Cancer and the Immune System Essay -- Biology T Cells

Have you ever eaten something without washing your detention or been next to someone who sneezed? If you experience then youve been exposed to millions of germs. The sphere is full of germs (microorganisms) - things like bacteria and viruses which can make us unbalanced - and simple things like breathing and eating ar constantly exposing us to them. Sometimes we get sick, but amazingly enough, most of the time we codt. Our bodys ability to fight off disease is delinquent to the incredible insubordinate formation.Several T cells (white) attacking a tumorHowever, at times something goes wrong with the immune system. Everyone gets sick once in a while, and beyond making us ill, there are electrostatic many diseases which can kill people. Cancer is a disease which manages to vanquish the immune system. But how? For years cancer immunologists assumed that the cells of the immune system simply couldnt recognize tumor cells. After all, if they could, cancer would be no more seri ous than the common cold. The many people who divulge each year from cancer seem to support the view that the immune system is blind to tumor cells. However, new experimental evidence indicates otherwise. As often happens in science the assumed or most distinct view is not always the correct one. In a body of work designed to investigate exactly how cancerous cells defeat the immune system, a collaborating group of scientists found some very interesting results. In a Nature Medicine journal article titled Characterization of move T cells specific for tumor-associated antigens in melanoma patients they discovered a phenomenon we grow dubbed Dead Cells Walking.The number one problem was to identify anti-melanoma T cells.To do this they first harvested lymphocytes from the peripheral blood of mela... ... be no cure. The fact that specific TAA cells are present in people with metastatic disease opens up a completely new realm for oncologists. Perhaps new cancer therapies testame nt be aimed at reviving the anergic T cells. This would allow physicians to work with the immune system of their patients, and together, maybe the cancer can be defeated. In addition, the debate showed that chemotherapy significantly decreased the levels of anti cancer TAA cells. If those cells can somehow be revived, than a standard anti cancer chemotherapy regimen may actually be doing more harm than good. Physicians treat disease with the knowledge they have about how it works. Their treatments then, can only be effective if their knowledge is correct. As a result, studies such as this one, which clarify disease mechanisms, are tiny for the continued advancement of the medical profession.