Cancer

Sunday, October 11, 2015

9:43 PM

Mitosis - different types of cells undergo at different rates

Skin cells - course of hours
Some cells - take days or weeks
What controls cell cycle
Why do they go more frequently
Number of factors

Tell a cell weather to divide or not

Some internal

Cells have genes called checkpoint genes - spots in cell cycle

Gene activity
Gene products made (proteins)
Tell cell to speed up or slow down or stop cell cycle
External factors Cells can get signals from other cells to divide
Contact inhibition - when cells bump into other cells they sense that contact and
chemical signals involved and cells stop growing

Contact inhibitaion - grow cells in culture - clusters of cell Cells begin to divide cover whole bottom of a dish
Cover just one cell thick
Once cells bump into other cells
Chemical signals - vice versa to stop dividing
Take a little spatula and remove cells from one cell thick mat and find cells start
dividing again to fill up empty space

Cell cycle out of control - cancer cells

Cells out of control
A lot of different controls that are lacking
One - contact inhibition
Cancer cells don't stop dividing when they bump into each other - they keep on
going
Mass of cancer cells - called tumor
Ancorage Many cells - require substrate to attach to to start dividing
Cancer cells divide even if they are floating around in blood stream
Makes very dangerous

Cancer cells
Other control thing lacking - that they don't stop dividing keep on going
Most mammal cells can only divide 20/50 times udner culture conditions before they
stop, age, and die
Sort of limit to the lifetime of cells
Cancer cells - divide indefinitely
No internal ticker
No time to go
Cell llines in culture today
More than 50 years ago - no indication of slowing down cell division

Why do cells get out of control?

A number of possibilities

Mutation - most common reason

Check point genes
Determine when cell divides or how frequently
If those genes - become damaged or mutated
Checkpoints not there anymore
Cell free to go on its way
Induce cancer - oncogense - oncology
Ancology - study of cancer
Where do mutations come from
Can be inherited by parents - ticking time there
Carcinogens or mutagens - variety of chemicals, radiation, viruses Everyone experiences
But also from nuclear waste such as chernobyl
Viruses - insert their dna into dna of host
When that happens
If viral genes in middle of normal gene
Sticking screwdriver in machine
Not work well after that

What happens when we have cancer cells?

Some cases - cells remain localized - adhere to home tissue they are established in
Get tumor
Benign tumor - mass of cancerous cells - dont go anywhere else
These cancers dealt with - surgical removal of tumor
Run into problems
Maligament - cells in tumor no longer are wedded to home tissue they started out in
Migrate to neighboring tissues and get into blood stream and move around body
and establish strongholds around and create new tumors
Spread of cancer to other areas - refered to as metastasis

Cancer
Second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease (heart attacks, strokes,
so on)

Half a million deaths due to cancer

Cancer - 25% of all US deaths
Leading cancer killers
Lung disease followed by prostate, colon/rectum cancer
Woman lung, breast, colon/rectum

Cancer number 1 - due to smoking

Woman lagged behind in terms of lung cancer
Smoking rates increased in woman and so have lung cancer

Mortality rates for cancer - declined - tools for dealing with it but no major
breakthrough
No silver bullet to stop it

Cancer treatments - attempt to kill cancer cells using same mutagens (carcinogens)
that acused cancer in the first place
Radiation, chemotherapy cause mutations in dividing cells
Rapidly dividing cancer cells more affected than normal cells
Cell divides - lots of things going on
Chromosoems - go in right places
Very vulnerable time for cells
Chemicals or radiation present - than when the cell is making copy of DNA to put in
new cell
May make mistakes - mutation is - mistake when new DNA gets made
Bad thing - causes cancer cells
But what you can do - fight fire with fire and go after cells with own medicine

Bombard cancer cells with radiation and chemicals - they also begin to break down suffer sufficient mutation and can't function as dividing cells
Cancer dead
Fight fire with fire
Means that you're putting normal cells at risk
Cancer cells - rapidly divinding cells
Mutagen, carcinogens
Cells that are dividing rapidly - most vulnerable
Many cases - treatments affect other cells
Hair cells fall out and so on
Under cancer treatment
Most affected cells - cancer cells

Left - raised red bump

Right - dark colored melanoma
These skin cancers - all cancers
Some are more dangerous than others
Basal cell carcinoma
Squarmous cell carcinoma
Cut off or burned off and controled

Mallignant melonoma - serious - cells can metastosise - go other places

Skin cancer
Types of cancer with highest frequency
Omst frequent
Over lifetime 1 in 6 americans - develop skin cancer
Half a million new cases every year and increasing
Frequency going up
Good news - many kinds of skin cancers do not cause death
Death rate only 7500 year
A lot of people but only with respect to other causes of death
Hundreds of thousands
Mostly from melanoma
Important to catch all skin cancers but particular melonoma
Skin cancer - we know that its caused by mutation
But mutation occurred many many years before cancer manifests itself
Whats happening - delayed affect cumulative damage
Mostly before age 20
Skin cancer at age 40 or 50
Due to one severe sunburn at 18 on beach
Most damamge - done before age 20
Interesting things
How it works
All cells have a suicide switch gene

Responsible for assessing general health of cell

Cripled by mutations
Suicide - pulls lever and cell dies
Skin cancer - suicide switch gene - gets mutated
Cell without a switch to tell it when its becoming cripled by mutations
Continues on even though theres mutations
Mutations cause cell to grow out of control
Prevent skin cancer
Main source is ultraviolet radiation from sun
Avoid ultraviolet radiation
Hard to do
Live in sunny places
Things you can do to prevent ultraviolet radiation from penetrating
Use sun screen
Was a time - sun tan lotion
Thing with sunscreen
Promoted burning and getting tan
Get things with sunprotection, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 whatever
People use these and we find certainly many parents use on young children playing
in sun
However
A new study released - only 34% use sunscren routinely during summer
1-2 very bad sun burns during summer
Very bad burns - new skin cancers
Most people - getting tan very important to them

More important than posibility of skin cancer 20 or 30 years down road

30% of all cancer deaths are related to smoking

Cancer plus other diseases caused by smoking (such as cardiovasular disease) kill
half a millilon people pear year in US and 3 million worldwide
10% of smoking related deaths are from second hand smoke
Primarily causes lung cancer
In fact even if non smoker - affected by smoking
10% of smoking related deaths not smokers themselves - lived in house with
smoker
Someone smoking in workplace
Many places do not allow smoking in workplace
Many resturaunts don't allow smoking in resturaunts

Smoking
27% of americans smoke
Down slightly over last decade
And down from 44% in 1964
20% of high school seniors smoke daily
Except in cases where lungs have been physically damaged *emphysema) quitting
smoking can lower the risk of death to that of non-smokers in 10-15 years

Other way - make sure don't recruit new people in smoking category
Not doing real good job
A lot of smoking going on at earlier ages
More difficult for people to quit at some point

Quitting - can lower risk of death

Something that smokers may not realize
Damage already done - enjoy smoking - live out rest of life as smoker
Lower risk of death to non smokers in 10-15 years
40 year old - been smoker and stop smoking 55 - probability of death not different
of 55 year old person
Some effects are reversable
Physical damage to lungs
Any kind - not reversable
Encouraging and incentive - stop smoking now - reduce risk of death