I didn’t write these (I found them on the Crazy Cat Lady’s page on Facebook), but they could easily be our own “rules for the cat” or cats, rather! 🙂 I would like to insert this one, right after the kitchen counter rule:

“OK, the cat can go on the kitchen counter while I am preparing food but is not allowed on the dining room table while we eat. Deal?”

Well, we don’t actually let the cats on the kitchen counter while we prepare food (not hygienic, even though they are very clean indoor cats). I tell ya, that can be a real struggle…As cat people know, cats can be incredibly obstinate…but we always win in the end…sort of…

And, luckily for us, we have a large dining room table, so if one of the cats jumps onto the table while we’re eating, it’s usually not a huge problem (unless we have guests, of course)…For instance, if the “jumper” is our eldest, Puzzola, well, she simply wants to be petted and will spread herself out on a corner of the table and wait, very respectfully!, until we’ve finished eating. The one whose name spells trouble is Peekaboo who enjoys stealing food from our plates and playing with it, making a mess if we don’t stop her immediately…She also enjoys sticking her head into and drinking from my water glass. Gotta keep an eye on that one! 😉  

Ah yes, Stefano and I are most definitely ruled by our cats…and we love it, since our cats…rule!!! 🙂

UPDATE. Errata corrige, Saturday November 12: after publishing this post, I re-read the abstract (many thanks to Nicola, grazie!, for pointing out the obvious, which I’d missed at first glance…) and realized I’d made a mistake. Oooops! The compound found mostly in rhubarb is called pterostilbene, from which the researchers synthesized bipterostilbene. Two different molecules. So my post title should have read “eat your pterostilbenes!!!” without the prefix “bi.” I have a few more things to say on this topic…but no time today…perhaps tomorrow. But I did want to apologize quickly for that petit booboo. I’m just in too much of a hurry these days…Need to slow down…But I have also been assigned more English classes now, which is good since we need the money…but of course that means less time for research…oh well. Can’t have everything! 😉 Anyway, here follows the original post I wrote a couple of days ago…

Yesterday a blog reader (thanks, TL!) sent me the link to an abstract that was presented at the December 2011 American Society of Hematology, or ASH, meeting: http://goo.gl/EHFGs (click on “I agree blablabla”). This abstract is the purrrrfect segue to yesterday’s post about cancer cell resistance to conventional drugs. Yes, just purrrrfect!

It’s about a compound called bipterostilbene (hey, try to pronounce that, and then repeat it ten times in a row, fast! I dare ya! 😉 ) mostly found in RHUBARB…Remember yesterday’s mystery pie ingredient? Yep, that would be rhubarb. In fact, whenever I read the word rhubarb, the first thing that pops into my mind is “pie,” even though for the life of me I cannot remember EVER having a piece of rhubarb pie…in fact, I can’t remember ever eating rhubarb in any shape or form. But that will have to change from now on, I guess!

Let’s get back to the abstract, which states that bipterostilbene SIGNIFICANTLY inhibited myeloma cell proliferation. More importantly, it EXTERMINATED all the myeloma cells. Note: it also had a similar effect on a lymphoma cell line, but no effect on breast and ovarian cells.

Aha, quelle surprise (NOT!!!), it also didn’t harm any healthy blood cells, even at doses that were lethal to the myeloma cells. A familiar tale, huh? Yeah.

The following is mainly for those who have scientific tendencies: bipterostilbene inhibited the AKT1 and mTOR gene expression…Now, as I recently wrote in my quercetin post (see October 16 2011 post or my Quercetin Page), mTOR is verrrrry bad news for myeloma folks. It helps MM cells become resistant, among other things…so we’re back to the problem of resistance to treatment. Inhibiting mTOR, as we’ve seen recently, is BIG in multiple myeloma research right now. So is inhibiting AKT…just check PubMed. Curcumin, goes without saying!, inhibits both of these nasty thingies…and much more, of course…But there is that little, er, issue of curcumin’s not being patentable… 😉

I love the abstract ending: We propose that bipterostilbene may be better tolerated than other anti- cancer drugs that are currently being used for the treatment of B-cell malignancies.

In the meantime, bring on those rhubarb pies! (By the way, does anyone have any good rhubarb recipes? Please share ’em! Thanks!)

I have subscribed to Harvard Magazine since graduation (let’s see, that would add up to more than, yikes!, a couple of decades ago 😉 )…but not to the Harvard Gazette, so that explains why I didn’t read a Gazette article on JQ1 back in September. Luckily, yesterday an attentive blog reader sent me the link…many thanks, DP!!! Here it is: http://goo.gl/wRLzH

As you listen to the interview with Dr. Bradner, please keep in mind that “Mick” is not the name of his next door neighbour 😉 , but rather is the “Myc” gene that I have written about in my JQ1 posts.

A lovely image: JQ1 cuts the cable between “Mick” and the (cancer) growth genes, Dr. Bradner says at one point. Meaning, cancer cells can’t grow anymore. Thumbs UP!

But the following is most definitely far from…lovely. Dr. Bradner states (at minute 2:40, more or less) that myeloma cells can become resistant to JQ1…that basically, their cellular operating system shuts down in the presence of JQ1. Ooooooh. Not good, of course. We all know that myeloma cells eventually become resistant to chemo drugs…and, to be honest, I’d hoped that things would be different with JQ1. But it seems that those crappy little cells have a cunning little “brain” of their own…

But hey, the JQ1 research is still in an early phase, and, food for thought!, perhaps this resistance could be overcome by using curcumin or other non-toxic compounds, which are known to chemosensitize even the most stubbornly resistant cancer cells. Here is an example…On October 21^st I reported on this bortezomib (=Velcade)-curcumin study: http://goo.gl/UrDj1 And there are dozens of similar studies in PubMed…dozens…

Anyway, HOPE with capital letters is still the name of the game….And this is mainly thanks to the Harvard team’s Open Access philosophy, which is the most exciting thing I’ve heard or read about in ages, but OK I’ve written enough about that… In the meantime, do your research, take your curcumin and vitamin D and whatnot, avoid stress, laugh a belly laugh every day, eat your watercress and celery…aaaaaaaah, speaking of which!, stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, which will discuss yet another important veggie that we should add to our intake…Hint hint hint: it’s the main ingredient in a popular kind of pie…hehe. 

Exciting times…lots of information pouring in…mostly thanks to y’all! 🙂

Today I’m so busy I can barely think. My new English classes begin tomorrow…new students (some “old” ones, too, of course), which means coming up with new ideas, new new new everything…But “new” mainly means more work for me. 🙂

Not that I’m complaining, eh, not at all…I love teaching, love the English language (and languages in general, too, of course!), love my job, indeed, in this economy I love having a job…

Anyway, since I still have quite a bit of preparatory work to do, I don’t have time to write the post I’d planned to write…So I’m posting a photo (left, top) I took earlier today of my little helper, Pinga, our youngest and most mischievous kitty. The apple of my eye. The one who sleeps on my side at night, all night. The one who doesn’t meow like real cats but goes “wa wa wa!” 

But right now I have my heavy but handsome and very smart boy, Piccolo, draped over that same arm…wait a sec while I take a photo of him…There we go (right). Quite a difference in weight between the two cats. I can barely type with Piccolo here…mamma mia! But Piccolo is waiting for my parents to call me on Skype. 🙂 No, seriously, that’s why he isn’t taking his nap in his usual spot (= not my left arm!). While the other cats are, er, “weirded out” by Skype, Piccolo really enjoys it. He doesn’t say anything, but as soon as he sees and hears my parents he purrs like mad and watches their every move…

Okay, I’d better get back to work! 

When you saw the title of today’s post, I bet your first thought was Thanksgiving, huh? Well, nope. Not at all.

A blog reader (thanks!) sent me the link to an absolutely fascinating Huffington Post interview with Dr. Paul Stamets, published just a few days after this well-known mycologist (=mushroom scientist) gave a TEDMED talk concerning new medical uses for mushrooms. Note: I wasn’t able to find that video online…yet. But, no matter. In the above-mentioned H Post interview, Dr. Stamets provides us with more than enough food for thought. For instance, this:

As stated at TEDMED, the FDA is so adverse to the approval of new drugs (and scandal!) that the estimates are now that a new drug costs more than a billion dollars to get to market. Drugs are isolated constituents — single molecules — studied for their activity. Mushrooms are constellations of hundreds of thousands of constituents.
What single drug can benefit you by: 
1) supporting and strengthening your immune system?
2) providing anti-inflammatory properties?
3) providing anti-oxidant properties?
4) restricting blood vessel growth feeding tumors (“anti-angiogenesis”)?
5) causing programmed cell death of cancer cells (“apoptosis”)?
6) providing antiviral effects?
7) restricting the growth of pathogenic bacteria?
8 ) assisting conventional anti-cancer drugs to work more effectively at lower doses?
NONE. 

Wow, how about that billion dollars? YIKESSSSSS!!! And how about the effect that mushrooms have on angiogenesis and apoptosis and the immune system and…etc.!…Impressive, huh? Actually, come to think of it, we can’t be that surprised. After all, Reishi, = Ganoderma lucidum, has very strong anti-myeloma effects, which I’ve written about here on the blog (I still have to test Reishi properly, but some day I will!). Oh, I would also like to mention that curcumin covers most, if not all, of the points on Dr. Stamets list…

Interesting: using Turkey Tail mushrooms (see photo…a lovely thing, isn’t it?), Dr. Stamets helped his own mother fight a difficult battle with Stage IV breast cancer. Oh, sorry!, I got so carried away that I almost forgot to give you the link to the H Post interview (!), where you can read all about Turkey Tails and much much MUCH more: http://goo.gl/RooXj This H Post page also features the TED Talk that Dr. Stamets gave in 2008 on the “6 ways mushrooms can save the world.”

Here, among other things (beginning at minute 12:05), he mentions how mushrooms have an extraordinarily high activity against flu virus strains, including H1N1. Aha! As I did last year, I’m not going to have a flu shot this year, either, so this titbit may turn out to be very useful…

This video will or should blow you away (well, it blew ME away, at any rate…). I mean, the next time I walk in a forest, I will REALLY THINK about where I’m stepping and, most of all, WHAT I’m stepping ON… 😉 What I just wrote will make sense after you watch the video…which definitely opened up a whole new world for me…I mean, how about those carpenter ants…and that mushroom popping out of an ant’s head??? And how about that experiment with diesel and other petroleum waste piles? And…oh…so much interesting information in less than 18 minutes…Please find the time to read the interview, then watch the video…

Boyohboy, these TED Talks are quite something, aren’t they?

Very busy day, which means I have only enough time to share a few chuckles…so here goes:

This one made me laugh out loud…(Thanks, Mary Ann!). A “talking” dog wants some treats (apparently, this video has become so popular that it has gone “viral”…I can see WHY, too, hehe): http://goo.gl/g9eO0 

Chris Cohen’s translations into “animal talk” are (almost) always funny. I’ve posted links to the best ones here on the blog. This one, which I hadn’t seen yet, is about two cats having a dispute over a printer: http://goo.gl/Mx4MQ 

An uplifting “Abba” flash mob at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. Get out your dancing shoes! http://goo.gl/z32gE

Last but not least, the new Simon’s Cat video, “Double trouble”: http://goo.gl/2ysMH

I know all about disappointments. I’ve tested on myself quite a few promising, non-toxic substances that showed strong antimyeloma effects both in vitro and in vivo. But they had no effect on me. Or, shiver!, as in the case of BCM-95, they made my MM markers worse…

I am also quite aware of the fact that substances that perform acrobatic cartwheels in a Petri dish or inside a sick mouse may end up tripping and falling flat on their faces when tested in human clinical trials. We’re not cells or mice, after all, are we?

But what I find extraordinary about the JQ1 discovery is the fact that it is really something new. NEW with capital letters. And exciting. As one blog reader wrote to me, “the image of that ‘scanned’ myeloma-free mouse will be imprinted on my retina for quite some time.” On mine, too…

This is not just what I call a “shuffling-cards” combination of third or fourth generation drugs…those derived, I mean, from thalidomide or bortezomib, e.g. If you go to the Clinical Trials website, as I did this morning, you will find heaps of myeloma clinical trials…1426, to be exact…

But let’s have a look at those  numbers for a sec: bortezomib (Velcade) is being tested in 289 of those trials. Its derivative, carfilzomib, in 22 trials. Now for thalidomide: 225…Its derivatives:  lenalidomide 168; pomalidomide 13. Dexamethasone: 311.  Melphalan: 249. And then we have those combination studies, that is, two, three or even four drugs tested together. For example: Dex plus lenalidomide plus doxorubicin or even bortezomib plus melphalan plus Dex PLUS thalidomide…I don’t have the time right now to go through and examine all of these studies and combos…But I recognize that it would be a very interesting exercise…For example, I saw and was reminded of TBL-12, the sea cucumber extract that I reported on some time ago (two trials now, with SMM patients). And there are a few other promising studies there, too…a handful, perhaps… 

However, and here we get to my first point, which drug or which combo can really give us cause for excitement? I mean, real, body-quivering excitement? Even more, which clinical trial can really give us hope that a CURE is on the horizon? 

I’ll leave it at that… An open question that cannot be answered, really…(But you can imagine what I think…).

Next topic…

I took a few days off to sit back and try to figure out what it was about the JQ1 study that got me so enthusiastic and sobbingly emotional in the first place. Hey, I’m not saying I’m not enthusiastic about this molecule anymore. Hah. Not at all. I still think JQ1 is a fabbbbulous discovery with shiploads of promise and potential. But okay, I have to admit I’m disappointed that it will take a couple of years (!) to get it into a clinical trial setting…And that did dampen my enthusiasm just a wee bit. Not much, though… 

But now I would like to discuss what Dr. Bradner said about OPEN ACCESS. Now this is exciting pioneering stuff indeed, and it pushes my enthusiasm levels right back up to the SKY HIGH setting. 🙂

Let’s take a look at the transcription of the TED Talk. By the way, the joke’s on me: a few days ago, with my flying, typing fingers I transcribed some of the most relevant parts of the TED talk…only to discover, once I’d finished!, that a transcript already exists…online…freely accessible, goes without sayin’. ARGHHHH! 🙂 Well, without further ado, here is the transcription link: http://goo.gl/is3kU

Let’s start with what happened after the Harvard team discovered JQ1’s effect on myeloma and other cancers: So we started to wonder, what would a drug company do at this point? Well they probably would keep this a secret until they turn a prototype drug into an active pharmaceutical substance. And so we did just the opposite. We published a paper that described this finding at the earliest prototype stage. We gave the world the chemical identity of this molecule, typically a secret in our discipline. We told people exactly how to make it. We gave them our email address, suggesting that, if they write us, we’ll send them a free molecule. We basically tried to create the most competitive environment for our lab as possible. And this was, unfortunately, successful.

I repeat: We gave the world the chemical identity of this molecule, typically a secret in our discipline. A secret. A SECRET.

And here let me state the obvious. Drug companies aren’t on our side. I don’t care how nice and warm and friendly and sympathetic their representatives are or how many patient-doctor meetings they organize and finance. That’s fluff. A smoke screen. 

Drug companies exist to make a profit. Nothing else. Mind you, theoretically, there isn’t anything wrong with that. After all, these are businesses. And businesses have to make profits. A no-brainer, that one. Unfortunately, though, while they’re busy making profits and possibly/probably being secretive about potentially life-saving discoveries, cancer patients are dying…But that makes me crazy, so let’s keep going…

To be super honest, none of this stuff–secrets and Big Pharma and so on–comes as a surprise to me. But this is the first time I’ve actually heard a researcher, an MD!, come out and say it openly and very matter-of factly…And therein lies the “surprise!” element. For me, at least. 

Now, as we know, the Harvard research team mailed their molecule to 70 labs around the world. Probably more, by now. For free. And they received feedback from those labs. 

And this is where things get rrrrreally interesting: “…the science that’s coming back from all of these laboratories about the use of this molecule has provided us insights that we might not have had on our own. Leukemia cells treated with this compound turn into normal white blood cells. Mice with multiple myeloma, an incurable malignancy of the bone marrow, respond dramatically to the treatment with this drug.”

(Another thing I really like about this guy is his humility…”insights that we might not have had on our own”…)

And then, wham!, we are hit with can only be seen as a revolutionary approach to medicine and science. In Dr. Bradner’s own words, this was a social experiment, an experiment in what would happen if we were as open and honest at the earliest phase of discovery chemistry research as we could be. This string of letters and numbers and symbols and parentheses that can be texted, I suppose, or Twittered worldwide, is the chemical identity of our pro compound. It’s the information that we most need from pharmaceutical companies, the information on how these early prototype drugs might work. Yet this information is largely a secret. And so we seek really to download from the amazing successes of the computer science industry two principles: that of opensource and that of crowdsourcing to quickly, responsibly accelerate the delivery of targeted therapeutics to patients with cancer.

The “sharing for free” approach. The open access approach. To get stuff streamlined and down to patients more quickly and responsibly…

If a cure for cancer, a cure for myeloma, is to be found, labs all around the world are going to have to share their findings and work together. I’m convinced of that now. 

And, mark my words, this will take place only thanks to researchers such as Dr. Bradner, researchers with open minds, or rather, with open access minds!… 🙂

No more secrets! No more secrets! No more secrets!

P.S. I’ve begun following what the online media is saying about JQ1. You might be interested to read about the research being done at Notre Dame, e.g., on JQ1 and NUT midline carcinoma, the cancer mentioned by Dr. Bradner in his TED talk: http://goo.gl/r6ACG (Please note that Dr. Bradner and Harvard are not mentioned here…Odd, eh?).

And here is a Science Daily report, which I totally missed back in September…better late than never, I guess: http://goo.gl/jvRbu

We just had a long weekend. Four whole days off! Fabulous. But today is our last holi-day…Sigh…

Let’s go back to Saturday, which was a glorious sunny not-too-chilly autumn day. When we woke up, Stefano and I decided to go off and enjoy the stunning-in-all-seasons Tuscan countryside…