Scientists Engineer One Protein To Fight Cancer and Regenerate Neurons (phys.org) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Our lungs, bones, blood vessels and other major organs are made up of cells, and one way our bodies keep us healthy is by using protein messengers known as ligands that bind to receptors on the surfaces of cells to regulate our biological processes. When those messages get garbled, it can make us ill with a host of different diseases. Now a team led by Stanford bioengineer and department chair Jennifer Cochran has tweaked one ligand in slightly different ways to produce two startlingly different results. One set of alterations caused neuronal cells to regenerate, while different tweaks to the same protein inhibited lung tumor growth. The experiments her team described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences were performed on rat and human cells or in mice that model actual diseases and are still far from being tested in humans. But the results show how scientists are becoming increasingly adept at tinkering with the body's protein-based control mechanisms to help vital organs heal themselves.
As usual, the 21st century is a great time to... (Score:5, Funny)
If you're a rat, they can cure you of cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and even tooth decay.
But somehow it seems that seeing these results in humans is never any closer.
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"If 1/10000th of all the vaporware that is posted here came true we'd be doing donuts around Titan in our personal spaceship right about now."
There's a new propulsion system being made, in 3 months we'll be able to do that.
OK, 4 months.
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It's not just Slashdot. In the UK we used to have a TV show called Tomorrow's World where they showcased new inventions, so stuff that actually worked to some extent rather than being just theoretical. 99% of it you never heard of again.
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Re: As usual, the 21st century is a great time to. (Score:2)
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You know that's fiction, right?
Of course, these articles might as well be too, for all the good it actually does.
Re: As usual, the 21st century is a great time to (Score:1)
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I'm pretty sure he's lying. Probably part of the whole post-truth thing we've got going on. Ignore him. There's no need to listen to politically motivated science deniers.
Rat cures (Score:3)
Yeah, I think we've become too dependent upon rate/mice trials. Sure, they're a lot alike humans, and they're cheap and easy to use in experiments, but they're not that close to humans. As they say, the devil is in the details, and that is doubly true for medicine and medical procedures.
I remember reading a while ago where somebody proposed that depending on mice and rat trials were probably costing us more potential new drugs that would work well than what they were letting through but getting blocked la
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Obviously you can't start out testing on humans, and rats/mice are much easier to use in large quantities than it would be for monkeys or even chimps.
Rats/mice aren't ideal, but they are the best option.
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There are some syphillis patients that would disagree with you, if they were still alive.
{That's dark humor to support cmdr_klarg}
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Rats used in research are not inbred.
No, new drugs are not thwarted by animal testing. Pharmaceutical companies are not interested in developing new drugs because it costs money. Pharmaceutical companies have slashed their R&D budgets and increased spending on advertisement. What they do come up with are erectile dysfunction and allergy drugs.
Again, piss off.
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Please go away and never post again. The stupidity of your post shows the internet is ripe with fucking morons.
You need to take your own advice.
Rats used in research aren't inbred?
I mean, you could just check wikipedia [wikipedia.org], which shows that it is you that is the "fucking moron", because while I could have been wrong, you decided to go with an insulting, incorrect answer without checking.
Right from the wiki page: "Scientists have bred many strains or "lines" of rats specifically for experimentation. Most are derived from the albino Wistar rat, which is still widely used. Other common strains are the Sprague Dawley, Fisch
Re:As usual, the 21st century is a great time to.. (Score:5, Funny)
If you're a rat, they can cure you of cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and even tooth decay.
Unfortunately, the leading cause of death among rats is still research scientists.
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TFW your cancer is cured but you are growing an ear from a different species on your back.
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One reason is, the liability incurred when someone is harmed or killed by a drug, is so much higher for people than for rats. If a drug cures rats of a disease, and kills 1 in 1,000, that seems very promising. But if 1 in 1,000 people are killed by a beneficial drug, this is fertile ground for huge lawsuits.
interesting but churnalism (Score:2)
I like physorg though the churnalism factor makes many of their best articles a tease.
"Here's the press release and you can rent the paper with the actual information for two days for $35"
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There is your university library access, and if you don't have that, there are the good folks at libgen, which will provide you with it for free.
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Or good old sci hub...
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Well, it is the very same thing, but the search on libgen looks nicer to my oldfag eyes.
One protein to cure them all? (Score:3)
Garbled summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Now for something completely different... (Score:2)
...an actually serious post. 2 questions for experts in biochem:
Is it true that a prion is basically a rogue ligand?
What are the risk factors in ligand manipulation experimentation? What safety protocols are being / should be used?