cancer vs immune system

[OS]

My cousin is a doctor and I was having a conversation with him about cancer, since my uncle has late stage cancer. 🙁

Anyways, I've known that it's been documented that sometimes cancer spontaneously regresses, probably because the immune system figured out how to identify and controls cancerous/tumor cells.

When I mentioned this to him, he nonchalantly replied that this probably happens all the time and that we just don't know about.

So a new strategy in medicine research now is to develop drugs that stimulate response against cancerous cells.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/conditions/10/22/breast.cancer.vaccine.ap/
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=1253552&arctab=arc

Of course this is all too late for my uncle but maybe our generation will benefit from new research.

 

[Mo0o]

Sorry for your uncle

Not too sure what this information is gonna do here on ATOT though.

 

[biostud]

But the problem is still how to identify the cancerous cells, since they are basically your own cells. Auto-immune diseases are very harmfull, since they destroy your own tissue. As long as you can't efficiently discern between the cells a cure isn't present.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Mo0o
Sorry for your uncle

Not too sure what this information is gonna do here on ATOT though.

Umm...it's cool to know. Any link to a scientific article here is a good thing. Definitely forum appropriate.

Please don't thread crap.

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: biostud666
But the problem is still how to identify the cancerous cells, since they are basically your own cells. Auto-immune diseases are very harmfull, since they destroy your own tissue. As long as you can't efficiently discern between the cells a cure isn't present.

You should read the articles. 😛

Some cancerous cells express proteins that don't exist in healthy cells, or too many proteins relative to healthy cells. The immune system can use this to recognize the difference.