• Question: Following up from my fourth question, i did some research on what is different from a cancer cell to a normal cell and it suddenly popped into my head about what enzymes a cancer cell would produce! So i looked this up and apparently there is an enzyme called Hexokinase-2 that can be found in larger ammounts than usual in cancerous cells than normal cells. So i was just wondering if you could use some kind of hormone to target the cancerous cells through the enzyme and if so could the hormone somehow destroy the cancerous cell causing no damage to the cells around it?

    Asked by osmium456 to Aaron, Ananthi, Ashley, Christopher, Emma on 15 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Aaron Brown

      Aaron Brown answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      Again, sounds like a brilliant answer!! I’m really sorry I can’t help any more as being an envrionmental microbiologist this isn’t really my area of knowledge! 🙁

      If I can recommend something though; maybe you could google a researcher that works on cancer cells and ask them? 🙂 I’m sure they would be able to help answer your questions. It may take them a while to respond but they’ll get there!

    • Photo: Emma Stevenson

      Emma Stevenson answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      Wow, you certainly have a really great scientific mind. You should write all your theories down so you can know what to investigate in the future. Your theory is great, however you still have to be careful as even though the normal cells produce the enzyme at a lower level, they are still producing this enzyme and you might end up targeting them too. It wouldn’t take much to generate side effects. Definitely follow Aaron’s advice about contacting a cancer scientist though!

    • Photo: Ananthi Ramachandran

      Ananthi Ramachandran answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      You’re brilliant! Well done for researching yourself! Unfortunately as I am not a cancer scientist I can’t give you the full story but my first thing that I would suggest is that if you are using a hormone you again have to think of any side effects. An excess or a reduction of a hormone in the human body can cause some interesting effects! As part of my university (University of Leicester) we have a cancer studies department so by all means if you are interested you may be able to look someone up, or alternatively contact your local university and ask if you can meet someone to discuss your ideas with!

Comments

  • Photo: osmium456

    osmium456 commented on :

    ok! thanks for the advice! i’ll keep it in mind! 🙂

  • Photo: osmium456

    osmium456 commented on :

    And good point! We wouldn’t want the hormone to slowly eat your whole body just because your normal cells produce the same type of enzyme! I wonder if you could have a hormone that only followed the stronger enzyme? Like like if there was a wolf and to his left, there was a small portion of meat and to his right, a larger portion im pretty sure the wolf would go for the bigger portion, but thats not really the same with hormones though becausw they can’t think for themselves, they have a list of instructions which they constantly repeat. Maybe you could have the hormone constantly search for the cells producing the most hexokinase-2 and killing them, and when the cancer had been proven that it was gone they could use a harmless medication to kill the rest of the hormone to stop it from causing further damage to the body.