Abstract
Over the last 2 decades, the incidence of cancer is increasing daily with more than 13% of the Indian adult population having high risk of cancer. In the year 2022 alone, 9 Lakh Indians lost their lives to cancer while over 1.4 million people developed various forms of cancer. This translates to huge mortality with 2465 deaths per day, making India second highest in Asia among cancer deaths.The % increase of cancer deaths in India exceeds the% increase in the number of new cancer cases.
The top 5 cancer sites for Indian adult male population in age band of 15-64 years include lung, mouth, tongue, Oesophagus & stomach while cancer sites Indian adult female population in age band of 15-64 years include breast, Cervix , Ovary, Corpus Uteri & lung
With steadfastness in exponential technologies & scientific research, finding cure to cancer is not a distant dream. In fact, oncologists with the help of Positron emission tomography (PET) scan which produces dimensional images of inside of the body, can identify tumor( multiple cancer cells) at specific sites in order to frame a cancer management strategy which includes chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy & operative surgeries. Besides, a number of cancer detection startups are mushrooming that claim to early detect cancer.
In Spite of these scientific & technology advancements , the incidence of new cancer cases & cancer deaths are increasing more than ever which is a worrisome situation.
More & more money has been poured into cancer research, still the number of cancer deaths are increasing daily. This is failure in monumental proportions as nobody asks what kind of research in being conducted to understand the onset of different forms of cancer
In addition to this, the impact of harmful chemicals being feeded to your biology in order to kill tumors is suboptimal resulting in low survival rates & poor health outcomes. Even when these therapies do work( < 25% of the cases), the collateral damage from these chemicals are beyond repair & patients have to carry multiple metabolic & auto immune issues for life.
There are huge gaps in understanding manifestation of cancer which is resulting on sub optimal interventions that even fails to manage cancer, let alone correct diagnosis & prevention
-The central dogma of molecular biology around cancer development is based on the assumption that cancer is a genetic disease, blaming cancer on genetic mutations in the nucleus while research has now found that cancer is a metabolic disease & is an outcome of mitochondria dysfunction.
-No focus on nutritional therapeutics to eliminate tumors & nourish healthy cells.
-Lacks molecular understanding of how cancer cells grow in spite of damaged respiration.
-Disregard the importance of microbiome in improving effectiveness of cancer therapies
The following paragraphs sheds light on these gaps & also shares how we at Genefitletics are bringing revolution in preventive oncology starting with oral cancer.
Molecular mechanism behind cancer onset & progression
The modern healthcare model has been treating cancer with a flawed assumption that cancer is a nuclear genetic disease & is the outcome of multiple genetic mutations. This was solidified with the fact that cancer cells carry oncogenes & tumor suppressing genes & its expression of these genes that causes cancer. The somatic mutation theory states that there are random mutations that accumulate to convert normal cells into malignant cells. The best they can do is to manage this dreaded disease by using chemicals- chemotherapies, radiation therapies & more to target specific mutations & suppress the tumor growth. This sounds impractical since there are millions of mutations in cancer cells & targeting a group of mutations itself is a daunting task, leave suppressing millions of them.
No wonder, the results of these therapies have been dismal & worse in many cases which is very clearly evident in the data that depicts the number of people developing & dying of cancer or even developing multiple metabolic issues post targeted therapies. This is also because the healthcare system is addressing the wrong thing.
Until the healthcare system knows the root cause & mechanism of disease, how can they even develop preventative solutions to address them. Still we see every day many patients subscribe for these therapies with a hope that they will get rid of this menace.
Unfortunately, the mutations as described are not the underlying cause & this is the reason why cancer reoccurs.
This flawed approach has been refuted & it has now been found that cancer is a metabolic disease.
Research is pretty clear now that cancer is nothing but an uncontrolled cell growth. Every cell inside our body has a growth cycle which is modulated & controlled by the energy powerhouse of the cell- mitochondria. The mitochondria is called the cell switch. When the mitochondria becomes dysfunctional, this switch is destroyed or inactivated, cell growth becomes uncontrollable which leads to onset of cancer. The root cause of cancer is mitochondrial dysfunction
Simply put
-2.5 billion years ago, the pre-mitochondria era, when the environment was oxygen deficient, the organisms( humans were not in existence at that time) grew uncontrollably via fermentation pathways.
-Then came these ancient organelle-Mitochondria inside of cells which is the energy generating furnace of our cells. In the presence of oxygen via oxidative phosphorylation, mitochondria converts nutrients in the food you eat into ATP & thereby releasing carbon dioxide( you breathe out) & water(moisture).The mitochondria acts as a switch & modulate growth of cells & regulates cell cycle
-When the mitochondria becomes dysfunctional & there is damaged respiration due to chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, genotoxins, viruses, environmental toxins, hypoxia, low pH level, carcinogenic toxins & more, the kill switch is gone & it cannot control cell cycle & growth.The cancer cells bypasses apoptosis & proliferate using fermentable fuels( discussed below)
-Now mitochondria can no longer produce ATP. Instead, it produces reactive oxidative species(ROS). ROS is carcinogenic & mutagenic, it damages DNA, RNA, protein, lipids & enzymes which leads to genetic mutations in cancer cells. Therefore the genetic mutations are the after effect of the root cause- damaged respiration(mitochondrial dysfunction), not the cause itself.
-Due to damage to respiration, cells are suffocating as there is no ATP via oxidative phosphorylation. So how does cancer grow & survive? These cells in order to survive resort to substrate level phosphorylation- the fermentation metabolism to extract energy for their growth. In reality, cancer cells operate as if they are in a primitive pre-mitochondria era & use fermentation pathways to grow, proliferate & metastasise
-The hallmarks of cancer arising from damaged respiration include sustained proliferative signaling, evasion of growth suppressors, resistance to cell death, replicative immortality, enhanced angiogenesis, and activation of invasion and metastasis
The fermentation pathways explained
Cancer cells in order to proliferate & grow resort to fermentable fuels. As Otto Warburg states the fermentation process replaces & compensates for oxidative respiration/oxidative phosphorylation. What are these fermentable fuels which fuels cancer cell growth?
GLUCOSE & GLUTAMINE
Cancer cells ferment glucose & glutamine & as a byproduct releases lactate & other metabolic waste in the presence of oxygen which further damages oxidative phosphorylation. What happens next is a vicious cycle & helps cancer cells/tumors grow & proliferate. Our body senses there is some damage or sort of injury or wound. Macrophages are released in the bloodstream to go to cancer cells to heal the wound. As a part of this process, macrophages throw out growth factors & cytokines which are stimulatory towards these cells ( who have lost their growth control because of their fermentation activity). These macrophages( immune cells) fuse with these cells which results in diluting of cytoplasm of the immune cells with the cytoplasm of the cancer cells, making immune cells shift from respiration to a fermentation model, causing cancer cells to metastasize & spread its wings to different parts of the body. This essentially means, we have a rogue cell, part of the immune system, that is reprogrammed to spread throughout the body as they can easily survive in a hypoxic environment ( the fermentation mechanism comes into action). These cells ferment glucose & glutamine to grow further & hijack our biochemistry
How Genefitletics identifies & measures cancer cell energy metabolism for oral cancer & constructs nutritional therapeutics for cancer prevention?
It is very clear now that cancer cells feed on glucose & glutamine as fermentable fuels to grow & proliferate.
We at Genefitletics, using our blend of exponential technologies & deep research on molecular biochemistry, collects & analyzes your molecular data that measures changes in your biochemistry covering microbiome & mitochondria before the tumor manifests & grows to detect the oral cancer at the earliest stage while our model also measures fermentation pathways that are being actively expressed that could feed these cancer & rogue cells to proliferate. These pathways cover
- Glutamine Metabolism
- Pentose phosphate pathway (PPP)
- Lactate Dehydrogenase levels(LDH);
- Protein Tyrosine and Serine/Threonine pathway;
- OC CD 36 expression
We measure activities of each of these pathways along with 23 other biochemical pathways & assign them grades from good to suboptimal which drives the nutritional therapeutics to stop the growth of tumor cells while feeding healthy cells with nutrients, polyphenols, healthy fats & antioxidants.
Since our nutritional therapeutics are married to your unique biochemistry, there is no one solutions fits all & the recommendations are carved out by mathematically mapping of 30,000 plus food substrates with activity level of each of 27 pathways including the above 4 pathways
You could track the impact of these recommendations via scientifically validated assessment forms fed to our platform as well as every 3 months we make changes in your interventions aligned with changes in your biology which we track by collecting your longitudinal data. You may go for retest after following recommendations for 12 months.
You can find more details about our oral cancer early detection solution- ORAONCO here:https://genefitletics.com/oraonco/
ORANOCO is not an FDA approved or cleared test
ORANOCO is not an Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) approved or cleared test
Citations:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4493566
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8467939
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0171933522000280
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4783224
