A quick layman's primer on cancer and treatment.
Cancer is not a communicable disease in the normal sense. While cancers can be triggered by injury, disease, radiation, poisons and genetic predisposition, cancer arises primarily by small defects which occur naturally in the normal cell division process which occurs continuously in all living animals and man.
In the body, cells are constantly being renewed as old cells die or are damaged. This process is essential for continuing life and it is remarkably robust, billions of cells are renewed daily, all perfect reproductions of the "parent" cell. However the process is not quite perfect, and every day "imperfect" reproductions of all sorts of cells are produced. The presence of poisons, radiation, irritants etc. can damage the cell division process and increase the chance of imperfect or mutated cells being created. However many of these mutated cells arise just by chance without any known "trigger" present.
Although damaged in some way some of these mutated cells retain the ability to divide and reproduce themselves, and these cells are the ones that can give rise to cancer. In fact potential cancer producing cells are generated by this process in every person's body every day, but obviously we don't all develop clinical cancer on a daily basis.
The reason for this is elegantly simple. The body has a built in defense system to protects itself from foreign invaders like bacteria and viruses which also is effective in detecting "damaged" or mutated cells created by faulty cell division and destroying them. The defense system is composed of an interrelated system of chemical agents and cells which combine to perform this function which is called the immune system. It requires no drugs or medicines to function and if it fails a quick death is inevitable. It is
failure of certain parts of the immune system that makes aids so deadly. Also aids patients invariably develop cancers of types uncommon in healthy people because their immune system is compromised.
So here is the question. If the immune system is working properly why do apparently healthy people develop cancer at all? There are a number of reasons but the major one is this: The changes in the cancer cells are not detected by the immune system as being abnormal.
All normal cells created have a chemical signature which allows the immune system to identify the cells as "normal" or "foreign". Most mutated cells and foreign invaders have an alien "signature" and therefore the immune system recognises them as the enemy and destroys them. Any mutated cancer cells which don't fly their true colours and
express their "foreign" nature are therefore spared because the immune system doesn't recognise them. So they continue to multiply, taking up space, sapping the body of nutriment and crowding out and destroying other essential tissues.
Obviously if the immune system of the body could recognise all cancer cells the incidence of cancer would be reduced to almost zero. In rare but significant cases, cancer patients suddenly recover without medical intervention and without relapses. These are the patients reported in the tabloids as "Patient given a month to live by doctors now completely cured".
The reasons for the cure are always reported as something miraculous, the laying on of hands by a faith healer, the taking of huge doses of vitamins or a new herbal tea. Of course any last ditch attempt made by the desperate patient who is suddenly cured becomes credited with his recovery. In almost all cases the cure was effected by the patient's own immune system when it finally managed to identify the cancer cells. When that happened the normal destruction of the damaged cancer cells began and recovery was quick and complete.
It is this natural, but uncommon phenomena that the Genemax technology is designed to harness. In appropriate cancers (and not all will be appropriate) a treatment utilizing Genemax's technology will cause the previous "invisible" cancer to become recognized as an invader by the immune system and then, the patient's own natural defense will allow the body to cure itself. All characteristics of a living cell are ultimately formed by the genetic material within that cell. Change the genes and you can change the cell. The idea is simple but effecting a change to a living cell's genetic make-up while it is within the body is not easy.
The reason the cancer cell cannot be recognized is because changes within it's own genetic make-up no longer produce the right chemical substances that allow recognition to be expressed. If those genetic changes could be modified then the cancer cell would be able to be recognized and subsequently destroyed.
The way that Genemax introduces the right genetic material into the cell is to introduce it into a harmless virus which then invades the cells and transfers the genetic material into them. Viruses can easily invade large numbers of cells quickly as anyone who has had a common cold already knows. This technique of using viruses or virus like particles to transport genetic material into cells already occurs in nature commonly with bacteria where resistance to an antibiotic can be transferred from one species of bacteria to another. It has also been used commercially in plants and experimentally in a wide range of applications.
Most of the present treatments for cancer involve either surgery (cut it out) radiation (burn it up) or chemotherapy (poison it). Unfortunately all have limitations and stress an already ill patient further. Surgery works with nice discrete lesions but spreading cancers in all forms are poor candidates. It is just impossible to find and cut out thousands of cancer cell clusters in an affected patient.
Radiation also needs the cancer to be accurately placed and defined. Radiation damages or kills all cells, not just the cancer. Careful aiming and dosing of radiation beams or placing of radioactive substances can minimize the collateral damage but doesn't eliminate it. Using radiation to destroy cancer is rather like using a shot gun to kill cockroaches in your kitchen. You might get a lot of them; you are sure to miss a few; but you are going to make a mess of the furniture and appliances.
Chemotherapy is the current great hope, and most of the companies looking to strike it rich today are all developing a better poison for cancer. Now it's not hard to find poisons that kill cancer cells; there are dozens of them. However all of them are also very toxic to other body cells as well, so in order to get a dose that will kill 100% of the cancer cells it is possible that if enough normal cells and tissues are also killed and the patient will be cured of cancer but die from the treatment. Invariably one of the most sensitive body systems to chemotherapeutic agents is the immune system itself. So in attacking cancer by chemotherapy you are also damaging the main natural line of defense.
Chemotherapy dosing is like dropping two groups (one group slightly fitter than the other) of non swimmers out to sea and see how many struggle home. Drop them too far out (too high a dose) and they all die. Drop them too close to shore and they all survive. If you can get exactly the right dose (or distance) you can separate many of the weaker from the stronger but even then all that get to shore will be exhausted.
So if the Genemax technology can be developed into a viable therapy it will be a huge advance in the fight against many potentially lethal cancers. It is not a drug or a poison. The chances look good and the theory and practice both show promise. Sure there are always hurdles to overcome and unknown problems.
However as Einstein once said "If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research, would it"....
AI
