FAQ: Molecular modeling for drugs

6 facts about cell mutations, targeted therapies and approaches to cancer treatment

Cancer is known to mankind for a long time. It is a disease in which the treatment throughout the history of mankind is practically unable to achieve any success. With the advent of antibiotics people almost forget the terrible infections from plague and ending with syphilis. However, as the world population ages, the probability for each of us to meet growing cancer in life. Unfortunately, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent in the developed world since the late '80s, and decades of research, we do not see a significant breakthrough in the treatment of cancer. The increase in life expectancy of cancer patients was not due to the fact that there were revolutionary therapies for the last 20-30 years, but mainly because the cancer began to be diagnosed at an earlier stage. The problem is that the medicine can diagnose the disease at a phase where no treatment after a year in the number of cancer cells will be such that the weight or volume of the tumor will be measured already hundreds grams.

• 1.Genetic Background

The human body, like any animal organism comprises genes in its genome, which are used for cancer of the development. At first glance, this seems illogical. In order to grow from a single cell and become a human being, you must use the mechanisms that are at a mature age are dangerous or unnecessary. In particular, in order to prevent rejection of the fetus in the mother, the embryo cells learn to deceive her immune system, posing as "their own", and thus prevent the mother's immune system to destroy the embryo. This explains a lot of pathologies. This favorable evolution of the acquisition, but the same genes being activated in adulthood, can help a cancer cell to trick the immune system and prevent the destruction of cancer cells. To protect heart cells doctors use Meldonium for sale.

• 2.Age-related causes of cancer

In fact, the body of each adult healthy person - millions of cancer cells that are in balance with the body, and continuously determined cells of the immune system are destroyed. However, with age, the number of possible errors in the execution of the genetic program begins to grow, and at some point the amount of stress is greater than the possibility of damage control systems. At this point, the cancer cells are knocked loose. The danger lies in the fact that all signs are cells of the same organism. At first, they have almost the same genetic code as all other human cells, and it does not allow the protective systems to quickly identify them.

• 3.Mutation of cancer cells

Cancer cells begin to rapidly mutate, and new copies of the genome fight against the body's defense systems. New forms of these cells, which are absolutely not similar to the original cell or any other cells to the patient. Studies show that cancer swollen the same patient is not one type of cancer, and many species. In fact, it is not about how to deal with any one disease, but to fight with different, quite unlike forms of the disease. In this sense, there is no one disease - cancer. There are many different forms of cancer, and even in the case of each patient simultaneously realized very many different forms of cancer. It is for this reason that effective cancer control devices, except for surgery and very aggressive forms of chemotherapy or radiation therapy, has been invented.

• 4.Disadvantages of anti-cancer therapies

Another complicating factor is that the immune system is a major defense against human cancer. Cells of the immune system and tumor cells divide rapidly, and most of the therapies aimed at the destruction of rapidly dividing cells, at the same time lead to the destruction or suppression of immune functions. Thus, many treatment leads to the fact that the body gets strong toxicological damage and simultaneously suppressed immunity. We are talking about the fact that a lot of money in a very expensive hospital during the life of the patient increases less than a year.

• 5.Possibilities of targeted therapies

In this regard, the question arises: where to find a reason for the hope that cancer will ever be healed? Rapid progress can not be expected, but recent studies provide some hope. We must look for ways to distinguish between cancer cells and healthy people and come up with Targeted, specific therapies that allow the immune system to either recognize or specifically destroy those cells that are not strongly resemble the cells of healthy tissue.
In this way, in recent years there has been considerable progress. In particular, certain types of cancer could develop targeted agents, which allow to operate against a very specific genes activated only in cancer cells. Thus, in recent years has made significant strides in pediatric oncology, where the percentage of surviving patients was significantly increased. Also it managed to get a great response ( "response of patients") in some forms of cancer, such as breast cancer. specific markers have been developed, which allowed to identify the patient population for which certain specific tools would be useful, and get a very high percentage of cure in specific categories, even for small groups of patients.

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This approach has some advantages, but has some drawbacks. In order to apply a tablet or therapy genotyped individuals have first, and then determine that, for example, only 2% of the 100% of people will be able to respond to this therapy. It is extremely difficult clinical research in oncology. If only a percentage or a few percent of the entire population of patients respond to this drug, the pharmaceutical companies largely disappears the reason for which they are developing these drugs. After all, if the number of patients will be measured in tens or hundreds of thousands, this drug will receive the status of "Orphan Drug» (orphan drug), only work for a very small group of patients, which is unlikely to be able to create effective demand, in order to recoup the research.

Currently, biotechnology will likely move in the direction of the search universal mechanism that will effectively inhibit cancers using these or other unique arrangements. As the embryo is cheating mother's immune system in order to stay alive and cancer cells using this mechanism to control immunity. The destruction of this mechanism will not bring any damage to healthy cells, but is likely to help immunity or some means of immune therapy to cope with cancer. In 2013, in the second phase for the first time showed the success of GSK drug companies, which managed to get the immune-boosting drugs, raised its forecast for the survival of patients in combination with different forms of therapy or independently.

• 6.Glycolysis as an energy source

It is known that cancer cells use an entirely different way of breathing. When the immune system is trying to kill a particular cell of the organism, cell death occurs through the destruction of the mitochondria - a special organelle of the cell, which is responsible for energy production. Those cancer cells that were able to shut down the mitochondria, or get rid of it, obviously, can not be killed in this way, so after a few weeks or months after the onset of a cancerous disease in humans, almost all cancer cells breathe without mitochondria, using a completely different mechanism for energy It called "glycolysis". Glycolysis is ineffective, so it does not use the normal cells. Drugs that would cut out glycolysis, would be able to leave the cancer cells are starved and kill them either alone or in combination with other drugs. It is in this way recently in preclinical and early phase clinical trials, progress has been made with the drugs that control various forms of cancer metabolism.
So far there is no evidence other than animal testing, that this approach or an approach that is associated with immune therapy, will allow us to ever talk about the possibility of treatment of cancer patients. However, the fact that the attempts of the past dozen years to develop a drug to target a narrow group of people against specific markers the researchers once again start to move towards a universal anti-cancer drugs with a wide effect, allows us to hope that sooner or later the disease will be controlled.