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Member
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Maryland outside WASH DC
Posts: 258
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Member
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Maryland outside WASH DC
Posts: 258
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OT - But very interesting "THE LUCKY MOUSE No. 6"
I find this very interesting and only wonder how this approach could be
applied to the MS cure search.
Maybe they could find a population of humans that NEVER gets MS and see what causes that high level of protection??
JackD
Quote:
Lucky discovery uncovers cancer-proof mouse
22:00 28 April 03
Shaoni Bhattacharya
A cancer-proof mouse, which can survive being injected with any number of
cancer cells, has been discovered by US scientists. The discovery of the
resistant mouse could pave the way for future gene or drug therapies if the
mechanism by which it fights cancer can be understood
Researchers at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North
Carolina have now bred a colony of 700 cancer-proof mice from the resistant
male they stumbled across while doing other experiments.
Doctors have known for many years that in rare cases, cancers can
mysteriously clear up of their own accord. But this is the first time such
cancer-killing ability has been shown to be genetic.
"The power of this resistance seems to be unlimited," said biochemist Zheng
Cui, the study leader. "You can give them many, many tumour cells and the
mice get rid of them."
"This is at a preliminary stage, but very promising," adds pathologist Mark
Willingham, another member of the team. "Our hope is that, some day, this
will have an impact on human cancer."
Seven generations
The scientists discovered the original cancer-proof mouse by luck during
experiments in which mice were injected with soft tissue cancers, called
sarcomas. Despite repeated injections, one mouse did not develop cancer.
When this mouse bred with a normal mouse, some of their offspring were
resistant. And these resistant mice were also able to confer resistance, for
at least seven generations. "The resistance appears to be caused by just one gene, or a cluster of closely related genes," Cui told New Scientist.
The cancer-killing ability of the mice was unusually consistent with
different types of cancer. "What's surprising is it appears these mice are
able to recognise something in common to all cancer cell lines," said Cui.
"Usually it's difficult to find a common theme."
Willingham told New Scientist that the cancer cells are killed by the mice
in a "somewhat novel" way. The body's usual first line of defence against
invaders - white blood cells called T-cells - were not employed. Instead the
body's innate immune system, consisting of cells like neutrophils and
macrophages, attacked the tumour cells and ruptured them.
Previous mice bred so that their immune systems could beat cancer went on
the develop autoimmune diseases, but that did not happen with these mice.
One significant puzzle that remains is how the mice detect the cancer cells
in the first place. Cui speculates that some kind of diffusible factor from
the tumour may betray the deadly cells.
Paul Ko Ferrigno, a cancer biologist at the MRC's cancer cell research unit
in Cambridge, UK, calls the findings "very tantalising". "I'm intrigued and
excited. If they can pin down what the immune basis for resistance to cancer
is it should be straightforward to train a patient's immune system to do the
same," he told New Scientist. Although they are preliminary, the study's
findings have "huge potential", he says.
The top priority now, says Willingham, is to identify the mouse gene
responsible for the resistance. "Because of the Human Genome Project, we
could then look for a correlate gene in humans," he said.
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Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
(doi/10.1073/pnas.1031601100)
22:00 28 April 03
UPDATE MAY 2006 same source
Quote:
Sharing the Health: Cells from unusual mice make others cancerfree
Christen Brownlee
Immune-cell transplants from an extraordinary strain of mice that resists
cancer can pass this trait to mice that aren't as lucky, according to a new
study.
FADE TO PINK. This skin tumor on a normal mouse shrank and disappeared
over the course of 3 weeks after the animal received immune cells from
unusual mice that resist cancer.
PNAS
Seven years ago, Zheng Cui and Mark Willingham of Wake Forest University in
Winston-Salem, N.C., and their colleagues discovered a peculiar male mouse.
The researchers, who were studying tumor growth, had injected this mouse and
others with lethal doses of cancer cells. While the other rodents developed
fast-growing tumors, the mouse, known as number 6, remained healthy. "We
thought we'd made a mistake," says Willingham.
The mouse continued to thrive even after the scientists repeatedly injected
it with a wide range of cancer-cell types in increasing amounts. Eventually,
the researchers came to a surprising conclusion: The rodent was eradicating
cancer cells from its body.
In breeding tests, the trait turned up in about 40 percent of the unusual
mouse's offspring.
Cui, Willingham, and their colleagues suspected that the rodents' immune
systems were fighting off disease. But they didn't know how the animals
accomplished this feat or whether the cancer resistance could be transferred
to normal mice.
Since then, the scientists have examined the immune cells that swarm to
cancer cells injected into the cancer-resistant animals. The majority of
these responding cells are neutrophils, macrophages, and natural killer
cells-the white blood cells that form the core of what's called the innate
immune system. Unlike the adaptive immune system, the innate immune system
recognizes invaders on first exposure.
The researchers discovered that selectively killing off one or two of the
responding cell types didn't affect how well a cancer-resistant mouse fended
off the disease. However, removing all three cell populations rendered the
rodents as defenseless as normal mice.
When Cui and Willingham's team collected white blood cells from
cancer-resistant animals and transplanted them into normal mice, the
recipients became cancer resistant within several days.
The effect even worked retroactively. When the researchers injected the
cancer-resistant animals' cells into normal mice that had skin tumors, the
tumors vanished within weeks. The scientists noted that with one dose of
cancer-resistant white blood cells, normal animals acquired cancer immunity
that typically lasted for the rest of their lives.
Cui notes that the findings, reported in the May 16 Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, could eventually lead to drugs, cell
transplants, or other therapies for cancer patients. He and his colleagues
are now investigating which gene or genes are responsible for the
cancer-resistant trait.
Howard Young of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Md., calls the
report "a very intriguing paper, which raises more questions than it
answers." He notes that an understanding of the mechanism by which the mice
reject tumors might provide insight into the scattered medical reports of
people spontaneously recovering from cancer. However, he adds, "although
success in mice is encouraging, translation into diseases in people is a
long way down the road."
Agreeing that looking for clinical applications is "superpremature,"
immunologist Nora Disis of the University of Washington in Seattle says that
the unusual rodents might serve as a tool for studying how the innate immune
system affects cancer. "Most of the tumor-immunity world focuses on [the
adaptive immune system], but there's a burgeoning interest in the innate
immune system's role," she adds
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12-05-2008, 07:16 PM
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