The Brand New Mindset for Cancer Series: Part 9.0 Using hair loss after chemo as a marker for cancer R & D

(Key points: Hair loss is a marker for chemo therapy. It reflects all of pains and struggles the patients are going through. It is also an embarrassment for biomedical professional because a poor job was done and showed in public. In the near future the most powerful and effective anti-cancer drugs will come to the market without causing hair loss.)

Recently, there is an international figure who suffers from cancer. At the first it was news showing him looks like normal, and then few weeks later when he showed up again, all you found was he lost all his hairs. Even there are some drugs nowadays causing no hair loss, but for the majority of the patients who go through all those painful processes of chemotherapy, hair loss is not only a marker for a bad fortune, but also brings a lot of emotional struggles and embarrassment.

It is a landmark for chemo. Moreover, it is an embarrassment for the cancer R & D community as well as biomedical professionals because twenty years after Taxol brought into the market, there has been essentially no any improvement on this particular problem. All explanations are that the drugs kill cancerous cells, as a side effect it also kills normal cells because the hair follicle is where there is plenty of fast growing normal cells. When you want to know more and ask how to prevent or entirely avoid hair loss. Sorry, this is all on the table.

This has to be changed. Patients are expecting true breakthroughs in hair loss and cancer treatment. To achieve this result the doctors and scientists need to change their mindset and use new approach in the field of cancer research and treatment.

I have had strong interest in this field for a while. I still remember how exciting when I read an academic paper on hair stem cells, which was published by a research team in a famous cosmetic company headquartered in France. It is quite an unbelievable and fantastic project done by them. There are no many good studies on hair loss as a result of chemo.

We need to have an integrated plan for all aspects of cancer, from the mechanism of the disease to treatment regiments, including the prevention of hair loss. In three parts of the DoctorX Project, there is a section devoted to this narrow field. I am confident the day will come when the most powerful and effective treatment will cause no hair loss at all.

Any time you see a people without hair because of chemo, if it is a marker of pain and struggles for the person, it is more embarrassment for biomedical professionals because a poor job was done and showed in public. This has to be ended, the sooner, the better.

(This article is the ninth in a series of “the Brand New Mindset for Cancer” essays. It is published on 9/20/2011.)

Being a Creative Mind Series: Part 1.0 Being curious, having strong curiosity

(Key points: A creative mind needs to have a strong curiosity. Curiosity is an intrinsic character that can show in everywhere and at any moment. Creating new knowledge begins from human’s curiosity toward nature.)

One of the goals of our education system is to nurture as many creative minds as possible. There are hundreds of thousand articles and books on how to be more creative. For example, when one searches the Amazon web site by using key words “creative mind”, there are 394 titles popping up. Some of those titles have a large number of reviews. You may think it is so easy to find an effective guide book so many of us could become a more creative mind. That’s why some people are looking for a quick and easy fix to enhance our creativity through some methods such as drinking coffee, just as claimed in one popular book. The truth is there are really not so many creative minds around. Many people believe that it is not an easy task to be real creative mind when we seem being embedded in so many trivial things in our daily routines.

Perhaps there are many characters of a creative mind. To dissect those characters may help us to follow the success paths some great creative minds took. One of those perspectives is curiosity. We know how our kids show their curiosity. When we talk someone and he/she shows curiosity, we immediately detect that message. But what’s curiosity and how it happens? Curiosity is a mystery, just like why we sleep so long every day. As David Weeks, a clinical neuropsychologist, said in his co-authored book “Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness”, the curiosity is the premier driving force for the creative mind of many eccentrics. They have extreme degree of curiosity. But this is also a most neglected character for many adults because they fear being labeled as “immature” or “childish”.

Curiosity is an intrinsic character and can show up at any time and any environment. I still remember when I was a boy, I always curious about why airplane can fly so high. It is a magic for such heavy giant to take off, few of them can reach 250 tons!! Later on I learned the principles of aerodynamics. I made a lot of paper airplanes and competed with other kid to see who can make the most far. Even today whenever there is a plane flying over, I always give an extra glance.

The everyday life is full of wonders and calls our neglected curiosity. If I pass a tree which is growing on rock, I always wonder how those roots from the tree reach so deep into narrow gap between rocks. The tip of a root just has a cluster of few plant cells. What’s powerful mechanism for them to open a new world for the tree in the dark underground?

One of my most curious objects is ant, those tiny creatures underneath our foot and everywhere. I know that they use pheromone to mark a road so their fellow ants can find food or gathering place. I sometime make a prank just to see how fast they can rebuild a new path for a known destination. When I joined one university years ago, it has more than 13 libraries. The books about ant, more precisely myrmecology, scatter in different places. I read most of them. In particular, I admire one expert, Dr. Edward O Wilson, a Harvard professor who studied ants for several decades and earned a title “Lord of the Ant” as in a PBS’s NOVA program. There were some most beautiful pictures about ants appeared in an article in the National Geographic written by him. At present the ant study is well beyond its niche field, it has been applied to social science and more. One of the initial motivations for Dr Wilson was curiosity. So it may be confident to say that to have a strong curiosity is the beginning of gaining new knowledge.

(This article is the first in a series of “Being a Creative Mind” essays. It is published on 9/14/2011.)

The Brand New Mindset for Cancer Series: Part 8.0 Stop cancer cells moving around A bright future for treating late stage cancers

(Key points: For a long time the doctors and scientists have focused their attentions only on killing or removing cancer lesions. The results are not good as many patients, especially who have late stage cancers, are continually losing their lives. One of several future plans is to bring products which will disable cancer’s motility to the market.)

Why do cancers kill so many patients? The answer is quite simple. It is because cancer can move around either by metastasizing to remote locations or evading into the neighbor tissues. If this ability is blocked or eliminated altogether, then cancer will become a local problem being much easily managed.

However, all of current treatment options either focus on killing cancer cells, most often killing normal cells at the same time, or removing tumors, there is not any effective option available to deal with cancer mobility. Many new therapies like Iressa and several antibodies still use the killing strategy. Doctors and scientists may think the reason we don’t have such drug simply because we don’t understand well why cancer cells can move around. This excuse is half-true. In my not so humble opinion people, especially people in pharmaceutical industry really don’t consider this option is worthy to pursue when cancer is still left in the original place, even its mobility being disarmed.

Well, when so many patients continually die because there is no one method for cure, it is time to have a strategy review on how to deal with cancer, even it may not so sexy at the first glance like the method and treatment stopping cancer cells moving around. Cancer cells and other normal cells both have mobility. But cancer cells do have its unique mechanism in motility which is different from normal cells. That will severe as a target point which may bring cancer to its knee.

A group I used to collaborate is one of the premier research centers in the field of cancer cell motility. I am confident we can bring products which will disable cancer cell motility to the market. Cheer!

(This article is the eighth in a series of “the Brand New Mindset for Cancer” essays. It is published on 9/9/2011.)

The Save of Steve Jobs project, A special Facebook page is set up

Nowadays, it is hard to open a national newspaper without any article about Steve Jobs. People are paying a great attention to him for a good reason, because he has already changed the world in which we are living.

I have followed the reports on him for a while. When I saw a short video a while ago showing his difficult condition in the front of a hospital, I was very moved. When I heard the news that he had just resigned from his active role in the Apple, my reaction was to send him a letter in an overnight express mail.

I am trying to make a difference: to see whether I can actually save him. There is not any doubt that his situation is very serious and every second is increasingly dangerous for him. But as long as he is still around, there is hope.

I don’t think he has already used all the best options that are available, even though there may be a large professional team giving many helpful options. The reality is that even professionals in the cancer field may not be aware all available options, especially when the option is so exotic and radically different from all we already know. Furthermore, he may not learn the last progress in the cancer field, because some great progresses may still be at the very beginning and the mainstream has not paid any attention as yet. Steve Jobs needs to know it is out there.

If you think everything is possible, or if you have benefited from Steve’s great innovations, or you are sadly touched by cancer (by yourself, or your love ones, relatives or friends), please join the project---SOS-J, short for “Save of Steve Jobs”, or simply pray for the mission.

The mission is very clear: to Save Mr. Steve Jobs and many others life and to advance the whole of cancer research.

Facebook web site at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-of-Steve-Jobs/149105731845817

The Brand New Mindset for Cancer Series: Part 7.0 Are you still working in small workshops?

(Key points: Ultimately, every disease like cancer will have only one mechanism prevails. With all of those revolutionary technologies like OMICS it requires a massive and closely coordinated research project in order to claim a final victory on cancer or all other complex diseases. It is a doable and practical job with a successful precedence. But this time it relies on private sector and nonprofit organizations with help from government agencies to reach the goal to benefit humanity.)

In his landmark investigative report appeared in Fortune magazine Mr. Clifton Leaf gave many reasons why the science and biomedical community failed to realize the promise on cure cancer after a long and costly struggle. One of them was the small workshop culture. The community has worked in this model for several decades. Each principle investigator creates his/her own idea, and obtains funding to do research. Even sometimes the scientists claim to have a large coordinated research project with many co-authors in a published paper, in its core it is still a “small workshop” setting, lacking of a massive, coordinated assault on cancer. The National Institute of health tried other funding mechanisms like SPORE (“specialized programs of research excellence”) grants or the Program Projects to encourage cooperative researches focused on big pictures. Nothing works, there are no any big problems solved.

If this problem is not so obvious before high-throughput technology emerges, it becomes increasingly clear that this has been a big problem to deal with a vast volume of data generated by all those powerful tools: genomics, proteomics, interactomics, metabolomics, expressomics, and its growing list. For any scientists who publish a results based on OMICS method it is impossible for them to verify even a tiny portion of those data set. On the other hand for vast majority of scientist who still perform his/her own independent research, it is became increasingly hard to judge the relative importance and relevance of the particular project when compared his/her special and narrow studying object to the rest.

It is time to change this small workshop culture. Like an agricultural transformation the day when a single farm lives on itself with independence and self sufficiency has forever gone. Similarly, if a research project doesn’t contribute to a large and big picture, that research may become trivial and irrelevant. To achieve an ultimately victory on cancer a massive and closely coordinated research is the answer, and the only answer.

When internet becomes ubiquitous and people can easily connect each other, most people simply drown in the ocean of the information. Some may think that the era of grand idea is dead precisely when a grand idea can emerge from unexpected people and in unexpected place after empowered by all those unprecedented tools. Every individual can work together to make a great contribution to a common cause. All needed is a mindset change and work on one platform and fix all our eyes on one goal. The IT revolution and OMICS technology give us a golden opportunity to finish cancer project like the Manhattan Project. With two great leaders, one was Dr. Robert Oppenheimer as a scientific visionary and another person Major General Leslie Groves with strong funding and logistics support, the Manhattan Project was done successfully. At its peak there were 130,000 persons exclusively focused on one goal and one goal only. In the current economic situation there is no way the government can support such big project. It is a duty for private sector and nonprofit organizations, with help from government agencies, to do this work. With all gradients in the place this is a doable and practical job, and for an urgent purpose of saving dying cancer patients and ourselves it has to be successfully finished, sooner or later.

Please pause for a minute, and ask this simple question: are you still working in small workshops?

(This article is the seventh in a series of “the Brand New Mindset for Cancer” essays. It is published on 9/6/2011.)