Physics vs Biology in the Cure for Cancer

NCI Campus, Rockville, Maryland

From 2005-2012, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the US averaged an amount of $4.9 billion each year being put into cancer-related research.

Cancer Research UK spent £332 million on research activity in the 2011-2012 financial year.

Cancer research and treatment development consumes massive amounts of funding every year, but the cure for this universally-feared disease remains just out of reach.

Cancer cells, to a biologist, are pockets of chemical reactions and processes, capable of causing significant damage to healthy, living cells and genetic mutations in their cell recruits. Despite substantial funding which has fed into this all-important research, the US, for example, has seen a 5% decrease in cancer-related deaths since 1950. Although this is still an incredible number of lives saved, what more can be done to save future lives?

Perhaps the key to unlocking the mysterious fix lies with not a cancer biologist, but with a new type of mind - a physicist's mind.

In 2008, the NCI built 12 centres for physical science and oncology, designed for physicists, engineers and mathematicians to shed new light on cancerous cell behaviour.

Cells may be living things, but a physicist will consider other things than it's matter and behaviour: how about a cell's shape? Features in its structure such as pumps and levers? Properties of the membrane, the texture and design of the cell surface? "Many of these properties are known to change systematically as cancer progresses in malignancy."

Metastasis of the cancerous cells from the primary tumour.

Metastasis is the spread of cancer from its original position to another organ of the body. It is this which makes cancer so deadly.

Even if the primary tumour is removed, there is always the possibility that a new tumour could form and cause problems years later, due to a cancerous cell's ability to spread by entering the blood's circulation.

Four years after NCI proposed that physicists take a look at cancer, discoveries have been made concerning how the shape of a cancer cell changes during metastasis. Some are able to release "little molecular grappling hooks" or 'cadherins' to grip onto a blood vessel wall and 'nest' in the nearest organ.

Areolar extracellular matrix.

The new organ tissue may seem foreign but new research shows that cancer cells are able to alter the structure of the foreign organ's extracellular matrix - this section of tissue provides structural and defensive support to important tissues and organs.

So perhaps with the combined powers of biological and physical scientists, research for the treatment and ultimately cure for cancer will make some interesting leaps and bounds in the right direction. I think we should bring the three streams of science together more often (let's not forget Chemistry!), allowing different perspectives to be directed at the same problem. Surely things would be solved faster that way? No?

References: New Scientist, Wikipedia, National Cancer Institute, Cancer Research UK

I Wonder if Mario Was Dreamt Up by a Robot..?

Artificial Intelligence and Robots. All sounds a bit sci-fi, doesn't it? That may be, but there is some pretty cool stuff being done in the world by robotics and AI at this very moment...

Angelina, an Artificial Intelligence system built to design video games by creator Michael Cook, of Imperial College London, released her first game last December, A Puzzling Present.

Cook begins Angelina’s design process by presenting her with a game level that has no solution. Angelina then redesigns the level by applying ideas used in existing games, altering them, and adding further objects and obstacles, until she finds a solution. This may not seem too impressive, but what makes Angelina stand out in the field of AI is that it is able to invent its own additions to the game without outside help.

One example found an error in the initial level which Cook invented. This error enabled the game character to teleport inside a wall and yet still be able to jump. Angelina fixed this bug and modified the code to create a ‘wall-jump’ technique, allowing the character to climb a vertical wall by repeatedly jumping and teleporting up the surface.

Angelina is capable of finding multiple solutions to game levels, which can be used to help game-developers make their programs appropriately easier and harder. It will also be able to fix errors in games and offer new ideas for features of video games. Cook sees the development of AI systems like Angelina as a huge help in the gaming industry, which is worth approximately $50 billion worldwide, and potentially $70 billion by 2017. (Crikey, that's a lot of coppers...)

Anybody know of any other interesting AI systems or robots?

The Downfall of the Dinos... How Much Do We Really Know?

I am co-founder of my school's e-newspaper, which myself and a few like-minded friends set up just over a year ago with the aim of sharing important, relevant and also not-so-relevant-and-frankly-quite-wacky news stories with our school.

I love being a part of this and even more so, I love being able to research scientific and engineering developments for our e-paper. (As a side note, if anybody enjoys writing, browsing the internet and having an excuse to frequently meet up with friends and chow down on snackage, I highly recommend starting one yourself!)

I volunteered to compose our last issue's Big Article for the front page and found out some pretty interesting stuff about the dinos. I thought you guys might be interested to know!

251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, 90% of the world’s species became extinct. Why?

The current dominating theory is that the mass extinction was caused by volcanic eruptions across a vast expanse of land, now known as Siberia. This theory has never fully satisfied scientists; Daniel Rothman from MIT has been studying Permian rock samples and has announced that carbon levels around this time increased too quickly to have been caused by merely volcanoes. A likely cause for the concentration of carbon compounds is microbes.

Rothman and his team analysed the genetic information of a microbe called Methanosarcina*, a methane-producing microorganism accountable for the majority of today’s methane and discovered that it developed its ability to generate methane about 251 million years ago.

One catch is that Methanosarcina needs huge quantities of nickel to produce methane at such a rate. Siberian lava is rich in nickel and nickel levels shot up almost exactly 251 million years ago, which seems to suggest that volcanic eruptions triggered the production of methane by the Methanosarcina, which in turn triggered the extinction of so many species.

Anthony Barnosky from the University of California says, “It's a fascinating idea that the evolution of a new life form led to an extinction.” We still don’t know what exactly happened all those years ago, but we are getting closer, one microbe at a time. I'm not sure which theory is most likely, but this is quite compelling, don't you think?

*Frankly, this is far too difficult to pronounce. I propose we nickname this microbe Jeffrey, or Orlando. Thoughts? :D

I'm Dreaming of a White Christma- NO! PLEASE, NO!

December has been and gone, and now the New Year is upon us. In past years, January has brought us the gift of snow (or burden, as many more might like to think of it). Nevertheless, whether you love it or you hate it, snow could well be on its way.

Between the more common of sights, rain, and the white powder that falls from the heavens, snow, we have sleet. Sleet is rain that has frozen whilst falling down to Earth from the clouds, and is not a very pleasant weather to get caught in; it feels like rain is being thrown at you, rather than falling on you. This is very often confused with actual snow.

Snow is a more peculiar phenomenon. It is a form of precipitation made of snow crystals which fall from the clouds. These snow crystals are formed when water vapour within a cloud freezes. The details of this process are more complex but here's the 'nub and jist' of it:

     > in 'cold clouds', droplets of water vapour remain in their liquid state far below water's freezing point, because in order to freeze, certain molecules within the droplet need to bond together to form the necessary ice lattice at the heart of the droplet.

     > otherwise, in warmer regions of cloud, all it takes is a dust particle to come into contact with a droplet, et voila, a snow crystal is formed.

These snow crystals then begin to grow, and they can do this by two methods:

1. Coalescence
2. Deposition

You can think of a crystal growing by coalescence as a sponge; its environment is heavily saturated with water vapour and it engulfs (sticks to, absorbs) any droplets it collides with, growing in size and weight with each mouthful.

The water droplets freeze directly onto a crystal growing by deposition, until it is heavy enough to fall through the cloud, towards the ground.

Both these processes are employed by most snow crystals, and as they fall, they come into contact with more and more crystals and droplets. These accumulations are our snowflakes.

Have you ever found a weird and wonderful snowflake? If you have, drop us a comment! Cheerio! :)

References: Wikipedia, about.com, enotes