New compound shrinks pancreatic cancer tumours, according to new study

Sunday, 28 June 2015 - 1:26pm IST | Place: London | Agency: PTI

Scientists have designed a new chemical compound that has reduced the growth of pancreatic cancer tumours by 80% in treated mice.

Scientists have designed a new chemicalcompound that has reduced the growth of pancreatic cancer tumours by 80% in treated mice.

The compound, called MM41, was designed to block faulty genes by targeting little knots in the DNA, called quadruplexes, which are very different from normal DNA and which are especially found in faulty genes. The findings showed that MM41 had a strong inhibiting effect on two genes - k-RAS and BCL-2 - both of which are found in the majority of pancreatic cancers.

Researchers at the University College London (UCL), led by professor Stephen Neidle, conducted a small-scale trial, treating two groups of eight mice with pancreatic tumours with different doses of MM41 twice a week for 40 days (12 doses). A further control group received no treatment.

The tumours in the group given the larger dose decreased by an average of 80% during the treatment period, and after 30 days, tumour regrowth stopped in all the mice. For two of the mice in this group, the tumour disappeared completely with no signs of regrowth after treatment ended for a further 239 days (the approximate equivalent to the rest of their natural life span).

Analysis of the mice tumours showed that the MM41 compound had been taken up into the nucleus of the cancer cells showing that it was able to effectively target the pancreatic cancer tumour. The team also saw no significant side effects on the mice during the study: there was no damage to other tissue or organs, and none of the mice showed any significant weight loss.

"This research provides a potentially very powerful alternative approach to the way that conventional drugs tackle pancreatic cancer, by targeting a very specific area of the DNA of faulty genes," said Neidle. "One of the genes that MM41 blocks - the BCL-2 gene - is involved in regulating apoptosis, the body's natural process which forces cells to die if they become too damaged or unhealthy to be repaired.

"BCL-2 is present in high amounts in many tumours and helps cancer cells to survive, but when the BCL-2 gene is blocked by MM41 in mice, the cancer cells succumb to apoptosis and die," said Neidle. Neidle stressed that although these results are exciting, MM41 is not ideal for trialling in humans and further refinements are needed.

The study was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

8 jaw-dropping photos from NASA's new image gallery

Space agency's new online repository of more than 100,000 photos is now available to all Earthlings.

The Cat's Eye Nebula, which is 3,000 light-years from Earth, as captured by the Hubble telescope. (Photo: NASA)

If you're a fan of incredible space photography, you're going to love the massive new digital gallery NASA just made available.
Built by Luna Imaging, the gallery is composed of more than 138,000 high-quality shots from 70 collections covering everything from the Apollo missions to the Hubble telescope, Mars rovers, International Space Station and much more.
“We envision that NASA Images will appeal to space fans, STEM educators, visual resource fans, archive fans, people who appreciate open collections,” a Luna spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email. “We’ve already had some interest in the site from people with GIS and geospatial interests because of the satellite imagery the collection includes.”
Below are some beautiful images we located with just a few keyword searches. To have your own look around, hit the gallery here.
1. Supernova N49

Photo: NASA

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, N49 is the remains of a supernova that has since transformed into a stringy thing of beauty. It was captured here by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006.
2. Mars revealed in stunning detail

Photo: NASA
In 1976, the world received its clearest view yet of the surface of Mars thanks to hundreds of high-quality photos sent back from NASA's Viking mission to the red planet. Pictured in this shot is Valles Marineris, a 2,500-mile-long mega-canyon that spans some 20 percent of the surface of Mars and reaches depths of more than 4 miles.
3. Our place in the Milky Way

Photo: NASA
NASA's new gallery also includes access to a number of informative and beautiful artist renditions, like this one marking our place in the Milky Way galaxy.
4. Lunar training

Photo: NASA
Some incredible behind-the-scene photos — including this one from 1968 showing a NASA Langley researcher "moon walking" — are also available.
5. Space walk rescue system test

Photo: NASA
In 1994, Astronauts Carl J. Meade and Mark C. Lee performed in an in-space demonstration of a space walk rescue. NASA recently celebrated 50 years of successful space walks with the release of the documentary "Suit Up."
6. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts Jupiter

Photo: NASA
In the summer of 1994, the world watched as 21 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed in Jupiter, the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of solar system objects. The impacts were massive, but one in particular, that of fragment G, exploded with a power estimated at more than 600 times the world's nuclear arsenal.
7. Coronal rain on the sun

Photo: NASA
Turns out it does rain on the sun — just not the kind any of us would want to experience. In this photo captured by the orbiting TRACE telescope, coronal rain — plasma riding magnetic waves above the sun's surface — is falling back to the surface as it cools. The average temperature of this "rain"? A searing 107,540 degrees Fahrenheit.
8. A view of Earth from Saturn
Saturns rays

Photo: NASA
The pale blue dot, the term coined for the ultimate Earth selfie, continues to amaze as NASA spacecraft move further through the solar system. In this spectacular shot captured by the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn in 2006, we see the planet's stunning array of rings. And then, to the left of the first brightest ring, you see it: a pale blue dot, our home, more than 746 million miles away.

Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists

New theory explains many of the bizarre observations made in quantum mechanics.

Do parallel worlds ever cross paths? (Photo: Martin Brigden/flickr)

Quantum mechanics, though firmly tested, is so weird and anti-intuitive that famed physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Attempts to explain some of the bizarre consequences of quantum theory have led to some mind-bending ideas, such as the Copenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation.
Now there's a new theory on the block, called the "many interacting worlds" hypothesis (MIW), and the idea is just as profound as it sounds. The theory suggests not only that parallel worlds exist, but that they interact with our world on the quantum level and are thus detectable. Though still speculative, the theory may help to finally explain some of the bizarre consequences inherent in quantum mechanics, reports RT.com.
The theory is a spinoff of the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics — an idea that posits that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual, though parallel, world. One problem with the many-worlds interpretation, however, has been that it is fundamentally untestable, since observations can only be made in our world. Happenings in these proposed "parallel" worlds can thus only be imagined.
MIW, however, says otherwise. It suggests that parallel worlds can interact on the quantum level, and in fact that they do.
"The idea of parallel universes in quantum mechanics has been around since 1957," explained Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and one of the physicists to come up with MIW. "In the well-known ‘Many-Worlds Interpretation’, each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made. All possibilities are therefore realised – in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonised by the Portuguese."
"But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all," he added. "On this score, our "Many Interacting Worlds" approach is completely different, as its name implies."
Wiseman and colleagues have proposed that there exists "a universal force of repulsion between ‘nearby’ (i.e. similar) worlds, which tends to make them more dissimilar." Quantum effects can be explained by factoring in this force, they propose.
Whether or not the math holds true will be the ultimate test for this theory. Does it or does it not properly predict quantum effects mathematically? But the theory is certain to provide plenty of fodder for the imagination.
For instance, when asked about whether their theory might entail the possibility that humans could someday interact with other worlds, Wiseman said: "It's not part of our theory. But the idea of [human] interactions with other universes is no longer pure fantasy."
What might your life look like if you made different choices? Maybe one day you'll be able to look into one of these alternative worlds and find out.
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