New Cancer stem cell Therapies

Source:Science Daily

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Hello everyone!!! It has been a long time since I posted something on my blog. Now I have got the right topic to start off with. Ok. I got this one from sciencedaily.com . Scientists from the University of Michigan have found out an interesting way of blocking the cancer stem cells from proliferation.

The theme of the research is to combine chemotherapy with a drug that woudl block the notch signalling pathway.

Let me throw some light on the notch signalling pathway. This is basically a pathway which helps in the proliferation of stem cells. It keeps the stem cells in teh proliferative state so that it can replenish the dead cells. What happens in cancer cells is that this notch pathway is disturbed resulting in continued proliferation.

In the current research, the scientists aim to use notch inhibitors to disrupt the growth of the cancer stem cells.

The issue that arises now is whether this treatment would also affect the normal stem cells. But this fear was allayed by the scientists by doing a research on mice in which they experimentally blocked the notch signalling pathway and the mice still survived.

The scientists feel that this method of targetting the cancer stem cells could be very efficient since that's what drives the cancer malignant growth.

The method theya re using here is a 2 step process. First they would use notch inhibitors and make the cancer stem cells sensitive to chemotherapy after which they would use the same to knock the cells out.