Cancer cells can treat tumors

Cancer cells can treat tumors.
New probe suggests that many cancer cells are equipped with a sympathetic of suicide pill: a protein on their surfaces that gives them the power to send an "eat me" outstanding to immune cells. The challenge now, the researchers say, is to appearance out how to coax cancer cells into emitting the unique rather than a dangerous "don't eat me" signal female. A research published online Dec 22 2010 in Science Translational Medicine reports that the cells turn out the enticing "eat me" announce by displaying the protein calreticulin.

But another molecule, called CD47, allows most cancer cells to evade down by sending the opposite signal: "Don't eat me". In earlier research, Stanford University School of Medicine scientists found that an antibody that blocks CD47 - turning off the important - could worker pluck cancer, but mysteries remained. "Many conventional cells in the body have CD47, and yet those cells are not acted upon by the anti-CD47 antibody," Mark Chao, a Stanford graduate follower and the study's lead author, said in a university news release.