Potentially Reprogramming Cancer Cells Back to Normal Cells

Not to mention that killing cancer cells, which can be done in umpteen way in vitro and in vivo today, seems superior to reverting cells to normal, except on unusual circumstances.

That is, I assume one would want to have a tumor die rather just stabilize as it's cell reverted to normal (if that's even possible). Also killing cells on the outside of tumor seems the most effective way to deliver drugs to the cells on the inside of a tumor.

(Just speaking from common sense, if there's something I'm missing, I'd be interested).

Isn't the big question WHY that cancer cell developed inside a human body in the first place? I mean, if it happened once, what would prevent it from happening again?

The article is paywalled for me at the moment, but based on the abstract, the media claims are excessive for what they are reporting.

PDF: http://cl.ly/cmQ6

It is. There are a ridiculously large number of cancers and they are all different. Even something seemingly simple like "lung cancer" can be divided into several high level diseases, each of which have their own subcategories.

People who expect a one size fits all solution to cancer will be sorely mistaken

In my world, cancer is simply a cell, or group of cells, which lives inside the human body, that the human body treats as part of itself. But these cells are more interested in their own survival than the survival of the body. It's when a group of cells "dissent", so to speak, and start prioritizing themselves over the rest of the cells in the body.

Cancer can mean different things. Would you consider a viral infection "just data corruption"? The virus "corrupts" a cell's DNA to manufacture more virus. Nothing is "just" when it comes to code that's been running for billions of years.

Would disagree.

The thing that a sizable amount of cancer research funds should focus on is preventation of telomere extension. Selectively or periodically turn off all mechanisms of telomere extension, which covers telomerase activities and ALT, the alternative lengthening of telomeres processes. All cancers abuse telomere extension in order to thrive, it is required for rapid cellular replication. Normal cells are not so much in need of it, so turn it all of for some period of time until the cancer is gone then restore telomere extension capabilities. This will work for all cancer types.

Telomerase interdiction can be achieved via RNAi or similar methods, while the hurdle to blocking ALT is that it isn't well understood at this time; the targets till need to be listed and understood. It will probably be the case that targeting telomere extension interdiction to cancer cells will be superior or even necessary, but fortunately selective targeting of cancer cells is a going concern in research, with considerable progress achieved already and more in the works.

DNA damage is not a major issue at all. Most of the damage can be "reversed" by looking at your close relatives since it's single nucleotide mutations.

Right now you can't even get the genome sequenced without gaps for a reasonable price. The current $1000 genome is 30x coverage which leaves some parts unsequenced. You can probably infer what some of those sequences should be, but that would be much harder than reversing potential DNA damage over your lifetime.

But even if we had the whole thing sequenced, modifying DNA in some or every cell is definitely not easy and in some cases impossible. Also, all current methods have all kinds of side effects.

Finally, even if you had some dangerous DNA mutation reversed, it may not help if a mutation induced cascade already began.

Eh, genome engineering is a possible solution to those problems, but that doesn't mean that it has to be the only solution. I'm working on genome engineering solutions for a couple of cancers right now-- we're close to solving problems in vitro, but that doesn't mean these treatments can be transferred to actual sick human subjects successfully.

Genome engineering is white hot right now, sailing off of CRISPR. Wait five years, see what pans out. I highly doubt that we'll have cures in hand on that timescale, but we can hope! I expect that genome engineering will improve human health vastly, but it's not going to be as easy as they make it out to be.

A last tidbit: like all medical interventions, genome engineering has side effects, too. They're largely side effects that have never been seen or treated before, and they can frequently be fatal or severe. I wouldn't expect that there is an incentive for these side effects to go away unless they're fatal more than 10% of the time.

What do you mean by a "spontaneous way to evolve these cells back to their original code"? The cells' genetic code (DNA) itself not changing, but not every gene in a genome is expressed in equal amounts or at the same time. In addition to encoding genes that "do stuff", the genome also codes for helper molecules which regulate the expression of these "action genes/proteins" in response to stimulus and environmental conditions. Modifying or replacing these helper molecules can therefore change the fate of the overall cell without even touching the main "action genes".

not sure what the downvote is for, im assuming its because you suspect a mutagen like pesticide is directly responsible for the mutation that causes cancer cells to grow. bbbut my government lobbyists and their scientists recommended eating pesticide sprayed foods for 100 years, because spraying lemon juice on the foods was more expensive than pesticide. typical hacker news downvote because its actually a good idea thats not in your college text books.