Stealth Cancer: Brain Tumors Fly Under The Body's Radar
Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - 23:20
in Health & Medicine
Brain tumors avoid the body's defense forces by coating their cells with extra amounts of a specific protein - they use biological stealth technology to evade detection by the early-warning immune system that should detect and kill them. By the time the tumors are detected it's too late for the body to defeat them. The findings in mice and rats show the key role of a protein called galectin-1 in some of the most dangerous brain tumors, called high grade malignant gliomas. They had actually been trying to study how the extra production of galectin-1 by tumor cells affects cancer's ability to grow and spread in the brain. read more