Saturday, August 31, 2013
of CANCER STEM CELLS, MICE, AND SHMOOS
Linda and lobster pots
Newfoundland, , 2001
Are you old enough to remember the cartoon strip Li’l Abner? It was drawn by Al Capp and was one of the funniest things around; often it was the only compelling reason to open the Sunday Riverside Enterprise of my youth. Anyway, for a time it featured the most benign creature ever conceived – the Shmoo. The Shmoo was a small, round, smiling creature that existed only to ascertain the wishes of humans (seemingly by mental telepathy), then happily turning into whatever was wanted. If you were hungry, for instance, the Shmoo would suddenly become a hamburger. Presumably if you were vegan it would become a vegi-burger, with a certified organic, gluten-free, whole wheat bun.
Well, there aren’t any Shmoos in this world, but there ARE laboratory mice. The laboratory mouse has given its life to benefit humans for many decades. More have just died to give us important information about cancer stem cells. They may not have died gladly, but no doubt they went straight to mouse heaven with no pause to clear purgatory.
So, anyway, the British journal Nature has published an important paper about the role of stem-like cells in epithelial ovarian cancer. The principal author appears to be A. Nikitin to whom the Marsha Rivkin Center gave a nice grant in 2011. The gist of the matter is that his research team seems to have shown that there are stem-like cells lurking in “niches” in the epithelium of ovaries. They have a positive role; they repair small tears caused by ovulation. However, this research also points out that they are particularly susceptible to cancer-causing mutations. (This may account for the fact, that the more you ovulate, they greater your chance of contracting ovarian cancer.) They investigated this hypothesis by first detecting and then isolating mouse epithelial cells with stem-like properties, then injecting them into eight lady mice that previously had several tumor-suppressor genes “knocked out”. (How this is done is just as much a mystery to me as it is to you, of course.) Anyway, seven of these unlucky mice developed ovarian cancer.
I can’t actually discern any immediate applicability of this discovery to human OVCA, but the more we know about the enemy, the sooner we can defeat him. I got that quotation from The Art of War. Not really, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.
I previously blogged about cancer stem cells on 8/22/12 and again on 8/26/12
Do you want to read more about ovarian cancer stem cells?
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257367.php
Do you want to know more about Dr. Nikitin?
Do you want to learn more about Shmoos?
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