BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW!#49: Breast Cancer Cells ATTACKED By Nanomachines!!!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-legions-nanorobots-cancerous-tumours-precision.html

This article is about the future.

You can’t ask your doctor to give you a shot of nanobots to cure breast cancer tomorrow. But your KIDS might be able to, and almost without a doubt, your grandkids will be able to take this treatment.

The article talks about an experiment written up last August in the journal, Nature Nanotechnology.

Let’s define a few terms to begin with. Simply, “nano” means “so small you can’t see it without a microscope”.

Technically, for those of you so inclined, it means 1/1,000,000,000 (one billionth) of a meter. For the sake of comparison, a single hair from your head would look fat compared to a nanometer at a whopping NINETY THOUSAND nanometers wide. This article talks about the possibility of building “machines” that are about 200 nanometers across. The cancer cell would be a bit over 1000 nanometers (the same as one micrometer) across.

When I talk about “machines” here, we’re not talking about lawnmowers. Nanomachines, while they are made by people, are built out of things that are already around, like bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic life forms (or more often, “the key is to be able to both see and manipulate nanomaterials in order to take advantage of their special properties…the invention of special microscopes gave scientists the ability to work at the nanoscale. The first of these new discoveries was the scanning tunneling microscope. While it’s mainly designed to measure objects, it can also move tiny objects such as carbon nanotubes.”

So doctors and other technicians are able to “build” very small structures and make them so that they will do certain things.

The article talks about doctors who were able to take bacteria, put in a few molecules of magnetic iron – which gave the machine a built-in compass; and a few molecules of an oxygen -sensitive material so that it could detect how mch oxygen is in the cells around it.

Why?

The compass gives the bacteria – which has long, “sperm-cell-like” tails to move it around – a way for scientists to aim it to the right area. Once the bacterial nanomachine is on site, it narrows down the target area by sniffing out the places where cancer cells have sucked out all the oxygen from the tissue. That’s what cancers do because growing as fast as they do, they burn a lot of oxygen, just like we get wheezy when we go on bike rides and have to pedal up a hill.

Why does that matter? Because the doctors have LOADED THE BACTERIAL NANOMACHINE WITH TAMOXIFEN OR ADRIMICIN OR ANY OF THE OTHER ANTI-CANCER DRUGS IN OUR ARESENAL.

So? So…instead of flooding your body with chemo and accidentally killing hair follicles, the only place in the body that get the chemo is the cancer cells. Which saves the body all SORTS of abuse.

Hopefully this excites you as much as it excites me. Now all I have to do is fold my hands and wait…

Resources: http://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/definition

Image: http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/2016/legionsofnan.jpg

ENCORE #45! – What’s the Difference Between Metastatic Liver Cancer and non-Metastatic Liver Cancer

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry appeared in July of 2012.

A few weeks ago (June 2012), my brother-in-law was diagnosed with liver cancer.

I’d talked about metastatic breast cancer of the liver (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/12/metastatic-breast-cancer-liver-cancer.html), but with this grim diagnosis, I wanted to look more closely at the differences – if any.

In brief, metastatic breast cancer in the liver (MBC:L) comes from the transfer of breast cells to the liver and then the growth of tumors there. Most often treated with hormone, chemo and radiation therapies, there are newer choices as well, including liver resection.

Regarding non-MBC liver cancer (and my brother-in-law has the complication of being a hemophiliac (this refers to a group of bleeding disorders in which it takes a long time for the blood to clot)) it has been “...shown that cancer is…common…for people with hemophilia. The authors attributed this to overlooked symptoms, such as blood in the urine or stool, and delayed treatment because of bleeding complications…The most common cancer in patients with hemophilia and hepatitis C virus is hepatocellular carcinoma, a type of liver cancer.”

Hepatocellular carcinoma, also called HCC, develops like any other cancer by a mutation to the cellular machinery that makes the cell divide faster than normal and/or gives the cell a sort of “immortality” by keeping itself from ever dying. This wild growth of cells form tumors and the tumors ruin the normal balance of chemistry in the liver. This leads to many different symptoms: abdominal pain, jaundice, bloating, loss of appetite, nausea and proteins in the blood that aren’t supposed to be there.

There are many treatments available for both MBC:L and HCC and while there is a constant search for new methodology, in the long run, whether the cancer originated in metastatic breast cells or in the liver itself, the prognosis continues to depend on how much the cancer has spread and how quickly it is treated. The main difference is that MBC:L cells can also be treated with tamoxifen (which affects estrogen levels) the same as any other breast cancer cells. HCC is not treated that way.

Resources: http://www.hemaware.org/story/getting-older-hemophilia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatocellular_carcinoma

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…Alzheimer’s #1

Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed hidden from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents. Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from the most of the people I know even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had Alzheimer’s…” But there was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads. Or horror stories. Lots of those! Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

I had no idea.

That’s still my thought…

“I had no idea this could happen to my dad.”

“I had no idea it would be like this.”

“I had no idea what to say.”

“I had no idea what to do.”

“I still have no idea how to deal with this…”

As we age, I think we discover that there are fewer and fewer things we can do anything about. I suppose, as we age, we discover that we are more and more helpless. More and more dependent on others.

The most famous Alzheimer’s patient in the world is the one no one talks about. The one who disappeared from history after MAKING history…

The Former President of the United States, Ronald Regan, who after his diagnosis, disappeared and was never heard from again…

If someone as powerful and famous as Ronald Regan – actor, governor, president – can disappear from history, what hope is there for my father?

There is no cure for Alzheimer’s – look at the list of famous, incredibly wealthy individuals who were able to do absolutely NOTHING with their money and influence to stave off the horrific destruction the disease leaves in its wake: most recently, Gene Wilder; Glenn Campbell; Charlton Heston; Norman Rockwell; Rita Hayworth; Sugar Ray Robinson; Jimmy Stewart; James Doohan (SCOTTY FROM STAR TREK!!!!!); Malcolm Young; Robin Williams; Casey Kassem; Rosa Parks; and EB White.

What possible hope does my dad have?

But there is hope, and over the next few months – maybe years – I’ll be doing with Alzheimer’s what I did with my journey into my wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. I’m going to be deconstructing it to understand it.

And I have always believed that to understand something is to begin a long road to accepting it; to naming it. Madeleine L’Engle once said, “Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos, we see despite all the chaos.”

I will leave you with this image to ponder for next time:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Alzheimers_brain.jpg

Resource: http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/10-celebrities-with-alzheimers-disease/

Image:  http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/06/25/6360242025150255191939281878_Alzheimer-disease-patients.jpg

ENCORE #44! – Putting It All Together: EXERCISE ISN’T MAGIC!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry appeared June of 2012.

Doctors harp on exercise and this is the last time I’ll harp on it at length, too!

Despite the harping – or in my case, perversely because of it – I avoid exercise like the plague.

Even so, as I read more and more sites promoting the “exercise makes you better if you have breast cancer” meme, I found that almost none of them give any kind of evidence as to WHY exercise fights cancer and promotes healing.

So I dug into the sites and finally found some evidence supporting this wild, “Do this one weird thing…” kind of meme.

1) “The complicated nature of the physical activity variable, combined with lack of knowledge regarding possible biological mechanisms operating between physical activity and cancer, warrants further studies including controlled clinical randomized trials.”

Translation?

We haven’t got a good, clear idea of why exercise makes some kind of difference because we can’t quite dig deep enough or look small enough into the Human body to really understand this.

It seems clear that we know a few things: exercise gets rid of fat cells that make estrogen and estrogen drives cancer cell growth; exercise makes insulin more effective; exercise reduces the amount of leptin (which gives cells more cancer receptors) in your blood because you have fewer fat cells to make it; exercise suppresses the production of LH, FSH and “other ovarian hormones” like estrogen and progestogens. At MUCH lower levels, exercise can mimic the effect of the anti-cancer drug, tamoxifen; exercising means that more fat is metabolized and you don’t need as MUCH of the hormone to do the work of fat destruction so there are fewer hormones to drive cancer cell growth; exercise decreases the markers of inflammation; exercise boosts the immune system by circulating more wbcs and T cells, lowers the chemicals that cause swelling, lowers the number of fat cells which make estrogen which strengthens breast cancer cells and keeps the immune system working like this LONGER; and lastly, even the exercise of DAILY MOVEMENT can increase the effectiveness of insulin in those who are insulin resistant.

So we know that exercise is helpful in preventing and recovering from breast cancer. I guess that’s a big “duh” for me. Of course keeping the body healthy would prevent and fight breast cancer.

But now we know the HOW – and that’s been my goal all along!

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg