Word: celle
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Once activated, the T cell transforms itself into a sort of commander-in-chief of immunity, activating the B cell-which secretes antibodies-and prompting the release of a farrago of molecular signals that lead to inflammation...
...therapies are emerging from two extraordinary decades of intense basic research, a fantastic voyage that scientists are taking into the heart of the cancer cell. "The life and death of cells is being worked out, and the dozens and dozens of molecules in the body that participate in those pathways are now becoming targets for therapy," says Alan Houghton, a medical oncologist and immunologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in Manhattan...
Glivec is just one of several new therapies that work by cutting a cancer cell’s lines of communication, either preventing it from reproducing or forcing it to self-destruct. Other signal-jamming treatments use monoclonal antibodies, tiny proteins that resemble the human immune system’s own antibodies but which bind to the surface of cancer cells. New York-based ImClone Systems has an antibody called IMC-C225, now in the final phases of testing in colorectal and head and neck cancer, that acts like bubble gum stuffed in a keyhole. It prevents a specialized protein known...
Other antibodies carry tiny payloads of radioactive isotopes or poisons, which kill the tumor cell without affecting surrounding tissue. IDEC Pharmaceuticals, in San Diego, just completed final rounds of testing Zevalin, an antibody that is hooked to the radioactive isotope, yttrium-90. Last month, IDEC reported that the tumors in about one third of 73 late-stage non-Hodgkins lymphoma patients were undetectable after being treated with Zevalin...
Such therapies will not, on their own, be able to rid the body of large tumors. So it is likely that oncologists will put together cocktails of treatments, each using a different strategy to outfox the cancer. In the future, the cell-killing drugs of traditional chemotherapy will be combined with treatments that aim simply to stop tumors from growing. The latter includes the so-called antiangiogenic factors, relatively non-toxic compounds that blunt the growth of new capillaries...