Cancer

[John Clark]

The journal Nature Immunology published an article yesterday that I think could be pretty important in the war on cancer:

CRISPR–Cas9 screening reveals ubiquitous T-cell cancer targeting via the monomorphic MR1 protein 

It's been Known for some time that T-cells can be extracted from a cancer patient and genetically modified with CRISPR to produce a receptor for the patient's cancer and therefore label it as malignant so the immune system can attack it. This has produced some very good results for some cancers like leukemia but unfortunately the treatment must be personalized for each patient and is far less effective in dealing with large solid cancers. But in this new discovery they found a  protein called MR1 that does not change from person to person and exists on the surface of many different types of cancers. When they used CRISPR to make T-cells to produce a receptor for this MR1 protein the results have been encouraging.

So far they've only tried it with mice and with human cells in vitro, but at least in those limited circumstances it has been shown to kill lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney, and cervical cancer cells but seems to have no effect at all on non-cancerous normal cells. And one size fits all, no personalization is needed. It remains to be seen if this works as well in clinical trials, sometimes they don't, but one can hope.

Scientist Finds New Blood Cell That Kills Cancer While Ignoring Healthy Cells

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

My favorite paper on Cancer is the famous Spanish paper of 2000:

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/37948

It is a (re)discovery, in Spain, that THC cures some cancer, and indeed in way killing only cancerous cells without harming healthy cells. The original discovery was made in 1974 by Americans, but has been hidden to the general public, and I have never found a copy of the publication.

This explained a little bit here:

http://www.mapinc.org/newstcl/v01/n572/a11.html

When I read this in the book on Hemp by Jack Herer, I thought that he was exaggerating or just doing pro-cannabis propaganda, but everything Jack Herer said in his book has been confirmed, including the “conspiracy” against letting people know this. After all the American were paid to prove that cannabis provoke cancer, and the boss was not happy with the result!

Note also that since then, many other cannabinoids having a negative impact on cancer has been found. The CBD has also anti-cancerous properties, and according to which kind of cancer needs to be treated, the relative concentration of different cannabinoids plays an important rôle. 

Another interesting paper is

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6387667/

Bruno

John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

A Heronian triangle (from Hero of Alexandria) is a (planar) triangle with integer sides having also an integer area.

Note that all Pythagorean triangles are Heronian triangles, but they are not the only one.

A superhero triangle is an Heronian triangle whose perimeter is the same as its area.

Does that even exist? Or is there an infinity of them?

How could an answer to such natural question be considered as conventional?

The actual answer is that there are 5, and only 5 superhero triangles.

Here is a cute video explaining why that is the case. It is rather simple, and you might lean a cute formula for the area of the triangle not involving its height.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIjeCKPHbso

Note how particular integers arise in this context. The interest in such triangle can be conventional, but the truth of their existence and of their properties cannot be.

This is a different argument against computationalism than the usual argument I made already by mentioning the no-go theorem. If the mathematical reality was only a matter convention, I would decide that all triangles are superheroes!

Bruno