Did you miss this post or is no one interested...

I wrote this post last saturday - 10/05/08 - no one commented so I don't know if you missed it OR if your not interested. Let me know if your not interested in these types of posts cause there is no point me writing them if no one is going to read them...





So I learnt a little about breast cancer today (in my immunology lecture). And now I understand why they say once you have breast cancer it will ALWAYS come back


So basically we have somatic (Non-embryonic stem cells that are not derived from gametes - egg or sperm cells - ) stem cells in our breasts.

Stem Cells = Stem cells are the body’s blank or “master” cells. They are the foundation cells for every organ, tissue, and cell in the body. Stem cells can renew themselves indefinitely and give rise to (differentiate) many types of specialized cells, such as muscles, nerves, organs, bone, blood, and so on. These properties make stem cells different from the body’s other mature cells. For example, a skin cell can only divide and generate new skin cells.

So what happens is when the stem cells renew and differentiate (become other stem cells as well as other breast cells). Something goes wrong and the new stem cell becomes a tumor cell, which proliferates (grows) uncontrollably.

So we irradiate AND inject toxic chemicals (chemotherapy) to kill the cancer cells. NOW stem cells are hardy little buggers and don't die during this. So what happens - they continue to proliferate EXCEPT this time they are now immune to irradiation and chemotherapy.....

My lecturer is develping Immunotherapy to combat cancer (mainly breast cancer, stage IV's melanoma's (usually only have about 6 months to live once you are at Stage IV) and another cancer that I forget at this moment).

What they are doing is taking monocytes (A monocyte is a leukocyte, part of the human body's immune system that protects against blood-borne pathogens and moves quickly (aprox. 8-12 hours) to sites of infection in the tissues.) and changing them into dendritic cells (the most immune-stimulating cells in the human body) and then exposing them to the cancer cells so they recognise it and then injecting it into the body...

They seem to be having a fairly good response to it. With both the Stage IV melanoma's and the breast cancer (he didn't really talk about the other cancer I THINK it was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or a type of lymphoma anyway)...


He even showed pictures (CT scans) from some of the patients in the clinical trial of melanoma's. So far they have trialled it on 39 patients and of those 39 patients 7 have had complete response (cured); 5 have had partial response and 1 has had stable disease (meaning it stayed the same). So it doesn't seem like a HUGE success but think about it of those 39 patients who only had at most 6 months to live - 7 have survived completely cured. FIVE have survived but had the disease come back years later and 1 had the disease not grow any larger.


Anyway I am sure that just bored the pants of you all....

Ps lecturer = J. Alejandro López