There was a very interesting article on embryonic stem cells and cancer reported in the May 16, 2007 issue of Molecular Biology of the Cell. British scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how cancers spread, which could lead to new methods of fighting the disease.
The University of Manchester study used embryonic stem cells to investigate how some tumors are able to migrate to other parts of the body, thus making cancer treatments more difficult.
Christopher M. Ward, the lead researcher, and colleagues studied a crucial change what makes cancer cells able to start moving and spread into other tissues. Known as the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, this crucial change was observed in the early embryo, theorizing that embryonic stem cells might undergo a similar process.
They have shown embryonic stem cells spontaneously change in a manner that is remarkably similar to the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. They lose the proteins that cells use to bind to each other and have other protein alterations that are characteristic of spreading cancer cells.
Studying such cells, researchers have identified a novel component of the transition process and expect to identify other factors involved in cancer cell spread, hopefully leading to new cancer therapies.
http://www.molbiolcell.org/cgi/repri...urcetype=HWCIT
Abstract
http://www.molbiolcell.org/cgi/conte...urcetype=HWCIT