Fascinating: A Fizzy Chocolate Drink For Your Tumor
From WIRED/UK, Kadhim Shubber writes about sugar-based imaging technology to detect tumors. Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades first told me about Otto Warburg, mentioned in the piece. Mike blogged this about him:
In pre-WWII days, a German scientist, Otto Warburg, received a Nobel Prize for his work in sussing out the fact that cancer cells don't generate energy the same way that normal cells do. Cancer cells get their energy, not like normal cells, from the mitochondrial oxidation of fat, but from glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose withing the cytoplasm (the liquid part of the cell). This different metabolism of cancer cells that sets them apart from normal cells is called the Warburg effect. Warburg thought until his dying day that this difference is what causes cancer, and although it is true that people with elevated levels of insulin and glucose do develop more cancers, most scientists in the field don't believe that the Warburg effect is the driving force behind the development of cancer.But it stands to reason that it can be used to treat cancer that is already growing. Since cancers can't really get nourishment from anything but glucose, it stands to reason that cutting off this supply would, at the very least, slow down tumor growth, especially in aggressive, fast-growing cancers requiring a lot of glucose to fuel their rapid growth.
The WIRED excerpt is below:
Researchers at University College London have invented a new MRI technique for imaging cancerous tumours that uses glucose from a fizzy drink or chocolate bar.Called glucoCEST, the technique could replace the current practice of using radioactively-labelled artificial glucose, which can be hazardous as it involves introducing radioactive particles into the human body.
"We've started to [...] lay patients down in a MRI scanner and ask them to drink a bottle of Lucozade," says Simon Walker-Samuel, lead author of the study published in Nature Medicine on 7 July. "Then we see the accumulation of the glucose from the Lucozade in the tumour."
Tumours typically consume glucose ravenously. Described by the Warburg effect, cancerous cells use glucose at up to 200 times the rate of normal cells. Glucose, therefore, is a good marker for tumours and cancerous cells.
There is a very strong genetic link between schizophrenia and diabetes. There are studies indicating that the insulin of bi-polars and schizophrenics is already fucked up before medication.
There is a strong link between mothers with gluten allergy and children with autism.
If you are allergic to gluten you are also more likely to have diabetes.
Interesting how genes work huh?
Ppen at July 9, 2013 1:53 AM
Ppen, that's very interesting... I assume the diabetes in question is juvenile diabetes. Schizophrenia, as I understand it, stems from the lack of a particular protein in the brain. Not sure what the connection is -- I should look into that some more. The answer one would tend to jump to first is that the messed-up insulin causes the other problem, but it could be that they both have a common root cause.
Cousin Dave at July 9, 2013 10:00 AM
Something that is not known among the general populace is that we don't have one gene for one protein. Rather, we have a gene and certain parts are turned into protein, and some not. And sometimes other parts are used, etc. To my knowledge, the mechanism(s) for this are not understood. But...
because of this, it is quite reasonable to think that there could be genetic overlap. Perhaps some form of gene A can cause diabetic tendencies (poorly functioning insulin or maybe fewer insulin producing cells) when in the presence of some other gene B that perhaps regulates the expression of gene A. BUT,if you have that same A and a different form of gene B, you get a disposition toward something else. People with an entirely different form of A may not be at risk of either, but are more likely to, say, be tone-deaf.
Shannon M. Howell at July 9, 2013 11:52 AM
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