Immortality – Hype or Hope?

Stem cell magic | The lame will walk again | Killing cancer cells | The elixir of youth | Find out more

Killing cancer cells

Cancer is the biggest killer in Western society. It's not intuitively obvious to see how stem cells could help here because cancer is a condition in which certain body cells get out of control and keep growing when they shouldn't. But in picking apart the chemical signals that initiate changes in stem cells, researchers are also uncovering details about the chemical cues that initiate cell death. All healthy cells have an inbuilt self-destruct program that is activated by certain chemical cues. Cancer cells lose the self-destruct response – they just keep on growing.

The dream to find a chemical signal that pushes cancer cells to self-destruct is now a reality. There is one drug, Glivec, already on the market and many more are in the development phase. Glivec has astonishing powers. Dr Ian Judson of London's Royal Marsden Hospital witnessed a huge abdominal tumour weighing 5kg melt away when he first prescribed the drug to a patient. He describes the development as 'the most exciting thing that's happened in my entire medical career.'

Billions of pounds are being poured into intensive industrial research to uncover more drugs like Glivec. Dr William Haseltine of the US$3 billion dollar company Human Genome Sciences sums up the quest: 'What we're really after is the ability to control every cell at every stage'. The task is huge as each different type of tumour cell is likely to require a different chemical signal or drug to get it to self-destruct. But this is one case where the funding and resources might meet the task.

top ^