2014-04-13 17:10:08
On February 4, International Cancer Day was celebrated, a day dedicated not only to stimulating the fight against this disease, but, above all, to improving education about it in the population and spreading the hope of defeating it. And there are numerous myths and misinformation about cancer. One of them is that if we investigate the causes of this disease, one day we will be able to eradicate it and ensure that no one dies because of it. It is, without a doubt, a very laudable objective. However, if it were achieved we would only increase mortality from other causes, since, it seems, we will all die sooner or later for some reason, if some decree law does not remedy it soon.
Another myth about cancer may be the belief that everything possible is being researched to cure this disease. However, I am afraid that this is not true. As evidence that what I say is true, I would like to analyze the current situation of a topic of cancer research that, despite its undoubted interest, has made very little progress, if not at all, in recent years. The research topic I am referring to seeks to find out the reason for the resistance to tumor growth shown by an extraordinary breed of laboratory mice immune to various types of tumors.
Chance discovery
However, this breed of mice was discovered by chance much earlier, in 1999, when a male laboratory mouse was injected, in the course of anti-cancer research, with several lethal doses of tumor cells that, however, failed to kill them. his life. When the researchers finally realized that this mouse was resistant to tumor growth, they crossed it with several females from which animals that were also resistant were born. This provided solid evidence that this unusual resistance had an interesting genetic basis to study. From the descendants of the original male, possibly a rare mutant, a strain of mice called SR/CR was generated, resistant to the growth of various types of aggressive tumors. The study of the inheritance pattern demonstrated the no less surprising fact that this resistance seemed to depend on the mutation of a single gene, which, in addition, was inherited in a dominant manner, that is, the inheritance of a single mutated gene, well from the father, or from the mother, was sufficient to confer resistance.
This resistance, however, was not constant. Only young people showed it in its full extent. When the mice reached the middle of their lives, resistance decreased dramatically. This fact reveals new connections between aging and the development of cancer that would be worth studying, but which so far have not been.
Insufficient research
Subsequent studies revealed that the ability to resist depended on the immune system. Surprisingly, however, the immune system cells involved were not the same as those responsible for transplant rejection, as the researchers expected. These are usually cytotoxic lymphocytes that are specifically activated in response to foreign cells. In the case of mice, the cells responsible for resistance appear to be the cells of the immune system that constitute the first line of defense against bacterial or viral infection. These are the so-called macrophages and granulocytes, which are found under the skin or scattered in the blood and fight against bacteria or viruses that try to penetrate the body.
However, despite these discoveries, the ultimate reason for this extraordinary resistance, which could also occur in humans, remains a mystery. An analysis of the scientific publications on this topic may begin to explain why. Since the discovery of this mouse, only eleven scientific articles have been published, most of them simply dedicated to confirming the finding, as if it were too incredible to be accepted.
The mechanism by which immune cells first detect and then kill various cancer cells with such extraordinary efficiency as to allow survival after injection of doses of cancer cells thousands of times higher than the lethal dose for normal mice remains unknown. The gene responsible for this ability remains unknown, which would allow us to advance in the understanding of this mystery and analyze whether human beings have a similar gene. The identification of the gene would also allow us to find out if there are variants of it that confer different degrees of resistance or susceptibility to cancer, which would perhaps explain why that grandfather who smoked three packs a day did not die of cancer, but of boredom, and why If she had never smoked, that grandmother nevertheless died of lung cancer. But the most important thing is that the identification of the gene would perhaps allow it to be introduced into our immune cells to try to convert them into killers of cancer cells and thus cure, at least, some types of tumors. Why do so few scientists investigate this question? That is also a mystery.
NEW WORK BY JORGE LABORDA.
It can be purchased here:
Chained circumstances. Ed. Lulu
Other works by Jorge Laborda
One Moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The intelligence funnel and other essays
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