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Comment by openasocket | Hacker News Reader

It is entirely possible that we can completely cure cancer. Not just a treatment, but actually prevent anyone from ever getting cancer in the first place. It would be super duper difficult, but we know it is possible because of the naked mole rat. Naked mole rats are essentially immune to cancer (I say essentially because this February scientists dicovered two individuals that had cancer, the only two documented cases). It is thus possible that genetic therapy could create a population of humans with no (or almost no) incidence of cancer.

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E.g.: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=6572

"These rodents are protected from cancer because their tissues are very rich with high molecular weight hyaluronan (HMW-HA)."

Weird, from what I get from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyaluronic_acid#Functions hyaluran helps cell migrations (metastatis)...

No, they are protected from cancer because naked mole rats never get cancer, to our knowledge.

HMW-HA is a correlation that has not been proven to be effective for preventing cancer elsewhere. Remember, such claims used to be made about shark cartilage, too.

Read a little deeper. This is a part of the investigations into the way in which p16 works in naked mole rats. If it isn't HWM-HA then it is something in its chain of relationships.

"When HMW-HA was removed, the cells became susceptible to tumors, confirming that the chemical did play a role in making naked mole rats cancer-proof. [The] team also identified the gene, named HAS2, responsible for making HMW-HA in the naked mole rat. Surprisingly, the naked mole rat gene was different from HAS2 in all other animals. In addition naked mole rats were very slow at recycling HMW-HA, which contributed to the accumulation of the chemical in the animals' tissues. [Previously researchers] showed that the p16 gene in naked mole rats stopped the proliferation of cells when too many of them crowd together. In their latest work, the two biologists identified HMW-HA as the chemical that activates the anti-cancer response of the p16 gene."

I read the study, not just the article. (Perhaps you missed "elsewhere" in my statement above.)

Again, there are many steps before such a claim could be made, let alone before having a safe and effective "cure" using it. You can't just genetically engineer humans to manufacture and maintain large amounts of HWM-HA in their bloodstreams.

If we can reliably cure it (let’s say immunotherapy advances or whatever), it might not be worth the risk of side effects from preventive manipulation.

Ok I'll state the obvious: people are not rats.

Of course, but if it's possible in one mammal, there's no real reason why it shouldn't be possible in another. I highly doubt that our vulnerability to cancer is somehow intrinsic to what makes us human.

This is obviously far off, but genetic modification opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

Maybe we should tell the scientists then. Apparently they've been doing it wrong for all these decades...

Naked mole rats aren't even rats, per se - they are the only species in its genus and the only known eusocial mammal. (I wonder if E. O. Wilson studied them?)

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