| MadSci Network: Medicine |
Hi,
First of all, I changed the subject, cause antibiotics have nothing to do with the question.
Cancer is a disease in which normal cells develop into malign tumors. This can be cause by infection
with certain viruses, exposure to UV-light, carcinogens (cancer inducing chemicals) or
just spontanously. All kinds of cancer are quite different, but I'll try to keep it simple.
As you may have heard, you can't just transplant organs from one person to another person, cause
the immunesystem of the receiver will try to destroy the new organ. To solve this problem in
transplantations, people that 'match' will be found to donate/recieve the organ and
the receiver will get treatment with strong drugs to stop his immunesystem from rejecting the
new organ and get accustomed to it.
The same thing happens when one persons cancer cells are injected in the person B. Person B will
produce a immunerespons to kill the cancer cells of person A, just because they are from person A, not
specifically because they are cancercells. If the antibodies from person B would be
injected in person A, all the cells of person A would be 'attacked', resulting in death. \
This can be compared with a wrong bloodtransfusion. However, if the virus would be caused by a virus,
person B could also be infected and develop a cancer.
There are however ways to produce antibodies (eg in mice or in cellculture with
human cells) and select out the ones that are specifically aimed at the cancer cells and
not against the normal, healthy cells. Unfortunatly, most cancer cells look almost
the same as normal cells, at least for the immunesystem. Some other cancer cells have even
found ways to hide the fact they are cancercells and are considered healthy...
Nevertheless, there are many projects going on to find cancercell-specific antigens. However,
every cancer/tumor and maybe even every patient may require new studies.
Some more info can be found on this site, where they have found some of
these cancerspecific antigens:
MUSTERING BODY'S SOLDIERS TO FIGHT CANCER
Regards,
Rolf
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