Biological 'Logic Circuit' Destroys Cancer Cells 98
intellitech writes "Researchers led by ETH professor Yaakov Benenson and MIT professor Ron Weiss have successfully incorporated diagnostic biological information processing in human cells. In a study recently published in Science (abstract), they describe a multi-gene synthetic 'logic circuit' whose task is to distinguish between cancer and healthy cells, and subsequently target cancer cells for destruction. This circuit works by sampling and integrating five intracellular, cancer-specific molecular factors and their concentration. The circuit makes a positive identification only when all factors are present in the cell, resulting in highly precise cancer detection. Researchers hope it can serve a basis for very specific anti-cancer treatments."
cool! (Score:2)
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That is really cool.... it won't go terribly wrong, right?
If it does, you'll die. Which you were going to do anyway.
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until it learns to jump hosts... then we all die.
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Well, the upside to that is that it will be a rather short lived problem. Its not going to live long after it kills us all.
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I imagine at least a few people considering euthanasia would jump on the chance to sign up for human trials for that reason. After all, if you're planning to die anyway, why not do it for science and the chance things might improve?
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When you add a tiger to a cell, the tiger usually gets very upset. Tigers need lots of room.
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That is really cool.... it won't go terribly wrong, right?
If it does, you'll die. Which you were going to do anyway.
Couldn't that be used as an argument for doing every sort of crazy, dangerous, or bone-headed thing that crosses into people's mind? I mean, you're ALWAYS going to die eventually ...
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You have a point! I'm off to wrestle that bear that's been bullying me for my lunch money. Will report back on my success later.
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If it does, you'll die. Which you were going to do anyway.
Not to sound like the Jim Morrisson downer in the room, but you ARE going to die. We are all on death row.
Don't wait until a doctor reaffirms this fact to try and do the things that you consider fulfilling.
Big difference in the two (Score:2)
One is the fact that the "Man In Black" will be visiting you (unless you are immortal)
the other is that the "Man In Black" has penciled you in for a date in the near future for his visit.
but yes Live with as little fear as possible so that the record shows you had a WILD RIDE (and most likely skidded for a week afterwards).
Great Weapon (Score:3)
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But it just doesn't feel like science that way..
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It's designed to target cell types, not the genome itself.
Like, you could kill everyone with, say, a heart, liver, or lungs.
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But it's easier and cheaper to shoot someone or arrange a car accident. The amount of research, time, money, skill, scientific advancement, and effort needed to create a logic circuit to differentiate between two related individuals is orders of magnitude higher than this experimental protocol, and even more orders of magnitude more expensive than a bullet.
The molecular differences between individuals are both very slight and unbelievably numerous. The only way a logic circuit like this can work is if the
At least the next step. (Score:2)
This is cancer treatment, but I agree: The ability to incorporate "logical" switches that react to markers in the DNA makes it suddenly possible to develop biological agents that are targeted towards specific subgroups of the human population.
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well this is rather frightening to those groups like the the jewish rabbis of Ethiopia which have specific markers and most likely multiple hill tribes of the nepal. what next are we going to look for the slanted eye gene and kill all the Asians, or the green eye's with red hair and kill all the Irish, wait ... blue eye's and blond hair taking out the northern countries of Europe, or how about skin color gene,
shit I don't even like the road this is taking.
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This is a very valid concern. Right now, I just have to take comfort in the fact that the differences between populations are so subtle that a logic switch currently would have trouble differentiating the target group with sufficient specificity.
Of course, this means that someone trying to target one ethnic group is potentially capable of accidentally killing even more people than they think. Like... everyone. The next Holocaust may very well be biological.
Also, it should be possible to vaccinate against
Hope it works (Score:1)
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Ditto. I just have a feeling... similar to how I feel about recent advances in solar cell tech (etc)... We keep hearing about all these great innovations in the last few years, but so far none of them have translated into a "revolutionary" advance. I'd like to see something that actually gets "out of the lab" and into widespread use someday. Keeping fingers crossed...
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Medical improvements take a long time from "discovery" to "buy it at Walgreens". The discoveries you hear about today won't translate into treatments for 10-20 years. But, progress is certainly being made (http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/survival/fiveyear/).
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Not long ago was the method to use reprogrammed safe HIV.
No, that was never the case. Please don't ever tell anyone about that again as you could not be much further from correct and still use the right words.
HIV was used to modify white blood cells, which did the actual work.
At no point does anyone get injected with HIV, nor does it being 'safe' have any actual bearing on it. You do not get an HIV injecting, you get seeded with your own modified white blood cells.
Sorry to sound like an ass, but as long as people think OMG HIV!@$@!%!@% it'll be treated like nuc
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I wonder where you would be if the people that taught you had better things to do then teach the ignorant?
Because, you my friend, are also ignorant.
Thats it.. We are all living forever. (Score:1)
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If people start living forever, no, it's not carrying the metaphor too far. In fact, it'll be absolutely necessary.
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Let's hope it doesn't turn you into a vegetable instead!
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I'm not counting. (Score:2)
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1, it is only the 2nd of Sept.
Re:Common factors. Cancer and AIDS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, your "universal cure" is so much more difficult that I don't see it as even worth working on right now.
Problems are:
1) Different cells do different things, and have different genes active at different times.
2) We are rather dependent on lots of micro-organisms that aren't human. So much so that they usually add up to around half our weight (I'm quite uncertain of the exact percentage, but it's hugely more that is commonly believed.) So you'd need to identify and exclude all of the necessary microorganisms from the "cure". And even then it's more complicated, as most of the microorganisms are only allowed to exist in certain parts of the body. So you've got to map micro-organism against location in your exclusion list.
Much easier to just tackle one problem at a time.
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If we're talking about gene targeting I dont think microorganisms will be a big problem.
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1) This is why the logic circuit targets things that are
a) present in cancer cells that are not present in other cells at the same levels and
b) uses a "multi-input" circuit. This means multiple abnormalities present in the same cell. This is common in cancer cells, but not in normal cells.
2) Mammals have apoptotic (killswitch) pathways that can be used that are not present in microbes. The biologist/doctors developing this are likely aware of the importance of a microbiome. However, e
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Not to mention the cytokine storm that happens if you can't slow the process down enough.
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A valid concern. I think dosing may address that though. There is no reason to give a dose high enough to kill every cancer cell at once.
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Sorry for being cynical, but it seems we get all sorts of researchers making breakthrough discoveries and then it takes a decade or longer for the stuff to get out to the general public to be used.
That's the wonder of government regulation. It's better that you die of cancer than risk taking a treatment that might save you.
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because otherwise it would kill you. but we wouldn't want that to slow down progress, now would we?
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You do know how researchers get funding, don't you?
Let me give you a hint, its not by telling everyone the realistic outcome of their research.
They can't say "AND" gate (Score:2)
You really want to impress me, show me an "XOR" - either of two indications, but not both.
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if we get to start building logic functions in biology, will that start a whole new phase of 'XYZ in a person' patents?
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Re:They can't say "AND" gate (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, it's more impressive than an "OR" gate (which could simply be two different mechanisms that trigger the same effect), but the word Logic circuit just doesn't do it for me.
You really want to impress me, show me an "XOR" - either of two indications, but not both.
http://2008.igem.org/Team:Davidson-Missouri_Western/DNA_Encoded_XOR_Gates [igem.org]
Looks like these undergrads still have some bugs to work out, but in principle such a thing should be eminently possible given that most genes already have tons of positive and negative regulators that can be easily co-opted and transplanted. The trick is making a robust system with enough dynamic range that you can easily read the output, but with enough finesse that it can dampen the noise as well as mother nature does it.
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If you can do OR, and you can do AND then you can do XOR. XOR is just the right combination of AND and OR after all.
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Ah, because of course all logic is limited to Boolean logic.
Prior Art (Score:2)
Just based on the abstract, it sounds a lot like they've just tweaked the Cell cycle checkpoint [wikipedia.org] mechanism. Your cells already use MicroRNA and miRNA to prevent tumor growth in a sort of sensor-effector "logic circuit" based on multiple inputs and feedback.
The abstract isn't clear enough about how this artificial process is different or constitutes a "logic circuit" that's novel relative to the natural mechanism. Not that it doesn't work better, but calling it a "logic circuit" seems sorta self-promoty, li
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I realize that the abstract doesn't go into a lot of detail, but this is a piece from the introduction of the article that clarifies how this is a true logic circuit relying on 6 specific inputs to classify a cell as belonging to the targeted cell line (in this case, the common research model of HeLa).
Here, we describe such a mechanism, a “classifier” gene circuit that integrates sensory information from a large number of molecular markers to determine whether a cell is in a specific state and, if so, produces a biologically active protein output. Specifically, when transiently expressed inside a cell our classifier ascertains whether the expression profile of six endogenous miRNAs (19) matches a predetermined reference profile characteristic of the HeLa cervical cancer cell line. A match identifies the cell as HeLa and triggers apoptosis .
(Multi-Input RNAi-Based Logic Circuit for Identification of Specific Cancer Cells. Zhen Xie, Liliana Wroblewska, Laura Prochazka, Ron Weiss, and Yaakov Benenson. Science 2 September 2011: 333 (6047),
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Wow.
So how does homeopathy and manipulation of vertebral subluxation help in the alkalinization of the localized substrate around the heavy metal contaminant leading to aerobicide of the wayward tissue? And is DMSO an effective transfer agent for these processes?
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Yes, of course, and AIDS can be cured by drinking lemonade. Dumb scientists!
This is bullshit, but what happens when someone reads this, decides scientists are much less knowledgable than your average grandma, and doesn't go to a doctor because sodium bicarbonate cures everything? At the time I'm writing this, the OP is modded +2 interesting. However good rule of thumb would be to disregard any post that claims to have found a very simple and natural solution to a problem that has been baffling scientists fo
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No mater how stupid you may thing a brain storming idea is, you don't disregard it.
Yes you do, because funding is limited. There has to be a credibility threshold before you start doing experiments. Anyway, we're not speaking about science here, but about how to react when you read such a claim on an internet forum. Any post claiming "scientists are doing it wrong and the cure is actually very simple" has "quack" written all over it.
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The AC's link goes to a domain squatted by those "what you need, when you need it" assholes.
Here [cancerisafungus.com] is the site that I assume the AC meant to link to (one of several near-identical sites, also including cancerfungus.com).
Here [wikipedia.org] is a Wikipedia article mentioning Tullio Simoncini, the guy behind said site:
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So explain how it is that cancer cells actually operate aerobically when in proximity to a blood vessel? Cancer cells only operate anaerobically when they're out of proximity to blood supply.
Oh, and you can't change the pH to a non-acid level, otherwise universal cell death occurs. All cells have an acidic pH. Or are scientists wrong about that too?
I mean, heaven forbid your body gets filled with amino acids. They cause cancer, so you should avoid them at all costs. Really, it's to your benefit. No, serious
For some reason.. (Score:1)
Biological Warfare (Score:2)
So, technically then, it would be possible to inject this into a common virus, and encode the logic circuit with a specific molecular pattern... ie DNA? So, if we have someone's DNA, we can custom build a viral bomb to travel through the entire population, and once it hits the person, it could cause life threatening alterations to their body chemistry?
That's probably beyond the scope of this research, but once you have a biological logic circuit, it's just a finite matter of time before it's put to military
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Sorry no mod points. But +5 insightful.
But as you indicate, that's decades away.
Logic (Score:2)
Reasearchers led by... (Score:1)
theoretical immortality (Score:3, Interesting)
I have wondered to myself a few times if it would be possible to reprogram an intracellular parasite to become a new "immortality" organelle.
Take for instance, the work with toxoplasma gondii. This is already an intracellular parasite, which has been fully sequenced and even fully reprogrammed in the lab.
we suspect that much of 'old age' is the genetic breakdown of chromosomes from cellular mitosis, which causes a limit to the number of times a healthy cell culture can divide, and further impact the functional health of tissues made from such aged cellular populations.
Incorporating a failsafe backup of the chromosomes of the host, detecting cancer factors, and selectively disabling some the tumor suppression genes in the host that restrict tissue regeneration would radically increase the lifespan of the host.
The idea I had in mind was for the endoparasite to contain a normal bacterial genome capsid, for the organism's own cellular activites, and for the cancer detection and apoptosis trigger of the host--- but also to contain a fully synthetic non-replicating copy of the host's genome. (Perhaps it could be phosphorilated or in some other manner rendered bioologically inactive in the parasite.)
The idea is that as the telomeres of the host's genome break down, it triggers the biological equivalent of running fsck on the host genome, then rebuilds the host telomeres- essentially restarting the cell division clock, and rejuvenating the host tissue.
The problem I haven't come up with a suitable answer for, is how to cope if the organisms end up in the WRONG host.
We don't want aunt mae turning into uncle ben on the genetic level after they shag, for instance.
The organisms need a way to update the template, withou updating to a BROKEN template in the host.
I am not a genetic engineer, so I haven't thout too deeply on the matter, but I could deffinately see something like this turning somebody essentially immortal.
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RAID1 DNA?
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Technically speaking, dna already has a raid1 configuration, this would be hybrid raid.
(Double helix has 2 sides that mirror each other, so already raid 1.)
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Given that senators get older every year, you can rest assured they have never significantly cut funding for aging related research unless it was stem-cell related. For grins, you can do a full-text search for "telomerase" and "aging" in the NIH funded grant database and see how many hits you get. . .
http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cf [nih.gov]
you'll see lots of ideas along the lines you've proposed (not exactly but close). I'm not in the aging field, but I can attest that to the fact that pretty much
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1) in this case I don't mean all the suppression genes. Duh, of course you need them if you live longer than a gnat... :-) I mean the ones explicitly tied to fibroblast behavior. A few of these genes cause scar formation instead of proper tissue regeneration when they are active. We don't want neoplasms of any sort, we just want to reduce scarring from injury.
2) you misread. The idea is to CAUSE apoptosis when the parasite determines that its host cell is cancerous, or otherwise unsalvageable, not to prev
BioWeapons (Score:2)
...it can serve a basis for very specific biological weapons.
There I fixed that for you
what's the worst that could happen? (Score:1)
brb. hands just commiteted suicide.