The Age of Cancer

I was sitting in my doctor’s office this morning. Follow-up visit, waiting patiently to answer a lot of the same questions as three weeks ago. Then, of course, computer problems, one computer system is not talking to the other, the test results are lost, normal stuff  really. I am not frustrated because I actually like my doctor. I debate between getting my laptop and working a little (sigh) or browsing through the boring brochures and magazines in the examination room. I choose the the boring stuff. Then, I find this article about pancreatic cancer and all of a sudden I am thinking that I hope the doctor takes his time with the results. I need to finish reading. I love it when I have my priorities straight.

So, I know that receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is more or less a death sentence. My grandmother passed away because of this cancer, and I always wondered what makes cancer so different from organ to organ. Why is it that liver cancer is "better" than pancreatic cancer assuming they are in the same stage of development? I know, this maybe not the best thought to have in a doctor's office, but oh well, maybe if they had People magazines around I would have been writing about something else now...

Ok. Back to my article on pancreating cancer. Here's a pancreatic cancer cell. Pretty and deadly.

The main reason for the very low recovery rate for pancreatic cancer (less than 5%) is that the disease is not generally diagnosed until 10 - 15 years after the first cancer-causing mutations appear, by which point the cancer has spread and become highly aggressive. So, if you can diagnose the cancer earlier, maybe it can be removed and the chances for recovery will increase. Obviously, everyone knows this. So then, what's new?

"scientists at Johns Hopkins University sequenced the genomes of seven people who had died of late-stage pancreatic cancer. Their tumor cells contained different types of mutations that the scientists traced back in evolutionary time using mathematical models to build a kind of “family mutational tree.” The models suggested that cancer cells appear 10 years after the first cancer-causing mutation arises and that another five years pass before the cancer cells spread and become deadly."

Now, this is really cool. So we can actually screen for these mutations and "catch it" before it's too late. The belief before was that pancreatic cancer is too aggresive and it changes to quickly for any screening to be succesful. Well, I say 10 is not too fast, so there is hope. I like hope.