Looking for a direction

[Andy]

I am in the navy and am looking at going to college for Bioengeneering when i get out.  My goal is to find a cure for cancer through Bioengeneering and genetics.  I am looking for some guidance  a direction if you will, on where to go.  I have been reading and researching what people have done and what I would like to do.  I have read in one book that there is a group in Whales that has actually come up with a drug free "cure" by way of the body, using proteins to signal "suicide" in the cancer cells.  After reading this I started to realize that finding a "cure" isn't the actual problem that I would be facing.  The true problem would be keeping the cure out of big blockbuster cooperation's  hands while making it cheap and accessible to the general public at as little cost as possible.  To do something like that a person would have to perfect the process of multiplying the results with as little effort as possible. I don't know where to begin...any ideas?

[Reason]

Make the thing first, then worry about accessibility. Once it exists there
are any number of ways to go about making it more available, and those
options will be more practical as biotechnology access spreads and ignoring
IP protections on biotechnology becomes economically ever more viable. Until
then, get the horse in front of the cart.

On methodologies, mole rats of the naked and blind varieties are possibly a
better place to look rather than whales. There are existing research groups
investigating the mechanisms that keep these animals cancer-free, and so
there will be places to sign up and help work on the issue when you have a
degree in hand.

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/11/the-mechanism-of-blind-mole-rat-c
ancer-immunity.php
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/revisiting-naked-mole-rats-and-th
eir-lack-of-cancer.php

There's also WILT in the SENS catalog of potential therapies if you're
feeling ambitious.

http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/nuclear-mutations

The next 20 years of the cancer mainstream look very much like a matter
focusing on targeted therapies using the immune system and/or nanoparticles
and/or viruses, however. Methods of detection are the thing, and it looks
likely that there will be some 80/20 combinations of marginally
cancer-associated cell surface markers that enable a targeted therapy to
reliably enough kill off cancer cells in preference to normal cells. The
important part of that process is finding the marker combinations, as there
are any number of viable ways to kill cells in the lab today without harming
their neighbors.

So the robust 80/20 "cure for cancer" in 2030 will be some combination of
targeted therapies based on overlapping cell surface marker detection
protocols that between then cover near all of the cancer space. How fast and
well that all comes to pass depends on how many broad and useful markers for
cancer cells turn out to exist. e.g.:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/03/more-on-cd47-as-a-potentially-bro
ad-cancer-therapy-target.php

Reason

[Josiah Zayner]

Andy,
Try and acquire as good grades as possible so you can be accepted to a good graduate school they will pay for your tuition and give you money to live. Study hard, real hard. Science can seem easy at first glance but there are so many details that are not apparent at first. There are probably close to 1 million Ph.D. level scientists in the world working on problems that might seem easily solvable at first glance to non-scientists.

Obviously if you are looking for direction on where to goto school I would say "the best school you can go to". People can thrive at even mediocre universities but to have the best chance to be a great thinker one really needs to be around other great thinkers. US News and other websites have school rankings.

You can do science or be a scientist. Being a scientist is a lifestyle. It means a life of constantly learning and nurturing your brain and experimentation. Start living that now. Pick up a textbook. Start with Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts and then progress as you see fit into Wolpert or Lehninger. Most importantly go to school if gives a regime and structure to "force" you to learn.

[Dakota Hamill]

Make use of being in the Navy as well. I'm sure there are some smart,
driven, highly talented people that have gone onto careers in sciences
and started (or are still in) the US Navy. The Navy has some
excellent research programs, and gives a lot of money towards medical
degrees. I don't know who around you would know about it but, I'm
sure some officer or recruiter or flight surgeon might.

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Andy <milacaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am in the navy and am looking at going to college for Bioengeneering when i get out.  My goal is to find a cure for cancer through Bioengeneering and genetics.  I am looking for some guidance  a direction if you will, on where to go.  I have been reading and researching what people have done and what I would like to do.  I have read in one book that there is a group in Whales

Do you mean the marine animals or the geographical location Wales?

 

that has actually come up with a drug free "cure" by way of the body, using proteins to signal "suicide" in the cancer cells.  After reading this I started to realize that finding a "cure" isn't the actual problem that I would be facing.  The true problem would be keeping the cure out of big blockbuster cooperation's  hands while making it cheap and accessible to the general public at as little cost as possible.  To do something like that a person would have to perfect the process of multiplying the results with as little effort as possible. I don't know where to begin...any ideas?

there are lot's of ideas for curing cancer. You've basically just gotta start reading, in a year or two of basic chem and molecular bio, you should expect to have a basic schematic of how cells work (from a very broad perspective, that is of course ever changing and growing and refining itself). I then recommend spending another year learning about instrumentation and basic electronics, and another year of intensive biotech and chem lab courses. If you want to do this at a University, on a normal schedule you'd probably spend 4.5 to 5 years.

I went to RIT for their Biotech program, it was pretty good, but it's not MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley or Cornell. Those places have good cash flow, they all each have their own 'genomics core'. If you can get into a school like that and succeed with the structure, aim as high as you can.

[Ravasz]

Hi,

I think that finding a cure for cancer is a very noble goal. However, I have studied the topic a lot myself, and came to the conclusion that probably no single cure exists. There are many different cancers in humans, each with very different causes and symptoms. For some cancers we have a cure already, but for many we have none.

Also, there are tens of thousands of groups are working on finding a cure each day. There is so much work done on cancer in general, that even keeping up with all their results is impossible. Therefore my suggestion would be to enroll at a uni which you find suitable, and once you've mastered bioengineering, then focus on a smaller topic like a certain form of gastric cancer or a lymphoma of your choice.

I think you have plenty of time to think about what your therapy will cost once its ready. The project I am working on is expected to be available to patients in around 20 years. I hope to live to see it, there is a lot of work to be done on it. So the price of the therapy is of little concern at the moment. We focus our efforts on making it work.

If you want to avoid big pharma from the start then you should keep in mind that biochemical research is expensive. Consumables can easily cost a thousand dollars a day for a single researcher, and there are various machines required which cost millions. If big pharma likes your idea, then they can provide this background, however, they will want to get their investment back when selling the developed therapy.

Doing good research without such a background is much harder. DIYbio aims to do research on the budget, and although the community has achieved impressive things, I have to admit that the big pharma approach is a simply more productive, albeit also more expensive solution at the moment.

If you want to get an idea on how doing bioengineering looks like, you could try to write to a lab in your area, and ask to do a visit. Pharma companies will not allow you in, but university groups are usually very friendly, and will probably show you around if they see you are genuinely interested. So for starters, you could maybe call one up, tell them your story, and ask for a visit.

Best,
Mate

[Matthew Anderson]

I do mean the country wales that was a typo.

--
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+un...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio?hl=en.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/-/CMR3LJZQYOQJ.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.