There was a super interesting article, from the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2018, explaining how they found chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a blood cancer, that cannot be found in DNA but is instead found in the changes of mRNA that inactivate tumor-suppressing proteins, thereby promoting cancer growth.
Most people think of cancer as a disease of disorderly DNA. Changes, or mutations, in the sequence of DNA, alter the function of the proteins made from that DNA, leading to uncontrolled cell division.
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Genetic testing that discovers cancers do not test mRNA, only DNA, leaving CLL largely undetectable. Christine Mayr, a molecular biologist at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said, “these mRNA changes have the same ultimate effect as known cancer drivers in DNA, so we believe they may play a very important role.”
DNA lives in the nucleus of a cell, while proteins are made in the surrounding cytoplasm. To bridge this gap, a cell must first make an RNA copy of a gene’s DNA. This RNA copy, called messenger RNA, is then transported out of the nucleus. It is this mRNA copy that cells read and translate into a protein.
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Exons are the useful pieces of DNA, which are separated by blocks of unnecessary DNA parts called introns. If DNA was a film, and each frame was either an exon or intron; to make the final mRNA product, you’d need to snip the intron frames out and splice the exons together. If the mRNA is missing exons or should have, the proteins it carries the directions for will be cut short as well.
If the mRNA is short of necessary exons, the protein made won’t function properly. If that protein is a tumor suppressor, one that protects against cancer, the tumor-suppressing protein may malfunction.
They discovered many of the mRNAs in cancer cells produce these truncated tumor-suppressor proteins. The changes occur not only in known tumor-suppressor genes but also in previously unrecognized ones.
The changes to the mRNA make proteins that are very similar to the proteins that are made when you have a mutation in the DNA that causes a truncated protein to be made,” Dr. Mayr says. “In the end, the outcome for the cell is very similar, but how it happened is very different.
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
It was also found in other cancers like T cell acute lymphocytic leukemia and breast cancer. “Using a method that Dr. Mayr’s lab developed to detect these particular mRNA changes, they found that a substantially greater number of people with CLL had an inactivation of a tumor-suppressor gene at the mRNA level than those who had it at the DNA level.
These findings help explain a long-standing conundrum, which is that CLL cells have relatively few known DNA mutations. Some CLL cells lack even known mutations. In effect, the mRNA changes that Dr. Mayr’s team discovered could account for the missing DNA mutations.”
There are some important differences between the mRNA changes and a bona fide DNA mutation. Most important, the inactivation of tumor suppressors through mRNA is usually only partial; only about half of the relevant protein molecules in the tumor cells are truncated. But in many cases this is enough to completely override the function of the normal versions that are present. And because this truncation could apply to 100 different genes at once, the changes can add up.
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
“Current cancer diagnostic efforts predominantly focus on the sequencing of DNA in order to identify mutations,” Dr. Mayr says. “But our research suggests that changes at the mRNA level might be as frequent.”
I’m not making any accusations, but it would definitely be interesting to know more about the mRNA in the unapproved by FDA, COVID-19 vaccines that are being widely distributed throughout the globe. I’d be curious to know what these mRNA diagnostics for tumor-suppressing alterations show, but the people testing it would have to be free of any conflicts of interest, especially with BigPharma.
Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) is implemented by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); it prevents employers from using genetic information in employment decisions and prevents employers from requesting and requiring genetic information from employees or those applying for jobs.
They claimed GINA doesn’t apply to these mRNA vaccines because it doesn’t have any effect on your DNA, but since it is entirely possible for cancer-causing changes to be made via mRNA, would it be reasonable that it should be covered by GINA?
I’m not a scientist, or any sort of medical professional for that matter, but I found this to be quite an intriguing revelation. This relatively unknown ability in mRNA to cause cancer makes me even more cautious about the actual purpose of the fast-tracked, unapproved mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, and the side effects they incite. What do you think?
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