Scientists discover a molecular switch that can reverse cancer—turning colon cancer cells back into their healthy counterparts | The researchers anticipate that the technology will be applied to create treatments to reverse other forms of cancer in the future.
https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-discover-reverse-cancer-2027113
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From the article: The revelation by researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korea, could lead to new cancer treatments.
“We have discovered a molecular switch that can revert the fate of cancer cells back to a normal state,” said paper author and biologist professor Kwang-Hyun Cho in a statement.
They did this, he explained, by “capturing the moment of critical transition right before normal cells are changed into an irreversible cancerous state.”
A critical transition, the researchers explain, is when a radical change in state occurs at a specific point in time. A recognizable case, for example, is when water changes into steam at 212 Fahrenheit when boiled in a kettle.
Another critical transition also occurs at a specific point in time in the process by which normal cells are transformed into cancer cells, as the result of an accumulation of both genetic and epigenetic changes.
In [their study](https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202412503), Cho and colleagues found that—on the cusp of this transformation, during the development of tumors, or “tumorigenesis”—normal cells enter an unstable state in which normal and cancer cells coexist.
Probing this critical transition using a systems biology approach, the team created a system to infer a model of the genetic network that controls cancer development, and then uses this to find a molecular switch that can reverse the process.
You can hear the pharmaceutical company exec rubbing their hands together greedily. They didn’t even need to research it, and they will charge millions for it.
Congratulations! We cured your 5lb tumor! And, as a bonus, you now have an extra 5lbs of colon.
(I know that’s not how it works, just going off the headline.)
So you have to get the cells at the right time? How would that get rid of cancer cells since they would be cancerous
Wouldn’t you still need tumors to be removed even if they were no longer growing? I mean, in the case of colon cancer you’d have a big lump of colon tissue, pressing on a nerve or blocking passage of feces.
So many new advancements lately. I just hope they’re available for people to use in our lifetime.
If this is true, sounds like something that pharma will buy off then bury as deep as possible like they did with other promising researches. Cause it’s more money to be made from sick people than from healthy people.
The article itself is trash. They tried to make an analogy comparing it to a phase change of matter? That was nonsense. Still a cool concept though. Too bad the author didn’t understand it sufficiently well to be able to explain it.
At the price of your first born child into slave labor for the capitalists.
Either you give up your first born for unlimited slave labor or you don’t get the treatment.
Nothing about ending cancer world wide or talks of being saviors to so many people. Just maximum profit in the shortest time period possible. Yay
Well this is the best news that I’ve read in awhile!
I hope so much that this works and the pharmaceutical maffia isn’t going to suppress the news and kill the scientists.. we need this.
As an American, I can’t wait to be told I can’t afford this treatment when I inevitably get some kind of cancer.
Next up: someone comes up with a cancer bomb/tumor ray/whatever