Sunday, February 1, 2015
Parasites Mutate Their Host Cells Into Cancer Cells
In certain tropical areas there is a parasite called Theileria. These parasites infect the white blood cells of mammals and cause their healthy cells to mutate into cancer like cells. These parasites mainly infect cattle. Once Theileria attacks the white blood cells it will let out a protein that is called Pin1. This protein allows for the mutation in the cells to happen. Scientists were actually able to create a drug that will take the cancer cells and return them back to normal cells.
This discovery is helping scientists further understand if and how parasites and cancer are connected. Dr. Helen Rippon head of worldwide cancer research was even saying that it has been proven parasites can cause cancer in humans. Schistosomiasis is another example of a cancer causing parasite. A human infected with this parasite increases their rise of bladder cancer. Schistosomiasis infects about 240 million people worldwide.
This article is very interesting in explaining to readers how cancer can be caused by a parasite. It is also very intriguing in the fact that scientists were able to create an anti-parasite drug to cure the host cells. The article is proving that future research can probably pinpoint the cause of many more types of cancer and gives hope that more cures will be discovered.
Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150126112243.htm
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This is really interesting, i wonder if they could somehow manipulate the drug or the protein in some way to allow the parasite to actually "infect" cancerous cells and return them to normal.
ReplyDeleteI was actually thinking about something similar to that. If these types of studies help make that possible imagine all the lives that could be saved through this process. Hopefully more research goes into fields like this because it could open up many doors in the scientific world.
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