potential breakthrough in Cancer treatment

[DCon]

Good news here, if it proves successful

A magnetic method of killing cancer cells has been developed by scientists in South Korea.

The technique uses a magnetic field to flip a "self-destruct" switch in tumours.

Researchers have demonstrated that the process works in bowel cancer cells and living laboratory fish. Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is one of the body's ways of getting rid of old, faulty or infected cells.

In response to certain signals, the doomed cell shrinks and breaks into fragments. These are then engulfed and consumed by amoeba-like immune cells.

Often in cancer, apoptosis fails and cells are allowed to keep dividing uncontrollably.

Details of the research, led by Professor Jinwoo Cheon, from Yonsei University in Seoul, appear in the journal Nature Materials.

The scientists wrote: "We have demonstrated that apoptosis signalling can be turned on in-vitro (in the laboratory) and in a zebra fish in-vivo (living) model by using a magnetic switch. Our magnetic switch may be broadly applicable to any type of surface membrane receptors that exhibit cellular functions on clustering."

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-n...b-3252092.html

[musashi]

Good news here, if it proves successful
http://www.independent.ie/breaking-n...b-3252092.html

Great news.
What a beautiful word, apoptosis, so ominous.
If the treatment is successfully developed and introduced it would have significant impact on populations, social structures...

[DCon]

If the magnets do not work, this might

A drug made from a plant known as “thunder god vine,” or lei gong teng, that has been used in traditional Chinese medicine, wiped out pancreatic tumors in mice, researchers said, and may soon be tested in humans.

Mice treated with the compound showed no signs of tumors after 40 days or after discontinuing the treatment, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Masonic Cancer Center.

“This drug is just unbelievably potent in killing tumor cells,” said Ashok Saluja, vice chairman of research at the center and the study’s leader, said in a telephone interview. “You could see that every day you looked at those mice, the tumor was decreasing and decreasing, and then just gone.”

“Does that mean it will definitely work in humans?” he said. “We can definitely not say that.”

The results pave the way for clinical trials in patients with pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal malignancies, the researchers said in the study.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...tumors-in-mice