Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 14/02/2012 17:57:28

Title: How can we get the immune system to attack cancer?
Post by: thedoc on 14/02/2012 17:57:28

Can we trick the immune system into attacking cancer cells by disguising them as bacteria?  New research suggests that adding a bacterial flagellum gets results...
Read a transcript of the interview by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1945/)

or  

Title: Re: How can we get the immune system to attack cancer?
Post by: budd3 on 20/02/2012 23:45:20

A friend told me that Yale  is doing a study on making viruses cells seek out the cancerous cells so the immune system could kill them. They tested it with mice by infecting the mouse with brain cancer and then injected it with viruses and the result was the tumor was gone. The interesting thing is that the virus only targeted the cancer cells not the healthy cell which is significant. That was just one experiment there are more experiments on using viruses to cure cancer and I am sure more will come.

Title: Re: How can we get the immune system to attack cancer?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/02/2012 06:02:12

The immune system does attack cancer. Natural killer cells screen body cells for MHC antigens normally found on healthy cells and when it finds one lacking these, eliminates it. Why some slip through, I'm not sure. Maybe they are quite abnormal enough at a certain stage, or the number of killer ts declines.