Cancer Cells Can Treat Tumors

Cancer Cells Can Treat Tumors.
New on suggests that many cancer cells are equipped with a sympathetic of suicide pill: a protein on their surfaces that gives them the ability to send an "eat me" notify to immune cells. The challenge now, the researchers say, is to judge out how to coax cancer cells into emitting the signal rather than a dangerous "don't eat me" signal. A lucubrate published online Dec 22 2010 in Science Translational Medicine reports that the cells cast out the enticing "eat me" signal by displaying the protein calreticulin.

But another molecule, called CD47, allows most cancer cells to leave alone destruction by sending the converse signal: "Don't eat me". In earlier research, Stanford University School of Medicine scientists found that an antibody that blocks CD47 - turning off the gesticulate - could domestic fight cancer, but mysteries remained. "Many normal cells in the body have CD47, and yet those cells are not also phony by the anti-CD47 antibody," Mark Chao, a Stanford graduate student and the study's lead author, said in a university scandal release.