Chemo

I came across this article
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/06/health-chemotherapy-backfire-boost-cancer_n_1745856.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

Kongo said:

Wasn't sure
which article your initial post referred to but the one posted by Hopeful and Optimistic indicated that they looked at patients of different cancers that had been treated with chemo.

Also not sure what percentage of people being treated with chemo exhibit the effects triggered when the WNT-16 enzyme is released to combat the damage that the chemo is causing to healthy cells. Some of the stories I read indicated that "some" patients were affected.

I agree with you that there is always danger of a well-intentioned medical team doing something that actually harms us. In fact, the history of medicine is filled with this type of occurrence. It's good to be an informed patient.

In actuality though, I don't think that many men receive chemo for prostate cancer. I don't know the statistics, but just from reading this and other forums it is very rarely mentioned as a treatment protocol although I am sure it does occur. That's why I was asking Vasco, who has experience with medical treatment in other countries in Asia and Europe, what his experiences were with this.

K

Therapies for cancer “it sucks”
Mike and Kongo

I would get a Nobel Prize if I could give you a satisfying answer for what chemo or radiation do so that we get cured from PCa. I see things as I summarized here;

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57487560-10391704/chemotherapy-resistance-in-cancer-treatment-tied-to-nearby-proteins/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2184805/The-suggestion-chemotherapy-undermine-cause-anxiety-But-effective-treatments-rely-better-understanding.html

The gene WNT-16 was named for what it represents in the human genome and it got nearly 25,000 “friends” to get things moving in our systems. This protein is known to control a sort of regulatory networks in the established instructions of DNA. That can influence how stem cells “operate”, and such is helping Scientists in finding a supposed manipulation to increase or decrease (embryon development) their presence so that they can cause “repair” of a damaged cell or tissue, or they let them to die.

The “combination/reaction” of some chemos can provoke an over expression of the WNT16 gene but it does not “produce” the WNT-16 itself. An over expressive gene will cause a reaction in their “neighborhood” (as the article comments) and take the cells to function for the “good or the bad” of a disease.
Surely our cells are well prepared to survive and will react to any attempt for distorting their “natural” process of living. This is well explained in the Darwin’s principle on “natural selection”. You may want to refer to my previous thread “Many drugs are doomed to fail from the beginning; a Darwin’s Principle” and its links;
http://csn.cancer.org/node/243214

An over expressive gene would cause an over expressive reaction for survival. To manipulate this “action” in our benefit is what scientists are trying to find in their researches.
Radiation also cause over expression of genes. But it does not “identify” (or target) a particular one. In fact, radiation principle is to damage the DNA of cells (indiscriminately) which requires precision in its application. Nevertheless, destroying DNA is not easy. High doses are required and that may damage areas out of the purposed scope. Subdividing the dose into fractions is the common way. With newer methods it became possible of lesser number of fractions of higher intensity (CK) which assures a better “destruction” of the DNA.
RT is therefore a treatment requiring established targets. It is not the best treatment for cancer that has spread. Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy are better ways of reaching all parts of the body where the cancer may be hiding.
Damaging the DNA of a cell we want to kill or causing a inter reaction of our immune system to “affect” the embryonic development of a cell become the task to follow.
I believe that a well targeted drug/medication through gene expression will be the so much wanted Silver Bullet.

The choice for the best drug compound has been difficult to determine for the toxicity it causes in all cells. The goal therefore has been to find chemos able of killing cells population that divide quicker, under the pretention that cancerous cells are more “active” than the “normal” ones. The popular chemo drugs that better address such cellular behavior are Docetaxel (Taxotere), Estramustine (Emcyt), Vinblastine (Velban), Carboplatin (Paraplatin), Cabazitaxel (Jevtana), etc.

Surely all these chemos (in substance or gas form such as the agent-orange) are toxic because they destroy the cells so badly that upon division, the cell dies and with it we die. They also can damage other cells out of the “main scope”, as it circulates through the blood stream in our body, creating systemic environments. Probably this is the condition f our friends Veterans, Ralph, Mike, Kurt, …...

In some cancer types neoadjuvant therapy with chemo drugs have shown to be very effective. In many breast cancer cases (a cousin of prostate cancer ???) the chemo has caused the tumour to disappear entirely. They call it “complete pathological response” and this finding is apparent in the cases with adjuvant surgery, where the pathological report indicates negative results for any finding of cancer in the dissected tissues.

It seems that neoadjuvant or prime chemotherapy is more common practice in Europe and Japan than in the US, where it tends to be used as a salvage treatment or when others have failed. You may find some articles in regards to the matter where Chemo is classified as a “last hope” for extending life. However, I have read successful reports of patients whose doctors planned their combi treatment starting with chemotherapy. Nevertheless, in late stages cases chemo improvements were short lived. Don’t ask me Why.
I like the booklet from the National Cancer Institute about Chemotherapy. They do admit that some patients have benefited from an early administration.

Zytiga and other similar drugs are in fact a sort of chemos but they target specific enzymes of boddy function. They are grouped as second-line hormonal treatments for improving response.

For more reading on the molecular genetics of our prostate cancer, you may like to see this;
http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/24/18/1967.full

Where is the Martini?

The best to you.

VGama