Paradigm Shift, page-6

I like this conceptual representation. Note that the processes don't occur within mTOR - mTOR runs/is the chemical computer that regulates them. Think of the mTOR molecule as being hard wired software.Say 80% of cancers runs a "turn on" mTOR hack for their own cells. PharmAust has placed its own hack to inhibit that hack, to take back control and restrain it.

Normal mammalian somatic cells require a minimum level of mTOR activity to function. They can't function below that. Extra rapamycin etc can be used to inhibit global mTOR activity down to that limit, which is slightly anti-cancer and is of benefit if only cancer is considered in the benefit equation.

To complicate it further, the arrest programs were originally only recycling programs. The more mTOR detects nutrients to be scarce, the more it will direct recycling to occur. Under the big evolutionary pressure to reduce the cancer cost in big mammals, the "arrest" programs evolved/diverged into cancer arrest programs as well.

That ties back to the scatter diagram. As all animals get bigger (in mammals especially), cancer become a species survival threat. Evolutionary pressure kicked in hard and has produced effective anticancer activity ... so effective that the cancer rate per aged kilo of bodyweight declines. Won't be solely via mTOR, but imo mTOR is central to the whole game...

The problem is that if global mTOR is inhibited you also tend to inhibit the anticancer pathways. Throw in the problem that added rapamycin also ablates the immune system and it really gets messy.