Complex Insight - Understanding our world

Uterine cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women, and the most common gynecological cancer. Researchers at the University of Iowa are using high-performance computing (HPC) to investigate how a tumor develops in normal uterine epithelium.

The majority of cancer research presumes that every cell in a tumor is driven by the same genetic alterations and follows same pathway to malignancy. Dr. Donghai Dai, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the Carver College of Medicine, doesn’t think that’s the case. He believes the billions of cells that make up a tumor may each have their unique mutations that cause them to deviate from normal cell behavior. So, Dai and his team are taking a single-cell approach to studying the development of tumors. With complex mathematical models and the Helium computing cluster, administered by Information Technology Services, they can run simulations on millions of representative uterine cells each day. The researchers determine the fate of the cells through incorporation of the combined effect of numerous random mutations and varying hormonal stimulations. Click on the image or title to learn more.

Cells are  naturally receptive to external influence, and this gives an opportunity  to manipulate a cell to achieve a desired function or outcome. To do this a deeper understanding of when and where to apply external influences is required. The application of network controllability theory may be the key to systematic reasoning about which nodes to target to achieve global impact toward a desired outcome, and when to target them in a perturbed system, such as cancer. Interesting paper discussing possibilies of applying systems theory of networks to biology. Worth a read. Click on image or title to learn more.

Up until now, scientists could only calculate the mass of large groups of molecules, by ionizing them (giving them an electric charge) and then seeing how strongly they interacted with an electromagnetic field, a technique known as mass spectrometry. They had no way, however, of measuring the mass of a single molecule. This has now changed with Caltech scientists have created an ultra-sensitive device that can weigh an individual molecule for the first time.  By weighing each molecule, they were able to determine exactly which kind of IgM it was, hinting at potential future medical applications. The initial demonstration weighed a immunoglobulin M, or IgM molecule hinting at future medical applications. A kind of cancer known as Waldenström macroglobulinemia, for instance, is reflected by a particular ratio of IgM molecules in a patient’s blood, so future instruments building on this principle could monitor blood to detect antibody imbalances indicative of cancer. Click on the image or title to learn more.

Tumeric is long held in to have healing effects in ayurvedic medicine. Curcumin, a bioactive ingredient in the fragrant orange spice tumeric, is thought to be effective in suppressing tumor growth and promoting chemoprevention of certain cancers.

In this review article Bassel El-Rayes et al. summarise the recent studies which describe preventive and therapeutic effects of curcumin and its analogues. In particular they concentrate on the breast cancer model, as curcumin has shown responses in reversing the human breast cancer cell resistance against paclitaxel and may be responsible for the lower incidence of breast cancer in Asian countries. Click on image or title to learn more.

Article based on  a talk given by Mark Boguski of Harvard Medical School at a recent healthcare conference in Boston.  Article is by Jim Golden a practising LIfe Science data scientist and worth reading. 

Cancer is not a single disease. It’s hundreds of diseases. Each tumor can be many diseases that are constantly evolving, both in response to the environment in which the cancer cells grow and to treatments that are thrown at them.Understanding the complexity and interaction networks that govern why cells go into a cancering state is critical to understanding the diseases. This older article by David Gorski helps explain just why finding cures for cancer have been so elusive... Read more...