is misleading. Imagine a net of rubber bands all knotted togethor. Changing one gene will "stretch a rubber band" differently possibly affect all the other aspects of the organism, often unpredictably.


      This cancer gene could be the one that also gives humans a soul. We can't tell with a mouse, of course, because they only speak in pips and squeaks, but scientists should know all the risks involved with creating such a possible genetic enhancement.


      You're a moron, Mr. Rifkin. Seriously, though, this is the type of comment that lies outside of answering, outside of science, and beyond reason. You can't win an argument with someone like this, and it's not even worth trying. It's a religious matter. For much of human history, such thoughts set the policies of governments. Then, we discovered reason and science. But the pendulum seems to swinging back the other way again.

    • Re:Beware. (Score:4, Informative)

      by CFTM (513264) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:52PM (#15296018)
      Well as terrified as I am about the "cancer gene" messing with the "soul gene", I'm willing to take the chance. Oh and last I checked, neurobiology has made some headway in cracking this whole "soul mystery" thing. Turns out that human individuality might actually be created by something called a "long interspersed nuclear element". A lot less handwaving than a "soul gene". LA Times has a rather extensive article on it and although the LINE is similar to a gene it's considered a precursor...

      Assuming that this article [latimes.com] isn't completely incorrect, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that we'll have trouble fucking it up. It exists in every mammal [including mice] and has existed for well over 600 Million years. Fun read on a fascinating topic.
    • That's kinda cool.

      So then we could transplant that gene and
      1) Give plants souls
      2) Give animals souls
      3) Give bacteria souls

      We already have a clearly soulless population of humans (CEO's and Lawyers) so we could isolate the difference between their genes and the rest of the populace to isolate this cancer-causing soul making gene.

    • Re:Beware. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Meoward (665631) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:53PM (#15296032)

      This cancer gene could be the one that also gives humans a soul.

      Hmm, lessee.. no cancer in my lifetime in exchange for something I've never had any use for. Man, hard choice.

      Ch-ching!

      Next week, maybe I'll get to trade group sex for herpes.

    • Whether a soul exists or not is debatable, but I think we can all agree that if we have a soul, it should transcend the possesion of a single gene. Otherwise, its not much of a soul. I know you are not suggesting this, but if a soul can depend on a single gene, then can't it also depend on a single hair cut, or a particular level of intelligence, or a particular skin color. One of the compelling things about the idea of a soul is that it would can mean that human beings are similar in a way that doesn't dep

    • Re:Cause of the cancer resistance (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:32PM (#15295831)
      Thats a brilliant idea.

      Why dont you email them and suggest it?

      Reading between the lines of your analysis, I think youre saying there could be a real future application for it.

      Like I dunno...curing cancer maybe?

    • Yes, you can... (Score:5, Informative)

      by danceswithtrees (968154) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @03:28PM (#15296388)
      There are two different ways to do this.

      The first is by expression profiling- looking at difference in gene expression. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_chip [wikipedia.org] This will actually give you a readout of how the two cells are different in terms of how they use different genes to express their differences.

      The other is positional cloning. You basically breed a resistant mouse with a non-resistant mouse to get an F1 intercross. If you are dealing with inbred mice, these are genetically identical but each chromosome is different- one from mom and one from dad. You breed this generation with eachother to get an F2 intercross and then phenotype the offspring (are they resistant to cancer?) and then genotype them (what are their genetic differences?). Genes undergo semi-random reassortment through cross-over events and all offspring in the F2 incross have a random sprinkling of genes from mom and dad. You then do linkage analysis to find out which genetic differences are most closely linked to the phenotype you are looking for.

    • Re:Not for humans (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HotNeedleOfInquiry (598897) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @02:52PM (#15296020)
      A better question would be "Are there cancer resistant humans and we don't know about it?"

      I know that that there are no cancers on my mother's side of the family despite heavy smoking , coal mining and high-risk lifestyles. Perhaps there is cancer resistant strains of humans and we just don't know about it.

        • Re:Not for humans (Score:5, Interesting)

          by maxwells_deamon (221474) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @04:22PM (#15296805) Homepage
          We may actually be doing the experiment and not looking at the results.

          The article states that if an immune mouse gives white blood cells to a mouse with cancer the second mouse gets better.

          If we assume the same mutation exists in humans, we just need to do a statistical analysis of humans who have had spontaneous permanent cancer remissions after receiving a blood donation.

          A few more tests and we could cure a lot of cancer.

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