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Plucking Cells out of the Bloodstream

Continued from page 1

By Katherine Bourzac

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

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"This is a very broad-reaching discovery," says Hammer. Indeed, King says that he has already had some success using selectin coatings to reprogram cancer cells.

Cancer cells appear to highjack selectin pathways in order to spread to other parts of the body, the process known as metastasis. Tumors shed cells into the bloodstream. Some of those cells seem to exit with the help of selectins; ensconced in new tissue, they then establish new tumors. These secondary tumors cause more cancer deaths than initial tumors do.

King says he has unpublished work demonstrating that leukemia cells that roll along a coating of selectins and a cancer-specific signaling molecule will go through a process called programmed cell death. Healthy stem cells also roll across the device because they're attracted to the selectins, but the death signal doesn't affect them. Leukemia is a blood cancer, but King expects that the anticancer coating would work for solid tumors as well. Devices lined with these coatings might be implanted into cancer patients to prevent or slow metastasis.

King hopes to test antimetastasis implants in animals this year. He's collaborating with Jeffrey Karp, a bioengineer at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and Robert Langer, an MIT Institute Professor, to develop selectin coatings that are stable over months rather than days.

CellTraffix CEO Tom Fitzgerald says that the company's first product, a kit that will enable researchers to capture large numbers of stem and cancer cells in the lab, will likely reach the market early next year. The company hopes to begin clinical testing of the anticancer coatings by early 2010.

Comments

  • Congrats!
    Awesome, important work.
    Rate this comment: 12345

    SVE
    02/13/2008
    Posts:48
    Avg Rating:
    3/5
  • collection stem cells
    I would think that the cell could be grown in vitro... but one would have to separate the remaining 72% that are not stem cells.
    Rate this comment: 12345

    rhansing
    02/15/2008
    Posts:34
    Avg Rating:
    3/5
  • Cancer
    Cancer has been cured for a long time, just not with Big Pharma drugs.

    Various cancer types have been shown to be responsive to oral melatonin (10-50 mg daily), including breast cancer, non-small-cell lung cancer, metastatic renal cell carcinoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, and brain metastases from solid tumors.
    http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/.fulltext/10/4/326.pdf

    There are over 1100 medical journal articles about melatonin on PubMed.
    At this link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed .
    You can type in melatonin melanoma, or melatonin prostrate, or melatonin pancreas, or many other cancers and see what researchers have to say about how melatonin will cure cancers.

    If you take melatonin under the tongue, it goes strait to the blood stream. If you swallow it, the liver removes 75 % to 95%. You can read about it in: Melatonin : your body's natural wonder drug Reiter, Russel J. 1995. ISBN: 0553100173

    The Hoxsey treatment was very successful, so successful it was run out of the U.S. and now can only be found in Mexico.
    http://www.hoxsey.com/

    And pancreatic enzymes were used to cure cancer since 1968. The Dentist cured his own pancreatic cancer. http://www.drkelley.com/CANLIVER55.html
    This book was prosecuted by the U.S. government for practicing medicine without a license. All copies were then burned.
    Wobenzym is the preferred pancreatic enzyme.

    Intravenous vitamin C has been used to cure cancer for quite a while. http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_331165233.html

    Salvestrols are tumour-specific; when the salvestrol comes into contact with the tumour-specific enzyme the salvestrol is metabolized and turned into toxin within cancer cells which brings about ‘cell death’ (apoptosis) and, by this means, destroys the cancer cell(s). It is also claimed that salverstrols are only active in cancer cells and are very selective and non-toxic to healthy cells, but are highly potent and safe.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1841709.stm

    Rate this comment: 12345

    TomTom
    02/18/2008
    Posts:29
    Avg Rating:
    2/5

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