Just want to say that a lot of the conversations here are revolving around using our current model of molecular biology to treat cancer. That model has had a ton of success, and is the best workhorse we have for reliably turning money into life-years probably. I think it’s a big reason why a lot of people throw that idea around that cancer is gonna be cured by just developing a super-cornucopia of drugs.
But I think the heart of this post is in asking “well, are there models that get OUT of that framework? ones that are seismic shifts, like the germ theory of disease?” Yeah, just the one(s) that I’ve seen are super theoretical. Michael Levin’s group, oft heralded on LessWrong bio posts, is in fact starting to study cancer. The argument goes that, like Archimedes mentioned in the comments here, cancer is a disease of individual cells rebelling against multicellularity. Levin’s group thinks that the mechanisms for that control might be electrical/physical — as in, the deformity is more in the “software” (transient signals dictating cell behavior) being run by the “hardware” of whatever mutated proteins are in the cell.
It’s a cool idea, but the work that I’ve seen on that front is really preliminary. I think the most experimental work I’ve read by them is a paper that shows that brain cancer cells are killed by drugs which modulate voltage-gated channels. Ostensibly, this modulates some of the transient signalling on the electrically based “software level” which is driving them away from multicellularity. [I am personally extrapolating these claims.] But I think it’s more likely that they’re seeing a response b/c voltage-gated protein activity is hard-wired to cell survival mechanisms.
Just want to say that a lot of the conversations here are revolving around using our current model of molecular biology to treat cancer. That model has had a ton of success, and is the best workhorse we have for reliably turning money into life-years probably. I think it’s a big reason why a lot of people throw that idea around that cancer is gonna be cured by just developing a super-cornucopia of drugs.
But I think the heart of this post is in asking “well, are there models that get OUT of that framework? ones that are seismic shifts, like the germ theory of disease?” Yeah, just the one(s) that I’ve seen are super theoretical. Michael Levin’s group, oft heralded on LessWrong bio posts, is in fact starting to study cancer. The argument goes that, like Archimedes mentioned in the comments here, cancer is a disease of individual cells rebelling against multicellularity. Levin’s group thinks that the mechanisms for that control might be electrical/physical — as in, the deformity is more in the “software” (transient signals dictating cell behavior) being run by the “hardware” of whatever mutated proteins are in the cell.
It’s a cool idea, but the work that I’ve seen on that front is really preliminary. I think the most experimental work I’ve read by them is a paper that shows that brain cancer cells are killed by drugs which modulate voltage-gated channels. Ostensibly, this modulates some of the transient signalling on the electrically based “software level” which is driving them away from multicellularity. [I am personally extrapolating these claims.] But I think it’s more likely that they’re seeing a response b/c voltage-gated protein activity is hard-wired to cell survival mechanisms.