Two interesting articles in Scientific American

There were two interesting articles in the April Scientific American that came today. One was about a discovery by a team at JH led by Andrew Ewald which shows that cancer metastasizes in clumps of cells, not as single cells, and those cells frequently are bound together by a particular keratin type protein. The implication is that if you were to break that protein up, the clumps would dissipate or not form, and the white cells would take care of business.

The second was a longer article about immunotherapy for cancer treatment. It does look like this may be the 'silver bullet' that has long been sought, finding ways to use our own immune systems to clean up the defective pre-cancer cells before they get established. Lots of promising directions for the research to go...and some tantalizing early results, particularly with difficult cancers like metastatic malignant melanoma.

halbert said...
Th............................. Lots of promising directions for the research to go...and some tantalizing early results, particularly with difficult cancers like metastatic malignant melanoma.

Met melanoma? True, not PC which I suppose is very different, but still very interesting to me, and promising!