by Rebecca, Student, London UK
Recently I undertook a research project at Bath University, looking at the effect epigenetics can have on the formation of breast cancer. What I found was really amazing, and very relevant given the current trends of breast cancer worldwide.
Breast cancer is now so common it is hard to find someone who is untouched by the disease either directly or indirectly through friends and family. It has become the enemy within and women across the board are now encouraged to check their breasts for any sign of breast disease. October has become synonymous with pink ribbons and raising money for breast cancer research.
I have seen so much in the news and in general about the few options available for women with breast cancer when it comes to treatment and prevention. The most common option for treatment, and now also for prevention, is the removal of the breasts, and sometimes the ovaries too, even before any cancer is diagnosed, if the women are deemed to be at high risk of developing the disease.
Scientists have isolated the ‘breast cancer gene’ and can give genetic counselling to women with this gene as to what their options are. However, what I have found interesting is that the research or information I talk about below is seemingly not taken into consideration, let alone placed equally alongside all other treatments and preventatives.
As taught in many high school biology classes, every person has DNA (Deoxy-ribo Nucleic Acid), which is like a genetic code that contains all the instructions needed to build everything that makes up the body, and make it function. However, what is not often taught is that your DNA on its own is only part of the story of how you come to exist and what happens to you during life.
Think of your DNA as a really, really long strand of string in our bodies, that is wrapped around little proteins called Histones. Your DNA wraps around a Histone, and then chemical tags can bind to these Histones. It is this second layer of structure (the chemical tags and the wrapping around the protein) that is called the Epigenome. It is the Epigenome that shapes the structure of your DNA.
The proteins help to organize the DNA because they have tails that can become covered with chemical tags and affect the DNA interaction. Some sections of DNA become tightly wrapped up, making the genes in that section inactive or unreadable. However, the proteins can also relax genes, making them active and easily accessible. So in effect, although your DNA code remains the same for life, your epigenetics are flexible, and whether a gene is wrapped up tightly and difficult to read, or is relaxed and easily accessible, is in reaction to your environment and your lifestyle factors, things like stress or diet.1
So how does this relate to cancer? Well, cancer develops when a cell becomes abnormal and begins to grow out of control. Out of control growth occurs by both turning off the genes coding for proteins that slow cell growth and turning on genes coding for proteins that speed up cell growth. Epigenetic events can affect many of the stages in tumour development; for example some of our lifestyle choices over time could lead to the section of gene that codes for slowing cell growth to be wrapped up tightly, while allowing the gene that codes for the speeding up of growth to be relaxed and readable, causing the increased chance of a formation of a cancerous tumour.
For my research project I focused on breast cancer, as it is the most common cancer among women in the United States, after skin cancer. It was estimated by Cancer Research UK that there were around 55,200 new cases of invasive breast cancer in the UK in 2014, that’s 150 cases diagnosed every day. And Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 1.68 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, with around 11,400 breast cancer deaths in the UK in 2014.2
The epigenetic alterations that occur are not well understood, other than that they are key contributors to breast tumour formation. Prevention, treatments and diagnostics are being developed by some researchers to target epigenetic changes leading to breast cancer.3
One such researcher is Mina Bissell, who has shown that cancer is not only caused by cancer cells and out of control growth, but by an interaction between cancer cells and their surrounding cellular microenvironment.
Her talk on TED ‘Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer’ is fascinating and she asks the same questions I used to try and get my biology teachers to answer all the time – how, when every human starts off as one single cell, a fertilised egg, do the cells in your nose know to become a nose, and your elbow cells to be your elbow? And why do you not wake up one day with a foot for a hand? The cells in your hand contain the same information, and therefore the same potential to be a foot, as your foot does. And yet it doesn’t happen. And so, the same question can be asked of cancer. Can we really say that one day, a single cell suddenly ups and decides its DNA is going to mutate, and it’s going to become cancer?
These questions led her to find that it is not a random event, but that all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them. She works with breast cancer, and so uses the example of a mammary gland (the gland in a woman’s breast that produces milk) to explain how this works.
They took just a tiny bit of a mammary gland, called an ‘Acinus’, where milk is created (shown in the picture below) and they asked, how it was that those cells formed that structure. It was believed up until this work, that the yellow cells around the red and blue ones in the picture were simply there to give the gland its structure. However, what they found when they took these cells out of the natural environment of the breast, and placed them in a dish, was that within a few days they forgot what they were, lost shape and stopped producing milk.
So what is the significance of this? What it shows is that environment and context overrides, and somehow signals to the cell to do different things. But the question became: How?
Mina Bissell thought that maybe the structural cells people always thought were only there for shape, actually contained information and signalled to the nucleus or ‘brain’ of the cell what to do.
She and her co-workers took cellular material containing the extracellular matrix (ECM) that surrounds breast cells, and put the cells which had forgotten what they were into it. In a few days, the cells had re-organised into fully functioning glands that produced milk, demonstrating once again it is the context the cell finds itself in that determines what it will do.
But it’s what she did next that was really incredible. She formed the hypothesis that if context is the most dominant thing, then a cancer cell restored to normal context should revert back to a normal non-cancerous cell.
And so they tested it – they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell.
She has given us a different way of viewing cancer – in her words, a more hopeful one – one where it is not a game of the genetic lottery, or one where you one day randomly wake up with cancer, but a view where cancer is the result of a context or environment that is signalling a normal healthy cell to become cancer. What her studies have shown is that the 70 trillion cells in our bodies are constantly communicating to the extracellular matrix, which is communicating back to the nucleus of the cell, keeping and restoring balance.
Mina Bissell has said herself that arrogance kills curiosity and passion, she doesn’t understand everything and that there is far more to be discovered4 and I agree. I think that we need to start matching up different research and findings to produce a larger understanding of what is at play in the body when cancer forms. What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer.
The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing.
Could we possibly consider that our bodies are like one little cell in the environment that is life – and that our life gives us signals, that we can choose to respond or react to, either making our environment a healthy and harmonious one, or one that effectively ‘gives us cancer’? Could it be that the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc., has an effect on our smaller internal environments, that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous?
Unfortunately, this will not make drug companies millions, nor will it make anyone famous for finding a cure, and most radically, it will ask people to put their health before their ability to do as they like with their bodies, asking them to take responsibility for the scientifically confirmed effect our lifestyle has on our bodies. It is for this reason perhaps, that Mina Bissell’s research is not yet front page news, and that no one is connecting up the dots to what appears to be a very simple conclusion, that perhaps the key to understanding cancer and possibly preventing and/or healing it will be found in the way we live.
References:
- University of Utah. (2014). Epigenetics at a glance and gene control. Available: What is epigenetics?
- Cancer Research UK (2016) Breast Cancer Statistics. Available: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/breast-cancer#DIKlwm8WjE4QgdDp.99 Last accessed: 23/11/16
- Dworhin A et al. (2009). Epigenetic alteration in the breast. Seminars in cancer biology. 19 (3), p165-171.
- Mina Bissell. (2012). Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer. Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/mina_bissell_experiments_that_point_to_a_new_understanding_of_cancer?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread Last accessed 23/11/16.
Read more:
1) Lifestyle choices and breast cancer prevention
2) Breast cancer: Knowing what I know now, I would definitely do things differently.
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
This is such an interesting article to read but also depressing at the same time as the article was written in 2016, so 4 years ago. It feels to me that the work of Mina Bissell has not been taken further. The studies of Mina Bissell make so much sense, by asking such simple questions as how do the cells in our body know what part they have to play to make up the human body. Where do they get the instructions from? I guess we take our bodies for granted and never really take much notice of them until they start to show signs of ill health. Is it possible that the way we have set up our current way of life, we disregard our bodies and rely on our minds to work things out, when actually it is our bodies that carry the greater intelligence as this Mina Bissell’s research clearly shows.
Great and didactic article that should be available in medicine studies and the general public.
Thanks for sharing it Rebecca
This is an amazing blog as is the work of Mina Bissell what this blog confirms to me is that our whole body is in constant communication via our cells, whereas we have been led to believe it is our minds that is the dominant communicator.
You make science so easy and interesting to understand not only that I love how you hone out to the much bigger picture leading it back to body and listening to what it is telling us, the choice is ours in do we listen and respond to it or override and ignore it!
Rebecca, this is an A-mazing sharing. I recall watching Mina Bissell’s Ted Talk and was fascinated by it. If we really break it down to the nitty gritty, say at conception, how do the cells know how and when to multiply.
There is more to life than being a human, everything communicates with everything, the precision of conception is just the same as the precision life offers to us. It is governed by something more than, just life.
What an inspiring sharing and much to ponder over too.
If only we pondered more Shushila but we don’t. We tend to not question things, often accepting what we’ve been told by our parents, our teachers, science, religion and government. However the trouble with being able to truly ponder is that it’s an activity that is offered to us by a particular energetic source and that is the energy of the soul. Therefore to truly ponder we have to be aligned to the energy of the soul but most of us are aligned to the energy of the spirit and the spirit doesn’t ponder, not truly. The spirit may question and ruminate but never with the freedom to actually come up with something that is outside its current way of thinking. The tricky part is that the spirit will think that it’s come up with something that is outside its regular parameters, whilst all the while still being very decidedly confined within its original box.
Alexis if we were as you say to ponder is it then possible that we can say that the 70 trillion cells in our bodies are constantly communicating to the extracellular matrix, which is communicating back to the nucleus of the cell, keeping and restoring balance, and that the 70 trillions cells in our bodies are also constantly communicating back to the universe? All the cells in our bodies are made up of the particles from space/ Universe, so it would make sense that they are then in communication from that which they are made from just as the cells are in constant communication to the extracellular matrix. So we could say our bodies are constantly communicating but are we listening?
What gets me Mary is even though I know this and even though I can hear what my body is saying (e.g. I need to go to the loo) I still choose to ignore it!!! And I know that this is because I am being impulsed by a consciousness that doesn’t want me to self care, a consciousness that ‘glues’ me into work, so that I feel compelled to finish just one more thing before going to the bathroom.
“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed.`’ A powerful article Rebecca and one which confirms that we are architects of our own health and futures. Understanding the main determining factor is how we live, not genetics puts responsibility for health back into our own hands.
This is fascinating because Mina Bissell is a scientist and one of a few of them that is prepared to say
“that arrogance kills curiosity and passion, she doesn’t understand everything and that there is far more to be discovered”
There are not too many scientists that say that these days and I guess that is why we have not heard much about her research. Is it possible that as a scientist you have to toe the line in order for your work to be recognised in the scientific world.
It is very exposing that something so ground breaking as the research above has not been placed in the spotlight. It shows that the dominant mindset is protective of the status quo and those that control it desirous of guarding their own security.
Michelle, what is fascinating is that Mina Bissell had to appear on Ted Talk to present this so called discovery, what if there are other researchers, questioning this too. It’s time to stop spending money on sending people to space and more on the real science of life.
‘These questions led her to find that it is not a random event, but that all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them.’ This is huge and goes to show that how we live our lives and the choices that we make really does impact our health. Mina Bissell’s research is showing that getting cancer is not the random event we think it is.
It is a fascinating piece of research but one that backs up what is already a known esoterically. It is perverse that we need research to confirm to all what is already truth to a few and unless this research is out there, the truth for the few will not be listened to and become the truth for all.
Your presentation here is just so valuable, Rebecca. Just like Serge Benhayon translated E=mc2 into ‘Everything is energy, therefore everything is because of energy’ – these amazing lab findings really need to be translated into our everyday language of movement that everyone can relate to and understand as our living truth. Thank you.
There is so much meticulous and precise order to so many aspects of the Universe we witness, otherwise there is no way we would be able to start formulating hypotheses and predict things. More than that human life is completely run by cycles, forget about the man made ones which there are plenty of, but there are the solar, lunar and the planetary cycles that gives us the years, months, days as well as the seasons. There are the predictable cycles of illness and disease, the menstrual cycle, and many many more. How on earth can we propose that anything in our universe is ‘random’?!? I love studies such as Mina Bissell’s that put us straight about such imaginings.
Research into the relationship between the way we live, the environment we live in and cancer from these findings in my opinion needs to be explored further. It is not rocket science but a science certainly worth investigating if we want to get to the root of cancer and its widespread prevalence in society today.
Thank you Rebecca for your article, it’s a very interesting read. I’m fascinated by what you have shared about the environment around the cell and that communicating to and instructing the cells. I can see the parallel between a single cell and a single human being, and what communications I am responding to each day and how the way I then live contributes to or harms the larger body of all of humanity.
Mina Bissel’s work is amazing. She looks deeper into the causation of cancer. But considering we are multi-dimensional beings, not just physical walking mechanical bodies there has to be a deeper energetic causation also. Our living and loving can be a preventative tool – or not.
The only way that we get to understand a particular disease is to be humble enough to know that we do not know everything about it and so cooperation is needed amongst people to find out what is truly known about a particular disease.
That humility is like a receptivity and openness, it’s a very beautiful part of being human.
I love the facts you present here Rebecca. It has made me realise there is no end to the amount of appreciation for just how amazing our bodies are, as long as the cells have harmonious surroundings, they remain healthy or actually return to homeostasis when their environment is restored from being out of balance.
“And so they tested it – they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell”.
Our bodies really are the blueprint for educating us on true living – without it we would really have no other signposts. Thank goodness the body reflects back to us what our choices are, but are we ready to listen?
So true Michelle. We have got to a point where we ignore the natural ‘signposts’ of the body and instead use all manner of manufactured signposts outside the body to determine how we’re going. We use the ‘food pyramid’ or any number of the other dietary guides to tell us whether what we’re eating is right, we listen to other people’s exercise regimes to determine how we should exercise, we draw from our ideas and use comparison to gauge how we’re doing in relationships and we compare our health to others (often to those who are much sicker than us) to get a reading about our own health. Pretty much all of our signposts about life are external and therefore not true. As you say say Michelle, “Our bodies really are the blueprint for educating us on true living”.
That’s beautifully explained Alexis – no where do we offer support for ourselves or others to trust in our/their own wisdom. We learn from very young to disconnect from it and yet it is the best friend we could ever wish for.
An incredibly informative and insight-full blog offering me, and humanity, so much vital information which has the potential to cast a new and very bright light on the cause of cancer. There was so much shared I was nodding to, but it was these words amongst everything written which really jumped out at me; “arrogance kills curiosity and passion”. Words, in this case, every medical professional involved in the field of cancer would benefit from reading but also a very wise message for all of us, in our everyday life. For me, arrogance shuts the door to endless possibilities.
I so agree Ingrid. When we think we ‘know it all’ we shut the door on any further enquiry.
And when I look around these days, especially in the field of medicine, science and religion, I see so many doors closed on what may be possible if the old and comfortable way of looking at life was to be discarded. And of course, then there are those doors which may be open but simply lead to a place which enables the door opener to receive the recognition and attention, and in some cases the money, they are desperately seeking. You’ve certainly opened my eyes to what’s behind all these doors!
Yes and we can also get to something and think that “this is it”, as in an end point or pinnacle, whether that be a scientific discovery, a loving relationship, our health and vitality, etc, the truth is there is always more – more learning, wisdom, discoveries, and more love to live.
It still seems to be missing in our societal consciousness that we do indeed play a massive part in creating our own illness and disease; likewise how we also play a pivotal part in our own healing.
What a fascinating blog. Why are we not testing this and experimenting with it on a big scale? What we have done so far hasn’t worked very well. We have nothing to lose, only our health to gain or maintain if we change the way we live.
Fascinating and revealing of a truth we all know that the way we live and the choices we make are reflected in our physical body.
I have come away from reading this with a greater understanding and appreciation for our incredible human bodies. And how I am affects much more than I think.