Health is the New Black

One mutated protein can be used to make our immune system attack and destroy cancer cells
This approach could be a complete game changer for cancer treatments.
“It’s cancer” is undoubtedly one of the most dreaded diagnoses any patient can receive today. And a large part of the dread this disease causes comes down to the fact that our bodies cannot deal with the tumors as they would with other diseases. Cancerous cells employ chemical disguises that fool our immune systems that they are not a threat, allowing them to develop unperturbed.

External avenues of treatment such as radiation- or chemotherapy can be employed against cancerous tumors. But, without the support of our bodies’ innate defensive systems, many cases of cancer are beyond the reach of external treatments.

New research at UC San Francisco hopes to fix that problem by painting huge targets on the backs of cancerous cells. Their approach involves pulling a mutated version of the protein KRAS to the surface of cancer cells, which flags them as targets for an immune response.

Un-stealthing
“The immune system already has the potential to recognize mutated KRAS, but it usually can’t find it very well. When we put this marker on the protein, it becomes much easier for the immune system,” said UCSF chemist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Kevan Shokat, PhD, co-lead author of the paper.

Around one in four cancerous tumors have one kind of KRAS mutation, the team explains, which makes them one of the most common gene mutations in these cells. Given that such mutations are the target of sotorasib, a drug candidate which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given preliminary approval for use in lung cancer, having the ability to bring the KRAS mutation to the fore would be invaluable in the treatment of cancers. In combination, these two substances could usher in a whole new approach to the treatment of cancers.

The researchers find the prospect of a new strategy that leverages our natural immune systems against cancers “exciting”. The findings, they add, could lead to better, longer-lasting treatments for cancer patients.

Immune cells read the proteins on the surface of particles they encounter in order to pick up on foreign bodies, unhealthy cells, or pathogens. Cancer cells have few proteins on the surface that are different from those of healthy cells. Most of the differences are contained inside the cells, where they are hidden from the immune system. The KRAS protein is the same, and for this reason, it was not considered to be a viable target for an anti-cancer drug despite how common it is in tumors.

The mutated version of KRAS drives the uncontrollable growth of cells in cancerous tumours. It is only slightly different from normal KRAS and its structure doesn’t allow drugs to readily bind to it. But work that Shokat carried out over the last decade described the protein’s structure and discovered a hidden pocket where a drug could bind to the molecule and block its activity. This research laid the foundation for the development and approval of sotorasib.

One cup of tea a day could keep diabetes away — but 4 cups or more yield the best result
While we don't exactly know why yet, regularly drinking tea can help prevent type 2 diabetes -- and the more you drink, the better.
New research presented at the 2022 European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Annual Meeting has looked at data from almost 20 different studies that, together, drew on data from more than one million adults. The research found a link between the drinking of tea and reduced incidence of type 2 diabetes — however, this effect was strongly dependent on the quantity of tea each participant drank regularly.

The findings come to complete our understanding of the relationship between tea drinking and type 2 diabetes in particular. Previously, the team explains, the consumption of tea has been linked to potential health benefits such as improved cardiovascular health and reduced risk of developing cancer.

A matter of quantitea
“It is possible that particular components in tea, such as polyphenols, may reduce blood glucose levels, but a sufficient amount of these bioactive compounds may be needed to be effective,” speculates Xiaying Li, lead author of the paper. “It may also explain why we did not find an association between tea drinking and type 2 diabetes in our cohort study, because we did not look at higher tea consumption.”

The study consisted of a two-part review of pre-existing research. The first stage was a cohort study that looked at data from over 5,000 adults who were followed for a 12-year period. Around half of the participants reported drinking tea but did not show any different rate of type 2 diabetes incidence between tea drinkers and non-drinkers by the end of the follow-up period.

The second part of the research explored whether the quantity of tea that each participant drank regularly could have an effect on type 2 diabetes outcomes. It pooled data from 19 studies regarding tea-drinking frequency, finding that the risk of developing type 2 diabetes did decline as the amount of tea a person was regularly drinking increased.

People who drank 1-3 cups of tea per day were 4% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes compared to non-drinkers. Those who drank 4 or more cups a day slashed their risk by 17%. This change was consistent across gender, geographical location, and the type of tea consumed (black tea, green tea, and oolong tea). As such, the team believes that some compound or compounds present in all types of tea may specifically reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in regular tea drinkers.

That being said, there are some limitations to these findings. First, it is not yet peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal, meaning that the methodology and conclusions drawn in the study were not double-checked by other researchers. Secondly, the data it used was based on self-reported dietary questionnaires, which can be less reliable than directly-observed data and don’t track long-term food habits in detail. Finally, the data didn’t cover some factors that could influence the health outcomes of tea, such as whether participants drank theirs with or without milk or sugar.

It is possible, for example, for milk to increase the effects of tea in reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. At the same time, some previous research has found that milk can actually decrease the insulin-enhancing activity of tea, which could completely counteract its ability to stave off diabetes. Other habits or psychological factors associated with tea-drinking could also have benefited the observed effect.

“While more research needs to be done to determine the exact dosage and mechanisms behind these observations, our findings suggest that drinking tea is beneficial in reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, but only at high doses (at least 4 cups a day)”, concluded Li.

Despite the findings, the team underscores that their study was observational in nature and cannot, and should not be used, to prove that drinking tea alone reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes — but they do reliably show that tea can contribute.

Five years ago, the Flint water crisis poisoned thousands. Now, 1 in 5 residents have PTSD
Many people are still afraid to touch water from the city even though it's been years since the crisis was fixed.
In the destitute town of Flint, Michigan, the story of one of the worst environmental injustices in modern history unfolded. It began in 2014, when reckless city management switched the water supply to save money at the expense of the population’s health. This new poorly treated water supply contaminated the town’s residents with unsafe levels of bacteria and various industrial toxic byproducts, including lead.

The scars left by this outrageous abuse run deep in the Flint community to this day, with a new study showing that more than 13,600 people, or one in five adults, suffer from clinical depression. Furthermore, 15,000 Flint residents, or one in four, suffer from PTSD as a result of the crisis that befell them.

“The mental health burden of America’s largest public-works environmental disaster clearly continues for many adults in Flint,” said Aaron Reuben, a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University who led the new research.

Flint: from prosperity to calamity
Flint was never blessed with clean water. For more than a century, the Flint river, which cuts the town in half, has served as an unofficial waste dump site for various local industries that made their base on the river’s shores. These include meatpacking plants, lumber and paper mills, and automotive plants, as well as agricultural and urban activities whose runoff was dumped into the river.

Nevertheless, Flint residents enjoyed a relatively safe water supply from Lake Huron and the Detroit River – but that wouldn’t last long.

In the mid-20th century, Flint was home to a booming automobile industry. It was here that General Motors was born more than 100 years ago. Unfortunately, rising oil prices and auto imports put the brakes on Flint’s prosperity in the 1980s, and it’s all been downhill ever since.

From a quaint, working-class American town of 200,000 people at its height, Flint spiraled down into a poor city of fewer than 100,000 residents in the early 2010s when the water crisis broke. Most of Flint’s residents are African-American and nearly half live below the poverty line. One in six of the homes in Flint have been abandoned.

In short, Flint was an economic and social disaster. Something had to be done, and in 2011 Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager to put the city back on the floating line. But rather than improving the lives of the city’s people, this intervention only made things worse — much, much worse.

Facing a $25 million deficit, the city’s authorities started looking for ways to cut city costs and singled out the water supply system as a prime target. For more than 50 years, Flint’s water came through piped treated water from Detroit. But this was viewed as too expensive, so the authorities decided to directly pump water from the Flint river — the same river everybody knew was foul — temporarily until a new water pipeline could be built that brought cheaper water from Lake Huron.