Destroy cancer will help malignant cells
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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At the Scripps Research Institute, a team of scientists found a way to treat leukemia. After several years of work, scientists have discovered a way to make cancer cells kill themselves.
This discovery can be a real breakthrough in medicine and help in the treatment of not only leukemia, but also other cancers.
A team of specialists at the beginning of the work was engaged in the search for antibodies that could trigger growth receptors on bone marrow cells that are immature.
As scientists suggest, such a mechanism would help transform immature bone marrow cells into blood cells. But also experts noted that some antibodies can have unpredictable effect on bone marrow cells and turn them into any types of cells, for example, into nervous cells.
The discovery has prompted scientists to think whether it is possible using this method to turn atypical cells into normal ones. As a result, 20 antibodies were tested that activate receptors on leukemia cells and only one of them was active.
The antibodies produced an exceptional effect on human leukemia cells - they transformed them into key cells of the immune system, as the exposure time increased, the key cells became NK cells, which differ in the rapid response to various pathological processes in the body. Such cells effectively resist not only viruses and bacteria, but also cancer cells.
The results of the experiments were quite impressive - a small number of NK cells per day destroyed about 15% of the leukemia cells that surrounded them.
The authors of the research project Dr. Lita Annenberg and Dr. Richard Lerner noted that the results of their work will be a new stage in the treatment of various cancers.
Cancer is the most terrible and dangerous disease of mankind, an enormous number of people die each year from different types of oncology, and scientists around the world are trying to find a way to treat cancer. So, in one of the largest private medical centers in the world, the Mayo Clinic, a team of specialists developed a method to return atypical cells to a normal state. The new method proved effective and helped in the treatment of certain types of cancer.
Head of the scientific project Panagiotis Anastasiadison noted that his group was able to do so that the growth of the tumor stopped and the atypical cells returned to their normal state.
In the course of their work, scientists used the gene Plekha7, which produces a protein that affects the wrong cells. This protein does not allow cells to divide and grow into a malignant tumor. The researchers tested a new technique on several aggressive forms of cancer tumors, and the results were positive. Anastasiadison explained that she was able to understand the principle of development of cancerous tumors and to pick up a "key" to tumors.
Now scientists are at the final stage, in the future a new technique is planned to be used to treat breast, bladder and lung cancer.
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