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Friday, April 28, 2006

Immune to cancer -- for life




Researchers Zheng Cui and Mark Willingham, and a team of eight others, have discovered a strain of mice that are immune to cancer. When cancer cells are injected into the mice, they are destroyed. But even better, mice that have established tumors are completely cured by injections of white blood cells from the cancer resistant strain.

Highly aggressive cancers and very large tumors were eradicated when the white blood cells from the mutant mice were injected into normal mice. And the normal mice were then protected from future cancers, even normally lethal doses of injected cancer cells.

The immunity is inherited in the mutant strain, and the pattern of inheritance indicates that it is caused by a single mutation, as if a switch had been thrown to make the white blood cells super effective at killing cancers. This gives the researchers hope that a drug can be made to target that switch in humans.

The mechanism does not involve T-cells, the cells that have to be exposed to a pathogen in order to kill it. Instead, the effect is based on the innate response of macrophages, neutrophils, and natural killer cells -- cells that do not need pre-exposure to the disease.

The mutation appears to have no side-effects, and does not harm the organism.

While the trait has only been seen in mice at this point, humans have an even stronger immune response than mice, because they must live longer before they can reproduce. So the effect in humans may be correspondingly higher.



7 Comments:

Anonymous Manuel Gonzalez said...

The best news item you could post.
Thank you for the information.

May 25, 2006 7:33 AM  
Anonymous Erik Uri said...

Now all i have to do is figure out how to give this to humans with no side effects, unfortenetly i am only going into 7th grade and have to wait some long years. But what i can do is tell you that whoever cures cancer will be the worlds riches man and will go down in history.Unfortanatly if cancer mutates to get past the cure we will be doomed with the worldes biggest pamdemic. So wichman has enuff corage or is stupid enuff to take that risk, God bless you.

July 05, 2006 12:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Erik...you do know that cancer is mutated cells?

August 04, 2006 2:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No, the world's richest person will be the one who cures sleep.

September 12, 2006 11:42 AM  
Blogger minerva said...

That's great news, nevertheless!
Thanks for that ~ Am sure it'll bring more Hope to lots of long-suffering pple out there, in our already beleaguered world.

Do take care & Wishes,
minerva*

March 03, 2007 7:34 PM  
Anonymous garrett said...

did you know...
a normal american's blood is acidic. this is because we intake such unhealthy and unnatural things throughout our daily lives. one who eats organic food, drinks clean water, and leads a nutritous and healthy life has alkeline blood. desease cannot live in an alkeline environment. they are immune to most deseases.

March 22, 2007 8:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hope nobody is getting their medical advice from comments on a blog.

Disease is not prevented by alkaline blood, an blood that strays too far from neutral in either direction is a problem all by itself.

One cause of slightly acidic blood is a high protein diet, which can be obtained while following Garret's advice.

March 22, 2007 8:14 PM  

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