Morphoproteomics
What it means
The change or alteration in the generation of proteins expressed by genes within an organism.
Why is it important
Tthe cancerous cells in a child belong to that child; the cells are the child. The child’s vitality enables their cells including those which are cancerous to adapt against a threat. The perceived threat, the threat perceived by the cancer cells to their survival is the treatment.
Why it becomes vital
Treatment assumes child A is the same as child B as C as.....
Treatment realises this axiom to be erroneous. But, as of now, without assuming this fallacy no treatment would begin as there is no facility for refining the knowledge of ‘the child’s’ disease.
Hence, the child is assailed by weapons of mass destruction in the hope that the weight of bombardment might conquer the cancer before annilating its host. Kill the cancer before you kill the child.
Before the cancer kills the child.
Morphoproteomics
Morphoproteomics may mean we understand the child’s cancer; the cancer’s personality beneath the generic banner of neuroblastoma. What point is there in identifying the type of lock unless you possess the key to its barrel. Today we have very destructive implement with, which to prise apart the cancer’s door. And in so doing we risk the disintegration of the entire fabric of the cancer’s building – your child.
Tomorrow we may have the understanding to cut the precise key for the cancer’s undoing.
Today.
A biology program at Vermont that is the first step in trying to personalized medicine and an understanding of how one child’s disease differs from the next. This will enable us to move away from the "trial-and-error" approach. The trial and deah approach.
In each child diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, the disease differs immensely. Each time the child receives treatment for Neuroblastoma, the disease changes, it has the ability to grow a resistance to agents it has already been treated with, and so with each relapse, the disease grows stronger and changes in biological makeup.
Time is running out for children with persistent and relapsed Neuroblastoma. If we are to save any of these children’s lives, the way forward is to identify which agents work best against that particular child’s disease, rather than the ad hoc approach of giving multiple children the same standard chemotherapies.
The technology now exists to undertake this task.
Where and how.
$120,000 will help 30 children at University of Vermont: Samples of tumour would be taken and submitted for morphoproteomic testing. (The total cost per child - $4,000)
Our aim is to raise and allocate money to University of Vermont to grow cell lines from the biopsies (this costs about $1,000 per child for growth factors, storage, and testing), including mRNA expression analysis (about $1,000 per child) and flow cytometry (samples sent by Vermont to University of Michigan where there is an advanced flow cytometry system.