Cancer Cells Can Treat Tumors

Cancer Cells Can Treat Tumors.
New analysis suggests that many cancer cells are equipped with a big-hearted of suicide pill: a protein on their surfaces that gives them the ability to send an "eat me" special to immune cells. The challenge now, the researchers say, is to put faith in out how to coax cancer cells into emitting the signal rather than a dangerous "don't eat me" signal. A chew over 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 keep destruction by sending the different signal: "Don't eat me". In earlier research, Stanford University School of Medicine scientists found that an antibody that blocks CD47 - turning off the gesture - could support fight cancer, but mysteries remained. "Many normal cells in the body have CD47, and yet those cells are not stilted by the anti-CD47 antibody," Mark Chao, a Stanford graduate student and the study's lead author, said in a university info release.