Managing the loopholes in the cell cycle

Cure to cancer is within reach and is within the management of LOOPHOLES. Cancer cells have within their pathways, redundancy that protects these pathways to maintain life of the malignant cell. You close one door, just to see another one open up to ensure that the life of the cancer cell is maintained. So, unless you hit a critical pathway with no escape routes, the treatment result will be partial and temporary. To succeed we need to hit several targets in total and and sometimes sequentially to impose on the cell to choose the path to its natural death (apoptosis). So most treatments which are limited to one or only a few targets prove partially and temporary effective. This is why building an electronic Cell and being able to put in all the pathways and observe where they lead to, what doors open and which ones are closed or closing, which are critical and which lead to apoptosis (natural cell death) is crucial. Which sequence of shut down leads to sure cell death? Right now we are at the step where we are learning about shutting or opening one door and evaluating the sequence of events that follow. But with our model in hand, we can be more comprehensive in our approach. The model will help determine effects on cancer cells by shutting several doors at once, "closing Loopholes" as Tax people would love to say. This approach with target therapy has led to breaking resistance to certain types of cancers that were notoriously resistant. Today, we are starting to have response rates in Melanoma. We have double or triple longevity in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, GIST, Myeloma etc...Just wait to see what we will get once we manage to give Multistage Multitarget Therapies (MMT). Cure is within the management of Loopholes!

The secret for Cure of cancer is located in the selective apoptosis, or cancer cell death

We know there are several ways that lead to cell death.  The main 2 ways are through the Extrinsic pathway which uses Receptors located at the skin of the cell called cellular membrane (receptors such as TNF-R1 and FAS) and Intrinsic pathways that use internal proteins (i.e. Caspases) that may destroy or paralyze  the breathing and energy producing organs of the cell called mitochondria. The challenge is to control these processes in the cell, know how to trigger them, and to do this only in the cancer cells without affecting the normal cells.  We need to know how to tag cancer cells, give that tag to a killing molecule that can attach to the apoptosis receptor.  This is just one way to be looking for a cure.  The complexity and multitude of metabolic pathways presents a problem, but also opportunities to kill the cancer cell.We are in the wee hours of learning them.Target therapy is in its early hour.

When there is a mistake in the gene during replication, there is a repair mechanism. To allow that repair,
the cell needs to be slowed down in its life cycle. This slowing seems to be the main action of P53. If repair does not occur, P53 leads the cell to cell destruction/apoptosis.  That's why most cancers remove or change the P53 to stay alive. Like most Molecules in the cell, the P53 has its own path to destruction. MDM2 seems to be that path to the loss of this so important P53.  Scientists are looking at knocking down MDM2 to see if this may restore the P53 function in those conditions where the P53 is not fundamentally altered.  We will follow this for you and give an update!

The Cure is achievable we know that for sure, we need just need to become better "cell mechanics"....stay tuned...

Many exciting Research and Prevention projects: CPRIT Abstracts 2012

http://abstracts.cprit2012.org/