This video explores the complex nature of cancer, a disease that remains largely unsolved despite our efforts to understand and combat it. It introduces the concept of Pito's Paradox, which posits that larger animals, despite having more cells and thus more opportunities for cancer to occur, have significantly less cancer than smaller animals.
The video explains that our cells are protein robots made up of hundreds of millions of parts, guided by complex chemical reactions, or pathways. These pathways are intertwined and stacked on top of each other, functioning perfectly until they don't. Tiny mistakes can accumulate over billions of trillions of reactions, leading to the corruption of the cellular machinery.
Our cells have kill switches to prevent this corruption, but these switches are not infallible. If they fail, a cell can turn into a cancer cell. Most of these cells are quickly slain by the immune system, but given enough time, a cell can accumulate enough mistakes and begin making more of itself.
The video then discusses the concept of hypertumors, which are tumors formed by cancer cells that have mutated and stopped cooperating with each other. This mutation can lead to the creation of a hypertumor, which cuts off the blood supply to the original cancer cells, starving and killing them. This process can repeat, potentially preventing cancer from becoming a problem for large organisms.
The video concludes by emphasizing the ongoing efforts of scientists to understand and overcome cancer, and the potential for new therapies and treatments to emerge from this understanding. It also includes a call to action for viewers to support the creators of the video through Patreon.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. Our cells are made up of hundreds of millions of parts and are guided by chemical reactions.
2. These chemical reactions are called pathways and are part of complex biochemical networks.
3. Large animals seem to be immune to cancer, which doesn't make sense given their size and number of cells.
4. The bigger an animal is, the more cancer it should have, but this isn't the case.
5. Humans live about 50 times longer and have 1,000 times more cells than mice, yet the rate of cancer is basically the same in both.
6. Blue whales have about 3,000 times more cells than humans but don't seem to get cancer at all.
7. This phenomenon is known as Peto's paradox.
8. Scientists think there are two main ways to explain Peto's paradox: evolution and hypertumours.
9. Large animals have an increased number of tumor suppressor genes, which prevent critical mutations and order the cell to kill itself if it's beyond repair.
10. Elephant cells require more mutations than mouse cells to develop a tumor, making them more resilient.
11. Hypertumours are the tumors of tumors and can cut off the blood supply to the original cancer cells, killing them.
12. Cancer cells are inherently unstable and can continue to mutate, leading to the creation of hypertumours.
13. Large animals may have more hypertumours than we realize, but they might not become big enough to notice.
14. An old blue whale might be filled with tiny cancers and just not care.
15. Scientists are working on understanding how large animals are so resilient to cancer.
16. Figuring out how large animals are so resilient to cancer could lead to new therapies and treatments.
17. Cancer has always been a challenge, but we are finally beginning to understand it and may one day overcome it.