Circadian Rhythm Cancer Treatment with Brian Altman
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2020
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cancer cells disrupt the body's circadian clock. Researcher Brian Altman works to understand why and how this happens and what therapeutic findings may result.
He tells listeners
- How our 24-hour cycle works and how cancer cells create a type of circadian rhythm disorder,
- Why cancer cells gain an advantage over other cells under this circadian rhythm disorder, and
- Why this information could prove useful in fighting cancer with circadian rhythm cancer treatments.
Brian Altman is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Genetics at the University of Rochester Medical Center. He's always been interested in the metabolism of cancer and did a post-doc that involved the circadian clock and rhythms.
He describes his lab's basic interest as centered on this disruption of normal circadian rhythms by cancer, which gives the tumor cells an advantage over normal cells by allowing them to outcompete the normal cells. This, they hope, is something that can be taken advantage of and manipulated.
He makes the connection for listeners between our circadian clock and metabolism and explains that cancer wants to engage in maximal metabolism all the time; therefore, this trend may break the circadian clock. Studies on mice allowed them to ask which genes are mutated in cancer that might impact the clock and they've focused on a cancer gene called MYC. This gene cranks up the biosynthesis of some cancers.
He explains that the two main focuses of the lab's work includes identifying which tumors disrupt the circadian clock and how they can use this to inform therapeutic choices. Finally, he adds that they're getting close to showing that slowing the circadian clock can slow the growth of tumor cells. They are investigating the best way to restart the circadian clock in patients who've been disrupted by cancer to slow this cell growth.
See his lab's website to find out more: urmc.rochester.edu/labs/altman.aspx.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Forget frequently asked questions common sense common knowledge or Google how about advice from a real genius |
| 0:06.8 | 95% of people in any profession are good enough to be qualified and licensed 5% go and beyond. They become very good at what they do. |
| 0:15.0 | But only 0.1% are real Jesus. |
| 0:18.3 | Richard Jacobs has made it his life's mission to find them for you. |
| 0:22.4 | He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every |
| 0:24.7 | field, sleep science, cancer, stem cells, ketogenic diets and more. Here come the geniuses. |
| 0:30.1 | This is the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:33.0 | That are Richard Jacobs. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, this is Richard Jacobs, |
| 0:40.0 | executive director of the Finding Genius Foundation and host of the Finding Genius podcast. |
| 0:45.8 | Today I have Brian Altman. He's an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Genetics |
| 0:51.1 | at Rochester University. We're going to be talking about circadian clocks and how they affect our metabolism and possibly predispose us to cancer. |
| 0:59.2 | Brian, thanks for coming. |
| 1:00.5 | Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. |
| 1:02.1 | Yeah. Well, tell me about your research. How did you get interested in circadian clocks and all the stuff? Right, right. So I saw that on the program a few weeks ago you had a Christian Freza on who works on metabolism and cancer and I'm also interested in that topic I've been working on that since I was in graduate school at Duke University. The idea being as as he explained, that metabolism is altered in many kinds of cancer. Cancer cells have a metabolism, looks more like growing |
| 1:35.0 | and they eat a lot and make a lot waste products. |
| 1:33.6 | They're rapidly growing. |
| 1:35.0 | And so when I was deciding where to do my postdoctoral training, |
| 1:40.2 | I ended up choosing a lab that would just |
| 1:41.8 | become interested in circadian rhythms, the lab of Chidang. |
| 1:46.0 | And before I get to that, so I'll tell you about our sort of basic interests, which is the idea that in cancer, normal circadian rhythms are screwed up. |
| 1:56.1 | And this gives the tumor cells an advantage over normal cells. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Richard Jacobs, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Richard Jacobs and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.