CELLS WITH MEMORY: THE FUTURE AGAINST THE CANCER

Thursday, 4 February 2015

http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/02/04/ciencia/1423071075_030347.html

Scientist field: Biology

Summary

The biggest hope is call stem cell memory “célula madre T de memoria”. It’s a new type of a white blood cell (leucocytes) and it has the two basic properties: They have the ability to renew themselves indefinitely and on the other hand they have immune memory. These cells are going to be use for the genetic modification of the tumour cells. Some Scientifics say that the stem cells would be secure for a long-term.

Glossary

Cancer: is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body.

Cell: is the basic structural, functional, and biological unit of all known living organisms.

White blood cell: also called leukocytes or leucocytes, are the cells of the immune system that are involved in protecting the body against both infectious disease and foreign invaders.

Chemotherapy: is a category of cancer treatment that uses chemical substances, especially one or more anti-cancer drugs (chemotherapeutic agents) that are given as part of a standardized chemotherapy regimen.

Personal Valuation

Nowadays the cancer I think that is one of the worst illnesses in the world because the most part of them don’t have any cure. In the past doctors had discovered the chemotherapy, this treatment had cured a lot of patients and had survived a lot of lives but unfortunately is a hard treatment because it has a lot of sides effects, and these are very cruel; the prostitute of the hair and the nails, vomits... finally it isn’t a comfortable cure. I think that scientists, doctors and investigators should have to study a lot this illness and they have to found the correct use of these cells. Nowadays the scientists are doing a lot of tests with different patients to see if this cell is effective and this can cure the cancer or not. They see that the cells can be introduced in the bone marrow directly. They start the clinic test in a pioneering study of gene therapy for congenital immunodeficiency. The cells of these patients had been extract and its deficiency was been corrected in the laboratory by infecting them with correct gene introduced into the DNA of a virus capable of integrating into the genome of human cells. These retroviruses are integrated into the human genome more or less randomly, and therefore each cell that has received the virus has a characteristic molecular signature, formed by the ends of the viral DNA bound to the context of human DNA.

In the future these cells can help a lot of people to survive and be able to prevent and cure the cancer.

 

            

Marta Hontecillas