[caymanjim]

Cancer needs sugar. One of the primary ways they detect cancer is via a PET-CT with a radioactive glucose tracer. It lights up where glucose uptake is the highest. This article talks about starving cells going into defensive repair mode, but also about how energy-hungry cancer cells are.

I had cancer (lymphoma) and did three years of chemo (mostly maintenance/preventative, as it was wiped out in the first couple months). I actually gained an enormous amount of weight, because the steroids I was on (and all the weed I smoked) made me ravenously hungry. If I end up in that situation again, I'm going to make a concerted effort to dramatically reduce my calorie intake, and in particularly carbs, because I've read a lot about the potential benefits of starving the cancer out.

[agumonkey]

A young biology researcher pitched in to explain the warburg factor in tumors, he made a long paragraph explaining the oh so twisted metabolysm of cancerous cells. The amount of counter intuitive disruptions that mechanically benefited the tumoral tissue was .. almost impressive.

[faeyanpiraat]

Could you give examples?

[agumonkey]

I forgot but let me try:

- cancerous cells often break the mitochondria forcing cell into a secondary respiration mode

- they also trigger vascular growth but chaotically

- since the cell is in this alternative respiration, they don't need normal arteries to get energy so the chaotic arterial network they grow is not a problem

- IIRC this network also impedes chemotoxins to reach the cell as fast as normal cells

- if you starve your body from sugar, you'll hurt the normal cells (which are in full respiration mode) while the cancerous will keep their metabolysm

It was a bunch of things like this but when you take distance, you have a dysfunctional cell that somehow is setup to construct a near perfect bed of survival in his own destructive processes.. it's almost smart.

[blithedale]

Good stuff.

Also of note is tumor heterogenity. Not only are cancers different between cell origin and across different patients, cancer is not one uniform genetic entity even inside a single person.

Why? The cancer's ability to repair DNA mutations is crap, so different chunks of tumor can rapidly evolve different mutations.

You might be able to drug one portion of the tumor based on a fancy receptor/biomarker, but that tumor chunk will get outcompeted by a different cancer blob that doesn't express that.

[agumonkey]

Yes, and this was ignored for quite a while at least at the mainstream level.

I've read not too long ago that a tumor is actually mostly an outer layer of active cells, the inner is made up of dead tumors probably serving as nutrient (<= very blurry on this). yet another part of that strange anti-life living form named cancer.

[C1sc0cat]

Oh Steroids and weed now that is some serious munchies - I used to joke the prednisolone (a common steroid) was the Homer Simson drug.