HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

Why the Nobel Prize is Important for Prostate Cancer

Support Forums
>
Prostate Cancer
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 10/15/2013 9:57 AM (GMT 0)
The winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year went to James Rothman at Yale, Randy Schekman of UC Berkeley and Thomas Südhof of Stanford. They explored the logistics of cell machinery – how cells transport molecules around within the cell and to other cells – sometimes called intracellular and extracellular signaling. It’s long been known that cells can do this directly with some molecules like hormones and cytokines in a process known as paracrine signalling. Their new discovery was the way cells use a structure called a vesicle to do this. Vesicles are lined with phospholipids and cell wall proteins that can merge with cell walls. They may contain large proteins or nucleic acids. Vesicles are sort of like the capsules used in olde tyme pneumatic mail tubes. What they contain can change the genetic expression (i.e., the phenotype) of the cells they merge with.

The reason this is important to us is because cancer cells send out vesicles containing proteins that can turn a benign prostate cell malignant. Conversely, vesicles emitted from benign prostate cells can turn a malignant prostate cell into a benign one. They also can change how sensitive the cancer cell is to chemotherapy.

This opens up many opportunities. Malignant vesicles, if isolated, can detect malignant prostate cancer. Furthermore, if they can be inhibited, they can stop malignancy. Vesicles from benign cells may reverse malignancy. Vesicles may be used to improve the therapeutic ratio of chemotherapy. So far this is all in the test tube stage and it will be many years before it proves useful to us in clinical trials, but it opens up new avenues for diagnosis and therapy beyond the current ones that are almost all targeted to the androgen receptor.

Sadly, these Nobel laureates and others studying this were funded in their work by NIH grants, which have largely dried up due to the Sequester and the Government Shutdown. Our best hopes are on furlough.

For any science nerds out there, here’s a lab study on vesicles involved in prostate tumorigenesis:

Reversal of chemosensitivity and induction of cell malignancy of a non-malignant prostate cancer cell line upon extracellular vesicle exposure
Posted 10/15/2013 10:37 AM (GMT 0)
Very interesting stuff TA. Thanks for sharing.
Posted 10/15/2013 11:50 AM (GMT 0)

Tall Allen said...
The winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year went to James Rothman at Yale, Randy Schekman of UC Berkeley and Thomas Südhof of Stanford. They explored the logistics of cell machinery – how cells transport molecules around within the cell and to other cells – sometimes called intracellular and extracellular signaling. It’s long been known that cells can do this directly with some molecules like hormones and cytokines in a process known as paracrine signalling. Their new discovery was the way cells use a structure called a vesicle to do this. Vesicles are lined with phospholipids and cell wall proteins that can merge with cell walls. They may contain large proteins or nucleic acids. Vesicles are sort of like the capsules used in olde tyme pneumatic mail tubes. What they contain can change the genetic expression (i.e., the phenotype) of the cells they merge with.

The reason this is important to us is because cancer cells send out vesicles containing proteins that can turn a benign prostate cell malignant. Conversely, vesicles emitted from benign prostate cells can turn a malignant prostate cell into a benign one. They also can change how sensitive the cancer cell is to chemotherapy.

This opens up many opportunities. Malignant vesicles, if isolated, can detect malignant prostate cancer. Furthermore, if they can be inhibited, they can stop malignancy. Vesicles from benign cells may reverse malignancy. Vesicles may be used to improve the therapeutic ratio of chemotherapy. So far this is all in the test tube stage and it will be many years before it proves useful to us in clinical trials, but it opens up new avenues for diagnosis and therapy beyond the current ones that are almost all targeted to the androgen receptor.

Sadly, these Nobel laureates and others studying this were funded in their work by NIH grants, which have largely dried up due to the Sequester and the Government Shutdown. Our best hopes are on furlough.

For any science nerds out there, here’s a lab study on vesicles involved in prostate tumorigenesis:

Reversal of chemosensitivity and induction of cell malignancy of a non-malignant prostate cancer cell line upon extracellular vesicle exposure

Wouldn't the the status of recipients of the Nobel Prize in Medicine bring in new funding resources and how about all the funds from Cancer donations in general, wouldn't they have an interest in supporting this avenue of study?
Posted 10/15/2013 12:54 PM (GMT 0)
GREAT post TA! Thank you.
Posted 10/15/2013 5:14 PM (GMT 0)

Foxrun said...
Wouldn't the the status of recipients of the Nobel Prize in Medicine bring in new funding resources and how about all the funds from Cancer donations in general, wouldn't they have an interest in supporting this avenue of study?

The way research funding works in the US is that NIH, and to a lesser extent, DOD, is the major funder of basic research. All of the NGOs together can only provide a fraction of what they provide. It's a simple matter of pooled resources -- we as a nation have decided that this is a mutually beneficial responsibility worth undertaking -- so the scale of funding cannot be matched by other sources.

The philosophy has always been that we collectively (through the government) fund basic research, but then private companies come in to fund applied research on which they can profit. So in this example, NIH has funded these preliminary lab studies, but if a company develops a "prostate cancer vesicle detection test," it is up to them to pay for the clinical trials. Private companies do not have the resources or the incentive to fund basic research, most of of which bears little fruit.

- Allen
Posted 10/17/2013 5:31 AM (GMT 0)
Anyone interested in the impact on NIH funding of research can read more about it on their website. Sequestration cut $1.5B from the NIH budget, and about 650 fewer peer-reviewed grants got funded this year:

One Nation in Support of Biomedical Research?

This has prevented or delayed many research projects of particular importance to each of us. This traffic on this forum demonstrates how hungry we all are for more, better information. If we want it, we'll have to somehow pay for it.

- Allen
Posted 10/17/2013 3:06 PM (GMT 0)
Stunning. Thx again.
Posted 10/17/2013 7:23 PM (GMT 0)
It was interesting article in USA Today on October 13, 2013 :
"N.Y. tax checkoff funds for cancer research sit idle "
So here from it:

"... Since 2005, New York taxpayers have donated $1.8 million through their income tax returns to aid the fight against prostate cancer, but researchers have yet to see a dime.

The prostate cancer research fund is one of eight causes state residents can support through a checkoff on their tax forms...

But a 2004 state law set up the prostate cancer research fund unlike any other tax checkoff program, and that unusual structure has led to long delays...

While most tax donations go into funds administered by state boards or agencies, the prostate cancer law requires the money to go to an outside nonprofit, the New York Coalition to Cure Prostate Cancer. In an arrangement state leaders promoted at the time as a unique public-private partnership, the California-based Prostate Cancer Foundation agreed to match taxpayer donations dollar for dollar by contributing to the same nonprofit, which then would finance research and prevention programs...

This much is clear: The New York Coalition to Cure Prostate Cancer did not exist before 2004, the year the checkoff law passed, and the Internal Revenue Service automatically revoked its federal tax-exempt status in 2011 for failing to submit required returns three years in a row. It has no website or readily available contact information online.

In New York state's corporation database, the coalition is closely tied to the California foundation. The organizations share an address in Santa Monica, Calif., and the coalition's listed contact, Richard Sandler, is a board member of the California foundation.

Sandler also is listed as executive vice president of the Milken Family Foundation, co-founded by financier-turned-philanthropist Michael Milken, who also established the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

State law required the new nonprofit to issue annual reports on its prostate cancer grants. Asked whether it could produce these documents, Prostate Cancer Foundation general counsel Kathryn M. Schwertfeger provided a statement saying that because the state has not yet transferred any money to the coalition, no reports have been issued.

Schwertfeger also noted that the foundation has funded more than $52.5 million in prostate cancer research in New York state over the past 20 years, regardless of the checkoff arrangement. She declined to answer other questions.

At the end of last year, the prostate cancer fund's balance totaled $2.9 million, including $1.8 million in taxpayer donations, nearly $987,000 in state matching funds and about $116,000 in interest earnings, according to the records from the Comptroller's Office...

Darryl Mitteldorf, chairman of the New York State Prostate Cancer Coalition, also described frustration, yet the fact that the money remains available is a "stunning opportunity," he said

"There's a great deal of money that could be used to help men with prostate cancer in New York state that seems to have been designed to be diverted to an organization in California," Mitteldorf said.

"We feel that money could be best used as intended — to serve the men of New York state with improved prostate cancer research and awareness."

www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/13/ny-tax-checkoff-funds-for-cancer-research-sit-idle/2974043/
Posted 10/17/2013 9:58 PM (GMT 0)
Just an FYI,
The DoD peer reviewers are hard at work through both sequester and the shutdown has ended. I am a DoD reviewer and we are in mid-process for 2013 grants.

Tony
Posted 10/17/2013 10:01 PM (GMT 0)
Also,
At SWOG, we have not as yet been heavily affected by poor government practices. The FDA has not been available for review of new trials but they should be back online quickly. Existing trials have been moving along fine. The NIH advocates have been on leave but again returning right away.

Tony
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply