Radiation damage pills.

[guartz]

And you thought fallout rad medicine was fantasy.

http://medheadlines.com/2008/04/11/new- ... on-damage/



Btw, I can't seem to decide how important this is.

Seems pretty important.

[Acturus]

Imagine chemo therapy without chemo sickness.

thanks for posting this. I heard it on the radio this morning, but couldn't find a news article.

[Kuya]

Looks very promising.

[Vuitton]

These pills prevent apoptosis (cell suicide). When cells come into contact with radiation they kill themselves off (also when there is any defect in a cell.) Why would cells kill themselves off in a radioactive environment? Most likely because the radiation is mutating the DNA of cells it comes into contact with, making the cell defective and possibly harmful to our body.

IANAB (I am not a biologist) but, I have to ask myself, what could possibly go wrong with preventing apoptosis in a radioactive enviornment? The cells that become mutated won't kill themselves off for the greater good. Hmmmmmm...... Keep your eyes out for more two faced and octopus babies in the near future from cancer survivors that took these pills.

[Alleya]

The drug's not going to make it to market before it's tested. Those questions will have to be answered before it can gain approval.

[guartz]

Ah, so it's valium for our cells.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

[Demosthenes11]

These pills prevent apoptosis (cell suicide). When cells come into contact with radiation they kill themselves off (also when there is any defect in a cell.) Why would cells kill themselves off in a radioactive environment? Most likely because the radiation is mutating the DNA of cells it comes into contact with, making the cell defective and possibly harmful to our body.

IANAB (I am not a biologist) but, I have to ask myself, what could possibly go wrong with preventing apoptosis in a radioactive enviornment? The cells that become mutated won't kill themselves off for the greater good. Hmmmmmm...... Keep your eyes out for more two faced and octopus babies in the near future from cancer survivors that took these pills.

lol? that's not how it works...

[Stolin]

sounds amazing. I wonder what the side effects are.

[kuronosan]

Cells have an interior mechanism to prevent mutation due to outside influence, they do this on a daily basis when exposed to UV radiation. Cancer is caused by a failure of these cells to prevent mutation, also by destroying the cell's ability to tell itself to stop dividing. Chemo causes apoptosis because the toxins introduced to the body to destroy cancerous cells often are toxic to healthy cells as well when exposed to radiation. A pill to prevent apoptosis (programmed suicide) in healthy cells is a pretty big breakthrough... the question really is if it will prevent apoptosis in both healthy and cancerous cells or if it will just keep healthy cells from dying. Then it's really up to the body's immune system response to keep the healthy cells from mutating (which as long as it's functioning properly the oncogenes won't mutate the healthy cells).

The problem is, unless you destroy every last cancerous cell, as long as 1 cell survives it will continue to spread. Even phagocytosis won't kill oncogenic cells.

[Vuitton]

lol? that's not how it works...

From the mother fucking article:

The trick is apoptosis, or cellular suicide. When healthy cells are exposed to radiation, even at doses that produce damage than can be repaired, they instead do what seems to be suicide. The cells in the bone marrow and gastrointestinal (GI) tract are particularly vulnerable.

Cancer cells, however, use various means of blocking apoptosis, enabling cancerous tumors to grow.One way they block cellular suicide is by activating a signaling pathway known as NFKB, or nuclear factor-KappaB.

By imitating this tumor trick, Gudkov and his team of colleagues were able to block apoptosis in healthy tissue by introducing flagellin, a protein made from bacteria in the GI tract, to activate the NFKB pathway.

Wow, I guess that really is how it works? The article makes it pretty clear that these pills are helping healthy non-cancerous cells block apoptosis in the presence of radiation. AKA: Preventing your cells from fucking exploding when you're radiated.

Edit:

Bolded the part that has to do with my OP. Our cells aren't perfect and they don't always fix themselves. If you're undergoing chemo you're being exposed to radiation. You take these pills and you're cells stop killing themselves in the presence of radiation. Yeah this is a great thing with great potential.

Side effect: not all of the healthy cells damaged by the radiation will repair themselves. Normally they would have killed themselves off, but this drug prevents that. Now you have a bunch of mutated cells (besides the original cancerous cells) in your body that may or may not be harmful.

[Howard Roark]

always trust the information brought to you by the manufacturer/developer, they couldn't possibly have an agenda like say.. profiting from the patent if the FDA actually goes for this

[Nystul]

apoptosis can be caused by a LOT of things (the lab I'm in actually studies this in a round-about way). Some of you are thinking about it in the wrong way. A lot of times- take brain cells during a stroke for example- cells that are perfectly healthy will undergo apoptosis because a cell near them dies and the stuff in that cell triggers an apoptotic cascade in surrounding cells. This is kind of like how firemen cut down trees as a fire break to cut off the advance of a wildfire.

From what I gather fro this article, the drug targets these kinds of events- healthy cells that are triggered into apoptosis due to some other dying cells. How that happens...I don't know. Apoptosis is EXTREMELY complex- we have this poster in the lab that shows pathways for a few types of cell apoptosis and it's covered in text, and it doesn't include several mechanisms.

[Furtwangler]

sounds amazing. I wonder what the side effects are.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/8...cesmashvh2.jpg

[Khamsin]

sounds amazing. I wonder what the side effects are.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/8...cesmashvh2.jpg

This is like the opposite of that. Instead of curing cancer, this just makes the rest of your body mimic cancer so it won't kill itself.

[Elmer the Pointy]

IANAB, but I am going to make a random and baseless claim that these pills will usher forth an era of mutant babies. If you challenge me, I will flip out and curse at you.

[Kuya]

apoptosis can be caused by a LOT of things (the lab I'm in actually studies this in a round-about way). Some of you are thinking about it in the wrong way. A lot of times- take brain cells during a stroke for example- cells that are perfectly healthy will undergo apoptosis because a cell near them dies and the stuff in that cell triggers an apoptotic cascade in surrounding cells. This is kind of like how firemen cut down trees as a fire break to cut off the advance of a wildfire.

From what I gather fro this article, the drug targets these kinds of events- healthy cells that are triggered into apoptosis due to some other dying cells. How that happens...I don't know. Apoptosis is EXTREMELY complex- we have this poster in the lab that shows pathways for a few types of cell apoptosis and it's covered in text, and it doesn't include several mechanisms.

But then, i don't really understand how that protects you from nuclear fallout. Does it just make cells that aren't damaged not go through apoptosis, while those damage through radiation in the first place die without taking the nearby cells with them?

[Charla]

The way I read it, this would cause cells that are mildly damaged to ignore the radiation, while cells that are irreparably damaged would die without undergoing apoptosis. In the case of using apoptosis blockage to mitigate the mortality from a radiological catastrophe, it makes sense that the result would be an increased probability of mutation in the surviving cells. With the localized and less intense exposure of a cancer treatment that's probably less of an issue.

[guartz]

I guess with enough radiation you'll melt anyway.

But it will take a lot more to kill you!

No more 6th toe and the expensive surgery!

[Metah]

No more 6th toe and the expensive surgery!

Thank God its hard enough finding shoes

[Nystul]

apoptosis can be caused by a LOT of things (the lab I'm in actually studies this in a round-about way). Some of you are thinking about it in the wrong way. A lot of times- take brain cells during a stroke for example- cells that are perfectly healthy will undergo apoptosis because a cell near them dies and the stuff in that cell triggers an apoptotic cascade in surrounding cells. This is kind of like how firemen cut down trees as a fire break to cut off the advance of a wildfire.

From what I gather fro this article, the drug targets these kinds of events- healthy cells that are triggered into apoptosis due to some other dying cells. How that happens...I don't know. Apoptosis is EXTREMELY complex- we have this poster in the lab that shows pathways for a few types of cell apoptosis and it's covered in text, and it doesn't include several mechanisms.

But then, i don't really understand how that protects you from nuclear fallout. Does it just make cells that aren't damaged not go through apoptosis, while those damage through radiation in the first place die without taking the nearby cells with them?

Charla said pretty much what I think is going on. The body has a lot of failsafe mechanisms (you have two kidneys, capillary beds are exactly twice as long as they need to be to deliver the proper amount of oxygen, your body gets the max amount of oxygen by a long shot- next time you see an athlete on the bench with an O2 mask, know that it physiologically does *nothing* for them). Diseases are often exploits of these mechanisms. Symptoms of the flu are not directly due to the virus- the sore throat, aches, fever, etc are caused by your immune system to get rid of the virus. Your body is willing to strafe bomb the cells of your throat to kill off virally infected epithelial cells for the long term greater good. In a similar way, cells that are only moderately damaged tend to adopt the better safe than sorry philosophy and just go apoptotic. Typically cells can be replaced, so why risk a damaged cell when you don't have to? Sometimes the body goes overboard- when people die of the flu it is because the immune system goes too far and the fever/dehydration/etc result in death. In this case, the body ends up killing off more cells than it can replace in a timely manner, and you die.

The concept of the pills is to give the person a chance and allow the moderately damaged cells a shot at being repaired. Odds are good that they will develop cancer later in life, I'd imagine, but better to live a little longer than to die- horribly, I might add- of radiation sickness.