Additional Information and Other Common Questions (2)

Can we do something about the “bad luck”

Let’s ask ourselves, even though we have no choice for the trip provided to us (the journey of our lives provided by nature), there is a lot we can do to make the trips safer and with fewer chances of getting involved with accidents.  For example, we can make sure the car is well maintained and we can drive more carefully by not speeding and not tailgating.  I believe that this strategy works similarly in reducing the risk of cancer. 

We can reduce bad foods and eat healthful foods; we can do regular exercise instead of being lazy; we can relax as needed instead of being under stress all the time; we can get rid of our bad habits (e.g., smoking and heavy drinking); we can avoid exposure to carcinogens and bad living environment.  All these could make the journeys of our normal/stem cells (i.e., cell cycles) safer and with fewer accidents, i.e., lower the chances for cell mutation to become cancerous. 

In addition, by doing the right things onto ourselves (eventually onto our normal/stem cells), we can maintain healthier cell cycles for our normal/stem cells so that the check points in the cycles (G₁, G₂, M check points) are less prone to mistakes.  If the check points are not healthy, they tend to allow damaged cells to continue the cell cycle to grow or divide and they might become cancer cells.  The other aspect about stem cells is the duration of cell cycle.  Some stem cells in the body don’t reproduce as quickly as the others; some stem cells may be stimulated by the environmental factors to grow and reproduce faster.  In this case, some things can be done to reduce the stimulation and then slow down the growth/replication of stem cells.  Therefore, it is possible to take some actions to reduce the chances of bad luck from happening.

In short, don’t be discouraged by the two-thirds of bad luck; many of them are attributable to macro- and micro-environmental factors, on which we do have some control.

Yes, accidents do happen in many aspects of one’s life.  Theoretically, anyone may be subject to the possibility of an accident such as earthquake, tornado, flood, robbery, car accident, etc.  However, one can always reduce the chances for the accidents to happen.  For example, one does not have to live in an earthquake zone; one can also live in an area with lower frequency of tornados, a higher area with lower flood opportunities, and areas with lower crime rates.  By doing so, can anyone say that he or she is 100% free from of any accident?  The answer is NO.  That’s why we need life insurance, home insurance, and auto insurance.  However, the chances of accidents happening can be significantly reduced by one’s proactive actions. 

I think you’ll agree that there is no guarantee for anything.  Unfortunately, that is how life is.  For cancer prevention, all we can do is to reduce the chance of getting it.  With today’s knowledge derived from the research work by thousands of scientists, we can really significantly reduce the chances of getting cancer.

In summary, although no one can guarantee that he or she will never get cancer, but there is a lot one can do to significantly reduce the chances of getting cancer. 

© Jiajiu Shaw, 2018

Disclaimer: This blog is written solely for informational purposes. It does not constitute the practice of any medical, nursing or other medical professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All contents posted are extracted from the book I wrote, "IS CANCER IN US", published recently.

Methods of Cancer Treatment, Summary

Methods of Cancer Treatment - Summary

So far, we have discussed a number of cancer treatment methods, conventional and novel methods.  Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages.  Although significant progresses have been made in some of them in recent years, it seems like there is no perfect way to treat cancer at the present time.  Why? 

Remember that most cancer cells are mutated and transformed from normal/stem cells through problematic mutations; the problematic mutations could be only one out of many thousands of mutations.  Thus cancer cells are just like brothers/sisters of normal cells and similar in many ways.  This is what makes it so difficult to treat cancer.  In addition, any treatment that contravenes the growth of cancer cells might also affect normal cells, thus resulting in side effects.  Fortunately, modern technologies in surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy have made significant progresses in reducing the side effects (i.e., injuries of normal cells).  

If there is a perfect way and it’s easy to deal with, we wouldn’t have many thousands of scientists in the world working day and night on finding better answers.  The way the world is created by nature, we are going to have a difficult time to find a perfect way to treat cancer.  However, researchers are making progress inch by inch; newer and better methods have been developed in the last 50 years or so and there will be more and more improvements discovered in the coming years to fight against cancer.

In my opinion, stem cell related therapies have the best chance to be among the best methods for treating cancer.  Among them, two strategies are most appealing to me; they are (1) potential treatment by exosomes, and (2) reversing cancer cells back to normal cells.  However, a lot of technical hurdles must be overcome before either can become practical.  In any case, I believe this is an exciting period of time for the research and development of cancer treatment. We are also putting some of our efforts in this general area and hope to make some contributions. 

Although there may not be a perfect therapy for cancer treatment at the present time, there are a few good ways to reduce the risk of getting cancer and/or to slow down cancer growth.  Other than the methods described previously, there are other aspects to consider in order to reduce the chances of getting cancer.  We will talk about these later. 

© Jiajiu Shaw, 2016

Disclaimer: This blog is written solely for informational purposes. It does not constitute the practice of any medical, nursing or other medical professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Although some commercial products, publications, and services are mentioned in this blog, the author does not endorse any specific products, publications, or services.  None of the contents in this blog represents or warrants that any of the products, publications, or services is appropriate or effective for their intended purposes. Readers shall always seek the advice of their physicians or other medical practitioners with any questions regarding personal health or medical conditions and shall be solely responsible for their own decisions and/or actions.

Novel/Unconventional Methods for Cancer Treatment (6)

(6) Stem Cells and Related Treatments

Remember we talked about stem cells in the beginning of this book?  The stem cells are very powerful ancestors of all cells; normal cells that show specific functions are all essentially derived (differentiated) from stem cells.  Therefore, it makes sense to attempt to utilize the natural power of stem cells to treat different diseases including cancer.  Generally, there are several ways to utilize stem cells for cancer treatment.  They are briefly described as follows:

Using Stem Cells Directly

On type of stem-cell therapy is to inject stem cells directly into the blood stream for them to fight against cancer and other diseases.  Stem cell based strategy has been shown to be very promising.  A well know example is to use stem cell transplantation for leukemia.  

Briefly, stem cells can be collected from the bone marrow, circulating (peripheral) blood, and umbilical cord blood.  In a stem cell transplant, healthy stem cells are infused into the body.  Basically, there are two types of stem cell transplants.  Autologous stem cell transplant is when stem cells are collected from the patients themselves.  When stem cells are taken from a matching donor, the transplant is called allogenic stem cell transplant.  In order to find the right match, a human leukocyte antigens test needs to be conducted on the patient and the potential donor. 

Although stem cell therapy has been used successfully in many cases, there are also many cases of failures.  Research and studies in this area are continuing.

Converting Cancer Cells Back into Stem Cells or Normal Cells

A number of studies are focusing on converting cancer cells into stem cells.  The origin of this type of research started from a Japanese scientist, Shinya Yamanaka, who won Nobel Prize in 2012 year for his discovery showing that mature cell (differentiated) can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent (similar to stem cells).   He successfully identified a few critical genes in mice; when these genes were activated, mice skin cells were re-programmed and became stem cells (now referred to as iPS cells or induced pluripotent stem cells) by using several key ingredients and a delicate process.  Theoretically, these iPS cells can be differentiated into all types of cells.   

Since then, many studies indicated that, if the condition is right, it is indeed possible to artificially convert normal cells back into stem cells.  At the present time, a lot of research activities are ongoing to hopefully convert cancer cells back into stem cells or normal cells.

Use of Exosomes

Stem cells, normal cells, and cancer cells all produce a variety of biological molecules and one type of very important vesicles, exosomes, for inter-cellular communication and other functions.  Exosomes are cell-derived vesicles; exosomes from different types of cells contain a common group of molecules, as well as cell type-specific components.  Once released from the cells, exosomes act as messengers to carry and transfer their biomolecules to proximal and also distant cells.  Indeed, this general description is correct.  However, there is a very important point not being well characterized: some contents of exosomes can also be cellular environment-dependent. 

Exosomes are present in all biological fluids (blood, urine, and even cell culture medium).  Their diameters are from 0.04 to 0.1 µM, much smaller than RBC (diameter 6-8 µM) and WBC (diameter 12-15 µM).  Fig. 6.1 shows a schematic size comparison of a WBC, a RBC, and exosomes. 

Exosomes have been shown to have specialized functions.  For example, exosomes play a key role in intercellular signaling and waste management. Among other functions, exosomes work like messengers to carry a variety of RNA, proteins, sugar etc.  As mentioned before, stem cells have the amazing power to grow and differentiate.  It is therefore reasonable to assume that stem cells utilize exosomes to carry important biomolecules to normal cells and cancer cells to deal with many different cellular issues. 

 Exosomes are like micro-packages of important biomolecules to be shipped from one cell to another.  Let’s use an analogy in our daily lives to explain the roles of exosomes as follows.  

In our daily lives, we all use the post office to mail letters and, sometimes, we use FedEx or UPS to ship packages.  The letters or packages all contain useful information or materials that may be useful to the receiving parties.  If you still remember, inter-cellular communication is very important and normal cells communicate better than cancer cells.  However, cancer cells do release specific exosomes to be conveyed to other cancer or normal cells.  Therefore, it will be very important to figure out what are in the exosomes that are released by cancer cells.  If we know the answers, it will be very useful in finding a better way to deal with cancer.   In short, exosomes are becoming a very important area for cancer research. 

In recent years, uses of exosomes for diagnostics and for treatment of diseases have become a hot area of research.  Because individual exosomes contain different RNAs and proteins and the fact that exosomes can stay in the circulation for a long time, it is possible to trace back to the tissues that produce them.  As a result, it is possible to develop certain diagnostics to detect cancers at early stages.  On the other hand, there are some real hurdles making the diagnostics at the present time.  For example, because of its small size as compared to RBC and WBC, it is not easy to fish out exosomes out of blood or urine.  In addition, there are a great number of exosome exist in plasma.  All these make it a real challenge to develop new diagnostic employing exosomes.  As to the use of exosomes in therapeutics, intense research activities are ongoing in many labs. 

In short, let’s use another analogy to make it easier to understand exosomes.  Exosomes released from normal cells are similar to missionaries in real life; exosomes carries a lot of important ingredients to deal with cancer cells whereas missionaries carry a lot of information to carry out missions such as religion, education, and health care.

© Jiajiu Shaw, 2016

Disclaimer: This blog is written solely for informational purposes. It does not constitute the practice of any medical, nursing or other medical professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Although some commercial products, publications, and services are mentioned in this blog, the author does not endorse any specific products, publications, or services.  None of the contents in this blog represents or warrants that any of the products, publications, or services is appropriate or effective for their intended purposes. Readers shall always seek the advice of their physicians or other medical practitioners with any questions regarding personal health or medical conditions and shall be solely responsible for their own decisions and/or actions.