Modern medicine has overcome many diseases, but for many years still on the cancer helpless. Once a person is diagnosed with cancer, the attendant is not only the patient's psychological and physical pain (sometimes psychological pain is greater than the flesh), its friends and family around the same is also watched the patient every day to death And helpless.
Why invested in countless funds, spent countless experts after the effort, the modern medical treatment of cancer is still stagnant? The latest research has brought a frustrating message that cancer may always be with us because ordinary cells become cancerous cells as an "instinctive attribute" and that before human beings are aware of cancer problems, this property of cells There have been at least a few hundred million years time. To overcome the cancer, you have to interfere with the basic properties of the creature, it is difficult to do one thing. Therefore, humans may never be able to prevent the emergence of cancer.
Cancer of the Hydra
The researchers got the discovery from Hydra.
Human cancer cells are caused by mutations in genes, specifically the sequence of genes that control cell cycle activity, which suddenly undergoes unexpected changes that allow cells to proliferate without supervision. In addition, the ordinary cells will be due to gene booking instructions and automatic apoptosis, and cancer cells can escape the process of apoptosis.
Researchers in the United States in the study of Hydra stem cells and tissue regeneration function, found that the birth of hundreds of millions of years ago, multicellular invertebrates should also grow tumors, and human tumors are similar to the process. But it is strange that the tumor will only attack female hydra.
In order to relieve the mechanism of cancer production, the researchers observed the process of hydromene cell division. They found that stem cells that became female cells (ie, eggs) were out of control at the time of cell division and that they did not experience the process of apoptosis, so that they would accumulate and form tumors, a process similar to that of human females In the ovarian cancer. Researchers sequenced DNA with tumor hydra, found a gene that could escape apoptosis, and the gene was activated in the tumor tissue of Hydra. Similarly, there is such a similar gene in humans, it can not let apoptosis, and the emergence of uncontrolled cell proliferation.
Then the hydra's cancer cells will also be like human cancer cells spread like that? In order to find the answer, the researchers transplanted the tumor to healthy hydrants and found that transplanted cancer cells spread to other parts of the Hydra.
what can we do?
This study means that cancer genes and carcinogenic mechanisms are of profound evolutionary origin. In other words, cancer is a biological cell has long been the basic attributes. Any cell in our body can make mistakes at any time, and we have no way to stop it from happening. In other words, since we were born, in the body to carry a time bomb, it can be in the early, middle or late life of the explosion.
But that does not mean that after we have cancer, we can not do anything. Researchers believe that while our cells are likely to make mistakes and cause cancer, they believe that future medical technology can successfully remove all cancer cells from cancer patients at an early stage, or at certain critical moments.
One of the strategies is to let the immune system go to attack cancer cells. A drug called Eliomimma can do this. In clinical trials, 20% of patients taking this drug, the body of melanoma was completely removed, and after 12 years did not relapse. Relevant oncologists believe that these patients with melanoma may never appear again. The development of this drug should be the most exciting research results over the past decade.
Of course, basic research on cancer in evolution is still crucial. Like the "Art of War" in the said, "know ourselves, know yourself." The researchers believe that if we can not kill the beast, then we can also go to fully understand it and try to make it harmless.