DailyDirt: Putting An End To Cancer…
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Cancer isn’t a single specific disease that can be cured with a universal treatment because there are many, many different kinds of cancers. Just about any multi-cellular organism can suffer from cancer, but the occurrence of cancer in some species is remarkably low — leading scientists to study those animals to find out why — to see if there might be a strategy for preventing cancers in mammals like us. Here are just a few interesting links on cancer research.
- Naked mole rats are cancer-resistant rodents, and that resistance could be due to a complex sugar called hyaluronan. This sugar exists in some form in all animals, but the naked mole rat’s hyaluronan is unusual because the enzymes that normally break it down aren’t very active in naked mole rats. [url]
- Cancer in insects has been reported for decades. So even if cockroaches can survive a nuclear war, they’re not immune to cancer. [url]
- Despite published books with titles like “Sharks (Still) Don’t Get Cancer”, sharks actually *do* get cancer. This myth has killed countless sharks as snake oil salesmen push shark cartilage as a natural cure for cancer (even though it isn’t). [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: cancer, cure, disease, hyaluronan, insects, medicine, myth, naked mole rat, sharks
Comments on “DailyDirt: Putting An End To Cancer…”
I, for one, welcome our new naked mole rat overlords….
old joke, I know. still couldn’t resist.
“This myth has killed countless sharks”
This myth is likely killing people too.
When the treatment is more profitable than the cure,
it is unlikely that a cure will be readily available.
A sad state of affairs to say the least.
What croc, sharks and orthodontists have in common?
They all shed teeth for a living.
Seriously though, some people realized that crocs can be used as models for tooth regeneration treatments.
Imagine one day you pull out a tooth and that is no big deal because your dentist just activates your own body’s capabilities to regrown a new one, some believe is about chemical signal processing, there is a way to initiate the process a Japanese researcher just proved on a rat, making it grow a new green tooth
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-alligator-dental-regeneration-tooth-humans.html
PNAS: Fully functional bioengineered tooth replacement as an organ replacement therapy
http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/tooth-regeneration-gel.htm
The naked mole rat and sharks have some super powers, shards don’t ever sleep and the little rat buggers are cancer resistant 🙂
In 100 years we may become masters of all we see, we would look at others and think they are Gods.
I was born in the wrong age.
scams are scams
you think “shark cartilage” sales people are actually selling REAL SHARK cartilage’s ??
Don’t you think if they are going to lie about the cure, they are going to equally lie about the product of that cure.
Shark fin soup is responsible for millions of sharks being killed, not scammers killing real sharks to make a FAKE CURE.
when was it proven that eating some animal would impart properties of that animal to the person who ate it ?
So if you eat the eyes of Eagles you can see better ? or fly ?