Mireia Cuñé Alonso, NOTICIA 1

SCIENTISTS ACHIEVE THE IMMUNE SYSTEM TO ATTACK THE CANCER STEM CELLS

SUMMARY:

A team of researchers from Stanford University could have found accidentally that nanoparticles of ferumoxytol activate the ability of the immune system to destroy tumor cells.

Heike Daldrup-Link, the head of the investigation, was checking if the nanoparticles could be used as vectors to transport the chemotherapy treatments to some laboratory rats.
He made an experiment with three groups of rats. One of them received nanoparticles with chemotherapy, an other only nanoparticles and the third one was the control one. Ferumoxytol causes macrophages to destroy the bad cells.

As a result, they noticed that the nanoparticles without the complement had destroyed the cancer cells and stopped the metastasis process in the rats.

LINK:

http://www.quo.es/salud/logran-que-el-sistema-inmune-ataque-celulas-cancerosas


DATE:

27/09/2016


SCIETIFIC SCOPE:

Medicine

GLOSSARY:

• Nanoparticles:  particles between 1 and 100 nanometers in size. In nanotechnology, a particle is defined as a small object that behaves as a whole unit with respect to its transport and properties.
• Vectors: In biology, a vector is any organism that facilitates the spread of a disease.Vectors do not inherently cause diseases but are mere vehicles of the germs that cause disease. In this case, this vectors are used to trasport the ferumoxytol to the cancer cells.
• Metastasis: The process by which cancer spreads from the place at which it first arose as a primary tumor to distant locations in the body.

COMMENTARY:

In my opinion, this can be a huge progress in medicine and it's something in which scientists should investigate more to create a new drug to cure some types of cancer or to help in it. This progress will take a lot of time till they can bring to market this new posible drug but anything is good to help.

This also can be good to create new job places, but the most important, to cure people from cancer.