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Submission + - Immune Discovery 'May Treat All Cancer' (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A newly-discovered part of our immune system could be harnessed to treat all cancers, say scientists. The Cardiff University team discovered a method of killing prostate, breast, lung and other cancers in lab tests. The findings, published in Nature Immunology, have not been tested in patients, but the researchers say they have "enormous potential." Our immune system is our body's natural defense against infection, but it also attacks cancerous cells. The scientists were looking for "unconventional" and previously undiscovered ways the immune system naturally attacks tumors. What they found was a T-cell inside people's blood. This is an immune cell that can scan the body to assess whether there is a threat that needs to be eliminated. The difference is this one could attack a wide range of cancers.

T-cells have "receptors" on their surface that allow them to "see" at a chemical level. The Cardiff team discovered a T-cell and its receptor that could find and kill a wide range of cancerous cells in the lab including lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer cells. Crucially, it left normal tissues untouched. Exactly how it does this is still being explored. This particular T-cell receptor interacts with a molecule called MR1, which is on the surface of every cell in the human body. It is thought MR1 is flagging the distorted metabolism going on inside a cancerous cell to the immune system.

Comment Re:I think this is bullshit (Score 1) 1746

by dosware (#46666763) Attached to: Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO

Bullshit? Yeah. Obama, Biden...the list is endless. Opposition to "gay marriage" was rife 5 years ago. The opposition wasn't up in arms over granting equal civil and legal rights to civil partnerships ... no, the religious zealots were pissed that their godly and sancro-sanct term "marriage" would be granted to homosexuals.

For many it was really about semantics... not rights. I can't know what Eich's justification was for supporting Prop 8. Did his opinion eventually evolve like Obama's? What exactly were Eich's opinions? Did they evolve? Oh, ok... let's make logically indirect assumptions based on donations.

Comment Re:Applications Don't Matter Anymore (Score 1) 1091

by dosware (#39436581) Attached to: Why Linux Can't 'Sell' On the Desktop
Gimp, Inkscape, VLC,, and other great free cross-platform programs do run on Windows because, unlike MS, these projects seek broad, free distribution. Sorry, but MS utterly fails in that area, understandably so. As a business user, I cannot survive without MS and Adobe. As a home user, I do survive with Linux...very comfortably and very cheaply (vs. 10 years ago). The Linux Desktop quietly arrived a few years ago. My Dad is 85, and happily and ignorantly browsing the Internet and reading email using Debian. He used to be a black hole for viruses on XP, but no longer....mission accomplished

Comment Re:Ice Age Park (Score 2) 302

by dosware (#38286592) Attached to: Russian Scientists Say They'll Clone a Mammoth Within 5 Years
Inference from fossils is a mature and noble science- but pales in comparison to studying live organisms. Direct observation of a living specimens provide verifiable data on behavior, ecology, soft anatomy/ physiology, genetics...and the list goes on and on. Digging up a human cranium likely wouldn't reveal to an alien the full behavioral potential (good or bad) of Homo sapiens.

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