A new soldier in the war on cancer: The blind mole rat
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - 13:50
in Health & Medicine
If someone ever calls you a "dirty rat," consider it a compliment. A new discovery published online in the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) shows that cellular mechanisms used by the blind mole rat to survive the very low oxygen environment of its subterranean niche are the same as those that tumors use to thrive deep in our tissues. The net effect of this discovery is two-fold: first the blind mole rat can serve a "living tumor" in cancer research; and—perhaps more important—that unique gene in the blind mole rat becomes a prime target for new anti-cancer drugs that can "suffocate" tumors.