I am on a quest
I have never truly believed that we can cure cancer. It is so diverse a disease, particularly in the elderly. Once it is metastatic, the odds are very poor.
I have a skewed view of the disease, as I see patients who are the sickest, the most elderly, and the ones who cannot go home for therapy. They have come to our rehab/hospice units to care.
However.......I don't see the ones our oncologists see. The ones who have been given years of life, keeping toxicity at bay, supporting each patient like a fragile flower. Those are the successes.
Is there a way, though, to reach those where standard therapy has not been succesful? Is there a way to reduce toxicity?
I have this vision for how cells work
Through my researching how proteins work in cells, I can put myself in the position of a protein within the cell membrane. I can visualize what effect different proteins have on different parts of the cell.
Clearly, in metastatic cancer, the nucleus is acting in an autonomous and unconstrained fashion. It is no longer listening to any signals from the environment.
That is bad, but it is also good.
It means that we may be able to ostracize and extinguish cancer nuclei without damaging those of normal cells.
So what's the next step(s)?
Here is where I want to go:
- Explore How cells stay young
- Explore the final common pathway
- Explore why cancer cells are so different from each other
One step at a time, building a case for best case scenarios in the management of cancer.
Life’s Chemistry Press explores the hidden patterns that shape the natural world. If you enjoy simple explanations of how matter is organized, you may also like my series on electrons, atoms, and molecules.
- By David A Litman. Shutterstock ID: 1012664833. Photomicrograph of a lymph node in a patient with Hodgkin's Disease (lymphoma), showing a Reed Sternberg cell variant.
- By Designua .Shutterstock ID: 172477928. Telomeres ends serve to protect the coding DNA of the genome. When a telomeres shorten to critical lengths, the cell senescence and die off.