Friday, August 6
Brain Cancer and Mitochondria
One in Five Brain Cancers Fueled by Overactive Mitochondria
Mitochondria are responsible for creating the energy that fuels all cells. Though they are usually less efficient at producing energy in cancer, tumor cells in this newly identified type of glioblastoma rely on the extra energy provided by overactive mitochondria to survive.
The study, by cancer scientists at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, was published in Nature Cancer.
The study also found that drugs that inhibit mitochondria—including a currently available drug and an experimental compound that are being tested in clinical trials—had a powerful anti-tumor effect on human brain cancer cells with overactive mitochondria. (Follow-up, unpublished work found that the same drugs are also active against mitochondrial tumors in glioblastomas growing in mice).
Such drugs are being tested in patients who have a rare gene fusion—previously discovered by the same researchers—that also sends mitochondria into overdrive.
“We can now expand these clinical trials to a much larger group of patients, because we can identify patients with mitochondria-driven tumors, regardless of the underlying genetics,” says Antonio Iavarone, MD, professor of neurology, who led the study with Anna Lasorella, MD, professor of pediatrics. Both are members of Columbia’s Institute for Cancer Genetics.
Study finds four types of brain cancer
The study found that all brain cancers fall into one of four groups, including the mitochondrial subtype.
By classifying brain cancers based on their core biological features, and not just genetic alterations or cell biomarkers, the researchers have gained new insights into what drives each subtype and the prognosis for patients.
“Existing classifications for brain cancer are not informative. They don’t predict outcomes; they don’t tell us which treatments will work best,” Lasorella says.
The importance of an accurate classification system is best illustrated by the example of breast cancer. Breast cancers have very well-defined subtypes that led to the development of therapies that target the key hallmarks, such as estrogen receptors or HER2, that sustain specific subtypes.
“We feel that one of the reasons therapeutic progress in brain cancer has been so slow is because we don't have a good way to classify these tumors,” Iavarone says.
Glioblastoma is the most common—and most lethal—primary brain tumor in adults. Median survival for individuals with glioblastoma is only 15 months.
The new study showed that glioblastoma can be classified in four biological groups. Two of them recapitulate functions active in the normal brain, either stem cells or neurons, respectively. The two other groups include mitochondrial tumors and a group of tumors with multiple metabolic activities (“plurimetabolic”) that are highly resistant to current therapies.
Patients with the mitochondrial tumors had a slightly better prognosis—and lived for a few more months—than patients with the other three types.
“We are excited about the mitochondrial group, because we have drugs for that group in clinical trials already,” Lasorella says, “but the classification now gives us ideas about how to target these other three and we are starting to investigate these more intensely.”
“We’re going beyond one mutation, one drug concept,” she says. “Sometimes it’s possible to get a response that way. But it’s time to target tumors based on the commonalities of their core biology, which can be caused by multiple different genetic combinations.”
Single-cell analyses opens new view of brain cancer
The new findings were only possible by utilizing recent advances in single-cell analyses, which allowed the scientists to understand—cell by cell—the biological activity of thousands of cells from a single tumor.
Overall, the scientists characterized the biological properties of 17,367 individual cells from 36 different tumors.
In addition to analyzing each cell’s genetic mutations and levels of gene activity, the researchers looked at other modifications made to the cells’ genomes and the proteins and noncoding RNAs made by each cell.
Using the data, the researchers devised a computational approach to identify core biological processes, or pathways, in the cells rather than the more common approach of identifying gene signatures. “In this way, we can classify each individual tumor cell based on the real biology that sustains them,” Iavarone says.
Most tumors, the researchers found, were dominated by cells from one of the four subtypes, with a smattering of cells from the other three.
Applying same techniques to other cancers
Lasorella and Iavarone are now applying the same techniques to multiple different aggressive cancers.
This “pan-cancer” approach, they say, should identify commonalities among different types of cancer regardless of the tumor’s origin. If such common pathways exist, drugs that treat mitochondrial brain cancer may also be able to treat mitochondrial types of lung cancer, for example.
“When we classify based on the cell’s core biological activities, which all cells rely on to survive and thrive, we may find that cancers share more in common than was previously apparent by just looking at their genes,” Lasorella says.
Thursday, August 5
Has Black Lives Matter Made A Difference?
Crime and Violence in many of the larger cities throughout the USA has increased becasue there are less law enforcement personnel to monitor and/or patrol local neighborhoods. Law Enforcement Personnel are apprehensive about getting into an altercation while a crime is being committed for fear of being sued later by the victim(s) or by the perp(s)... consequently, law enforcement has lost much of its influence.
Law Enforcement is also apprehensive about arresting people who commit crimes for fear that they will not be prosecuted by the Attorney General's office so there is no need to go through all the trouble and all the paperwork that is associated with arrests.
For example, if a criminal steals less than $950 in NYC, they will not be prosecuted by the criminal justice system. So, instead of arresting, law enforcement just stands by and watches in case someone is inadvertantly hurt.
If Black Lives Matter set all of this into motion, they hurt themselves and their communities worse than they hurt the white race which they hate. Defunding the police is not going to lessen their hatred of the white race, it is just going to temporarily pacify a small group of people.
Once store owners realize that law enforcement is no longer going to protect them or their personal property, they will relocate their store to another city or perhaps even leave the State. This loss of revenue for the city will result in offering fewer services or an increase in taxes or both... In the long run that will hurt the city's growth prospects.
The Black Lives Matter Movement got a few statues taken down that all of a sudden reminded them of slavery. Most of the white people didn't give a rat's ass whether those statues were there or not there. So, the impact on the minds of the whites was minimal other than increasing the separation between the races that already existed and was pretty strong on both sides.
History will record these last 12 months as pretty silly and full of nonsense as it evaluates the pros and cons of American economic growth and culture. History will record that not only was this period rather worthless but on the whole, crime increased, drugs increased, and prosecutions decreased... but there was no substantial changes in the racial structure of America...
WHO WON ANYTHING???
Our Government Does Not Care
HOWEVER...
I am totally opposed to the GOVERNMENT CONTROLLING my life in the form of:
- higher taxes
- Vaccination passports
- Allowing abortions
- Defunding police
- Teaching CRT to children
- Perpetuating racism
- Changing history
- Censorsoring speech
- Double standards
- Increasing national debt
- Not retaliating against China
- Reducing military budget
- Increasing social welfare
Our Federal Government SHOULD NOT control our lives like is currently being attempted...
Our Federal Government no longer wants the USA to lead the world in anything...
Our Federal Government does not care that our education system is ranked 14th in the world...
Our Federal Government does not care that CHINA has a larger military: army, navy, and air force than the USA...
Our Federal Government does not care about all the illegal immigrants that are coming across the border with COVID and drugs...
Good For Cleaning
So why are these household items such effective cleaning agents? The answer is pretty basic — baking soda and vinegar lie on opposite ends of the pH scale.
"When you are cleaning using baking soda or vinegar, you are actually doing very complicated manipulations of molecules," said May Nyman, a professor in the department of chemistry at Oregon State University.
Baking soda is the common name for sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3). Most people probably associate it with cooking, because it makes your cakes and breads big and puffy.
"When you are cleaning using baking soda or vinegar, you are actually doing very complicated manipulations of molecules," said May Nyman, a professor in the department of chemistry at Oregon State University.
Baking soda is the common name for sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3). Most people probably associate it with cooking, because it makes your cakes and breads big and puffy.
Capturing Black Holes
The observatory, called eROSITA, launched in 2019 and is the first space-based X-ray telescope capable of imaging the entire sky.
It is the main instrument aboard the Russian-German Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma mission, which sits in a region known as Lagrange point 2, one of five stable points around the sun-Earth system, where the gravitational forces of the two bodies are in balance.
From this vantage point, eROSITA has a clear view of the universe, which it photographs with its powerful X-ray detecting instruments.
Last month, the team behind eROSITA, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, released the first batch of data acquired by the instrument to the wider scientific community for exploration. READ MORE
Last month, the team behind eROSITA, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, released the first batch of data acquired by the instrument to the wider scientific community for exploration. READ MORE
What is Life
Based on a series of lectures given in Dublin, the book’s theme was to answer the question: “how can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?”
In other words: What is Life? Or, from a physicist’s point of view, how can life arise from inanimate matter.
Much of the lecture discussed the requirement for genetic material and some sort of encoding as well as how life related to thermodynamics — the laws governing energy, heat transport, and disorder.
Although their success largely depended on Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction experiments, Francis and Crick would also credit Schrödinger’s work for inspiring their research resulting in the discovery of the DNA double helix.
Schrödinger’s primary insight is that life creates order from disorder. In a universe governed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, that all things tend to maximal disorder, living things maintain small enclaves of order within themselves. Moreover, if you look down to the atomic level, you find that the interiors of living things are extremely chaotic. Heat and molecules diffuse through rapid motion. Everything seems random. Yet the living thing persists, turning all that small scale chaos into large scale order.
Human built machines, by contrast, attempt to maintain order down to the smallest relevant levels. Microchips, for example, depend on orderly transfer of data down to nanometers. Precision machine tools, likewise, function because they have an exact specification at nearly the molecular level. The result is that human tools require careful protection and maintenance and break easily when subjected to the elements.
Life, on the other hand, has withstood the elements for billions of years precisely because it is able to build order out of chaos. READ MORE
Wednesday, August 4
Here's Whats Interesting
I am sure that all these places understand that all I have to do is cut and paste the general idea of the article or the main headline into my brower's URL window, and I can find numerous sources for the same material which is easily used... totally negating whatever it is that they are trying to do...
This same logic holds true for photos that cannot be copied... I can do a general search and find the EXACT SAME PHOTO but easily copied for free...
I don't want credit for the writing or the photo, I just want to use both to draw attention to my blog... I'm selfish I suppose...
Back Porch Thoughts
August now ends the humid days of July which is previous years (not too long ago as I recall) took place in August not July but at this age, it really does not matter when they were as long as they are finally over. Humidity is not good on this youthful but old body.
I look out through the screen and see that all the brown grass has returned to its normal state of green and while I am pleased with that development, it also signals the need to mow the lawn and weedeat which is not a bad task jut a boring one.
I watched the news today... o'boy... about a man who fell from grace and is no longer the face of his party and is no longer welcome on our viewing screens telling us how wonderful he is... but, I wonder how much of this news is being shared with the public... and if it is not being shared why the hell is it my concern? It is not!!!
My back porch is not the place for lamenting... it is the place for pondering, wondering, and understanding that life around us is brief and while some live less than others, we all die and we all should enjoy that which we have and that which was given to us without regret that we may learn from that gift.
The sun (or son) has decided not to show its face again today and we are left to enjoy the environment outside without fear of its heat or deadly rays against our skin.
The air is calm and clean and free of polution and the noise of the city (as I recall its noise) is non-existent in these here parts as they saying goes. We are not the heartland of it all but we are still away from it all to the extent that we hardly know it is there unless we venture out too far away from what we have here.
A distant barking reminds me of animals that must be on leashes, except for cats, and I wonder why since cats can be more vicious if and when they are backed into a corner or out-numbered... and, that thought reminds me of politics and how our country is divided based upon points-of-view and the color of one's skin which does not seem fair since the latter is not a choice as is the former.
From my back porch, I see only the truth of what is in front of me and really am not concerned about what is around me from the standpoint of it being truth or not. Truth is subjective unless factual and even when factual, one must still believe and/or accept those facts as real. And, therein lies the problem... when I decide to leave my back porch.
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