What I want to know is why this compound acts this way on tumor cells and not healthy body cells. Im sure there is an explanation for that given the researchers are publishing its effectiveness, but I wish the article specified.
Pyroptosis is a fiery form of programmed cell death that helps the body fight infections and disease. Unlike regular cell death (apoptosis), pyroptosis is dramatic and explosive—cells swell, burst open, and release inflammatory signals that alert the immune system.
Originally discovered as a defense against bacteria and viruses, pyroptosis has recently become a hot topic in cancer research. That’s because triggering pyroptosis in tumor cells can not only destroy them directly but also rally the immune system to join the attack, essentially turning the tumor into a signal flare for immune response.Maybe it’s something to do with this.
I think the commenter was wanting to know why the tumor/cancer cells go through pyroptosis in the first place, and not the healthy cells.
I’m just guessing the immune response is what protects the rest of the body from pyroptosis.
Yes… But, what‽ starts the fire in cancer cells only vs. conflagration of all the cells. That’s the mystery.
From the research paper (behind the paywall) it appears they only tested cancer cells, shown below, and on mouse models. It’s been awhile since I’ve studied this, so I don’t know if the proteins involved are specific to cancer cells or not. If not I’d assume it would kill all cells. With the mouse models I assume they injected directly into the tumor for targeted treatment, but I didn’t dive into it that deep.
Paper link: https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1096/fj.202500412R?saml_referrer
2.2 Cell Culture
Human monocyte-like THP-1 leukemia cells (THP-1, THP-1Asc-KO, THP-1Gsdmd-KO, THP-1-Null, THP-1-defCasp1, and THP-1-defNLRP3) [4, 21] were provided by Professor Li Sun’s lab (Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China), and human liver cancer Huh7.5 cells were maintained in our lab. THP-1 cells and Huh7.5 cells were cultured in RPMI 1640 medium with 10% FBS, 100 U/mL penicillin, and 100 μg/mL streptomycin at 37°C in a 5% CO2 humidified incubator. All experiments were carried out with the same batch of cell lines between passages 2 and 8.
2.15 Xenograft Tumor Mouse Model
BALB/C nu-nu male mice, 4 weeks old, were obtained from Beijing Vital River Laboratory Animal Technology Co. Ltd. (Beijing, China). A total of 3 × 106 Huh7.5 cells were subcutaneously injected into the right fore flank of each nude mouse. The daily drug treatment began when the tumor size reached ~100 mm3 and continued for a further 2 weeks as follows: EPS3.9 (30 and 60 mg kg−1 d−1, intraperitoneal injection) dissolved in assisted solvent (PBS); Control groups were given the same volume of PBS. Body weight and tumor volumes were measured every day with a balance or with a vernier caliper. The tumor volume was calculated with the formula: 1/2 × [length × (width)2]. After treatment for 2 weeks, mice were sacrificed by decapitation and tumor tissues were collected for further analysis.
It’s both amusing and a little disturbing that the term for killing the mice is “sacrifice.” I’m now imagining a bunch of researchers dancing around the mice while ritually decapitating them.
I imagine a lot of what we know now was learned after we realized the benefits of things. I’d give it a few years/decades for researchers to spend time to analyze the data and figure it out.
In the meantime, fuck cancer and hell yes to this deep sea sugar stuff!
It’s discussed elsewhere here, but to answer directly - as I understand it, cancer cells can only use energy from sugars. Cancer cells are also extremely energy hungry, since they spend so much energy growing. When a cell absorbs these particular sugars, it self-destructs in spectacular fashion.
It sounds like they’re expecting cancer cells to absorb the vast majority of these sugars, leaving just a small amount for healthy cells. Which sounds to me like a kind of chemotherapy, but more effective and with weaker side effects.
(Not a biologist, most of this is over my head!)
It’s probably using the metabolic pathways against itself since cancer metabolism and healthy cells metabolism are drastically different due to proliferation speeds.
Oh I have a torch at home that I’ve modified to use map gas to increase the effectiveness of the pyrolysis procedure. It cures every disease know to man kind, ever meat too, even mushrooms for us vegans.
I imagine this will be similar to chemotherapy.
As in, it technically affects all your cells, it just happens to affect cancer cells a lot more. In this case, because they try to absorb extra sugars in many cases.
Cancer cells often times lose their ability to perform oxidative phosphorylation. This means they can only rely on glycolysis as a sole source of ATP… This makes them EXCESSIVELY glucose hungry.
It’s called the warburg effect. I’d have to read up on it and brush up on biochem, but that’s the basic principle.
Essentially, cancer should soak up all the harmful sugar before it hits normal cells. This makes it even safer in theory than traditional chemo like methotrexate and such
As I said in another comment, does that mean they can’t get energy from ketone bodies?
Because they try to absorb extra sugars in many cases.
I have absolutely no medical knowledge besides a first aid course. Does that mean that, by not eating any sugars, I could starve cancer cells? So like during keto (I did that years ago before the boom) I actually could have starved a lot of cancer cells?
Yes, certain cancer therapy benefits from a zero sugar, low but high quality carb diet. You’ll slow the cancer a lot, and can help prevent it from coming back like that. You’ll still need something to kill it though, because your body still produces and needs sugars.
And some are unaffected because they’re part of something that can already make or requires sugars, like brain or liver cancers.
Yet another <insert rare thing> kills cancer cells. Hey y’all, cancer cells are your own cells, just mutated to grow when they shouldn’t. This is not just one type of mutation. There are over 200 that they know of.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/what-is-cancer/how-cancer-starts/types-of-cancer
There is no universal identifier for all cancer cells. Therefore there is nothing that naturally kills them all.
The only general cure for cancer is to understand the immune system so well you can fine tune it at your discretion, or create a synthetic immune system to do the same. Everything else is just a one off. Still valuable, but not what articles like to claim.
Fiery?! Go up in flames? REALLY? I understand this is written for non scientists, .but this was written by the marketing department of Michael Bay’s production company.
Each time a cancer cel explodes, a tiny Nicholas Cage leaps heroically through the air just ahead of the blast
Do healthy cells also do this?
It’s too bad that curing patients is not a sustainable business model. Even if this did work we would only ever see it developed if you had to take it twice a month for the rest of your life in order to survive.
Edit: sorry, I just noticed this is in Uplifting News. So, let’s be optimistic. Maybe global capitalism will collapse and governments will start trying to take care of people.
You’re thinking too small. If we cure cancer, everyone can start smoking again. Asbestos is back in business. There are hundreds of industries that would take off immediately. W
The company that would truly suffer is the one that makes those little stickers in California.
Even if so… If this is as effective and safe as it seems then it will get leaked to the public or reversed engineered and then made public. The original paper’s abstract says “this active exopolysaccharide is ubiquitous among the genus Spongiibacter” which means it’s accessible.
The repression of such a boon could not last long. History has proven the human spirit is nothing if not irrepressible. There are plenty of people capable and motivated enough to run what little information we already have all the way to a consistent home manufacturing solution. Its publication and distribution is another game entirely but I’d bet on the public there as well.
Take a look at the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective for some tangible encouragement. Knowledge is power. Together we can be powerful enough to create what we need to survive. Government buy-in encouraged but optional.
People don’t magically stop getting sick just because you can cure them.
Let me explain. Our health care industry is part of our (mostly) global capitalist economy. That means investors demand the maximum profit the industry can produce. Imagine that this industry had the choice of providing an inexpensive one-time cure for cancer, or a long-term expensive treatment. Which option would generate the most profit for the industry? It doesn’t matter if there are people in the industry who would like to find a simple inexpensive cure. The board of directors is elected by the shareholders, which really means the largest and most ruthless capital owners. If the CEO or any officers approve research on an inexpensive cure that will threaten the profits of the corporation they will be ousted and replaced with someone who “sees the wisdom of using existing proven treatments”. So the built-in conflict of interest of a for-profit medical system means we will always be stuck with a system that extracts as much cash as possible from its patients.
Are there alternatives to this approach? Of course, but they depart from a pure capitalist system, and so, at least in the US, we will never see them as long as we accept our current economic structure.
Two things wrong with this:
- There’s more than one pharmaceutical company. Providing a better cure than your competitors allows you to take their customers. Hence increasing your market share and your profit.
- People would be willing to pay more for the one time cure than for the long term therapy. And since the cure is so cheap to make, presumably cheaper than the traditional therapy, the cheap cure can be sold at an even greater profit than the traditional therapy.
You need to remember that the global capitalist economy is not one team.
I’m always a little skeptical of these claims.
But hey, if we figure out a way to do this in people safely, then cool.
completely off topic, but you want to know how effective advertising is? every time i read a sciencific article about something exploding in a dramatic way, like this one, my mind goes 🎵 plop plop fizz fizz 🎵. how many years has it been since that damn ad?
The one my mind goes to is this xkcd https://xkcd.com/1217/
