[HN Gopher] Cancer Weakness Discovered: New Method Pushes Cancer...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Cancer Weakness Discovered: New Method Pushes Cancer Cells into
       Remission
        
       Author : thedday
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2022-12-02 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (scitechdaily.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (scitechdaily.com)
        
       | heisenbit wrote:
       | This sounds very interesting. Being able to associate specific
       | cancers with pathways worth dampening/shutting down may not just
       | enable new medications but might allow us to leverage existing
       | medications and engineer cocktails of medications for which we
       | already know how they affect the cellular pathways.
        
       | tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
       | Considering the Western diet, human evolutionary history of
       | constant near starvation, and how chemotherapy works, isn't
       | cellular stress a near universal weakness of most neoplasmic
       | cells?
        
         | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
         | I only skimmed the article, but the entire thing seemed like
         | some fluff to make a connection between machine learning and
         | biology research.
         | 
         | Cancer and genetic instability has been known for a very long
         | time (hallmarks of cancer). Many energy/maintenance pathways
         | are impaired or outright broken in cancer cells. Despite this
         | knowledge, effectively targeting these "weaknesses" is far from
         | trivial. Broken pathway does not a cancer cure make.
        
           | spfzero wrote:
           | But they actually did effectively target them. Six out of six
           | complete remissions.
        
           | tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
           | Which makes sense. Chemo (limiting cell division, etc.)
           | and/or starvation are "nuclear" options which rely on healthy
           | cells weathering stress more so than cancer cells. Targeting
           | (essentially assumed-to-be-novel) cancer cells specifically
           | (say oncolytic viruses, pathway-blocking molecules or
           | antibodies) seems extremely difficult without sheer luck of
           | prior research matching particular tissues.
        
       | FollowingTheDao wrote:
       | If they think this will not have side affects in humans they are
       | mistaken.
       | 
       | MTFHD2 is needed in our mitochondria and blocking it will be
       | worse than using methotrexate. There will be such a huge build of
       | of NAD in the mitochondria things will go haywire.
       | 
       | Maybe you all should stop eating so much folate so you do not get
       | cancer in the first place:
       | https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000653
       | 
       | And what is weird is that these same oncologist were telling my
       | father to take folate when he was dying of cancer.
        
         | edgyquant wrote:
         | Telling people to stop eating a type of food doesn't really
         | help those who have cancer at the moment. How about we stop
         | putting things in food until we can prove they don't cause
         | cancer
        
           | FollowingTheDao wrote:
           | > Telling people to stop eating a type of food doesn't really
           | help those who have cancer at the moment.
           | 
           | I disagree. Telling to not eat folate will help them.
           | 
           | If it was not true why are they giving you drugs to stop the
           | folate cycle?
           | 
           | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01017-8
           | 
           | https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc201711
           | 
           | Why continue to eat something that has been proven over and
           | over again to drive tumor growth?
           | 
           | It was LITERALLY how they found out that methotrexate worked.
           | 
           | https://cen.acs.org/food/diet-change-course-cancer/100/i33
           | Indeed, the very first potent cancer drugs were based on the
           | effects of cell metabolism. In the late 1940s, while
           | pediatric pathologist Sidney Farber was treating children
           | with anemia--a condition brought about because they had
           | leukemia --he found that using folate (vitamin B9) could make
           | the leukemia advance surprisingly quickly. That led him to
           | successfully treat their leukemia with methotrexate, a drug
           | that inhibits folate activity. Methotrexate is still widely
           | used against cancer and several other diseases today.
           | 
           | > How about we stop putting things in food until we can prove
           | they don't cause cancer.
           | 
           | I agree, but that doesn't really help those who have cancer
           | at the moment.
        
           | throwaway12245 wrote:
           | >Telling people to stop eating a type of food .
           | 
           | Some claim a ketogenic diet may help.
           | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31399389/ . "Major
           | conclusions: The ketogenic diet probably creates an
           | unfavorable metabolic environment for cancer cells and thus
           | can be regarded as a promising adjuvant as a patient-specific
           | multifactorial therapy."
        
             | capitainenemo wrote:
             | Intermittent fasting also triggers ketosis, possibly more
             | effectively, has cancer prevention as one of the benefits
             | and does not require diet changes (although they may help
             | depending on what your diet was).
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | Gatsky wrote:
         | Folic acid supplementation reduces the toxicity of a
         | chemotherapy drug called pemetrexed, used in lung cancer and
         | mesothelioma. That could be why it was recommended.
         | 
         | Sorry about your father.
        
         | tcj_phx wrote:
         | > Maybe you all should stop eating so much folate so you do not
         | get cancer in the first place:
         | https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000653
         | 
         | Your link is about _folic acid_ supplements, NOT _folate_.
         | 
         | Folic acid is shelf-stable pro-vitamin that about 60-70% of the
         | population is able to turn into Vitamin B9. The other 30-40% of
         | the population are "poor methylators" who struggle with folic
         | acid, or are harmed by folic acid.
         | 
         | Poor methylators are on a spectrum, from 'not very good
         | methylators' to 'very poor methylators'. I don't really grok
         | biochemistry, but I think more people should avoid _folic acid_
         | , and aim to get their nutrients from food.
         | 
         | https://twitter.com/JamesKnochel/status/1595562181692907520
         | 
         | Edit: My understanding is that folic acid feeds the growth of
         | inflammatory bacteria much more so than natural folate sources.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | FollowingTheDao wrote:
           | > Your link is about folic acid supplements, NOT folate.
           | 
           | It does not matter and this show you know little about the
           | folate cycle. DHFR, the enzyme that metabolizes Folic Acid,
           | also bidirectionally converts DHF and THF (folates).
           | 
           | https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/P00374/entry
           | 
           | https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jack-
           | Fletcher-3/publica...
           | 
           | > Folic acid is shelf-stable pro-vitamin that about 60-70% of
           | the population is able to turn into Vitamin B9.
           | 
           | That would mean 60 to 70% of the population cannot process
           | folate, not just folic acid. When did you even get this
           | number?
           | 
           | > Poor methylators are on a spectrum, from 'not very good
           | methylators' to 'very poor methylators'. I don't really grok
           | biochemistry,
           | 
           | No, you do not grok at all well. You know who does? Me.
        
           | JPLeRouzic wrote:
           | I am a lay person but:
           | 
           | * In the introduction of the linked BMJ article you can read:
           | 
           | " _Folic acid is a synthetic form of the essential B vitamin
           | folate, also named folacin, pteroylglutamic acid or vitamin
           | B9. Folic acid is in the human body converted to
           | 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, which also is the form of folate
           | found in dietary sources and is particularly abundant in
           | vegetables, fruits and grains._ "
           | 
           | * In Wikipedia "folic acid" is redirected to "folate".
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folic_acid
           | 
           | In the "folate" WP page you find this sentence:
           | 
           | " _Manufactured folic acid, which is converted into folate by
           | the body, is used as a dietary supplement and in food
           | fortification as it is more stable during processing and
           | storage._ "
        
           | gardenfelder wrote:
           | > My understanding is that folic acid feeds the growth of
           | inflammatory bacteria much more so than natural folate
           | sources.
           | 
           | That comment warrants justification. Web searches are hard to
           | formulate to support that. In the general literature, [1] is
           | fairly typical and benign, not supportive. Can you provide
           | some references?
           | 
           | [1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327290
        
           | stouset wrote:
           | > but I think more people should avoid folic acid
           | 
           | And of course, there's people on the opposite end of the
           | spectrum. For stroke survivors with certain kinds of vascular
           | causes, folic acid supplementation is encouraged to reduce
           | the risk of future strokes.
        
         | thaumasiotes wrote:
         | > If they think this will not have side affects in humans they
         | are mistaken.
         | 
         | Sure, everything has side effects.
         | 
         | This is a case where the side effects don't matter so much;
         | people will put up with things in order to avoid dying a
         | horrible death that they wouldn't tolerate in other
         | circumstances.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-12-02 23:01 UTC)