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(Ivanhoe Newswire) Could a treatment that cured 100 percent of cancers in mice have the same effect in humans?
Thats what researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center will be trying to determine in a new study. The investigation is hoping to build on the discovery of a mouse more than ten years ago with extremely high levels of cancer-fighting white blood cells called granulocytes. Transfusions of these cells into mice with cancer virtually eliminated the tumors from their bodies. Similar results were seen for mice treated with transfusions from the offspring of the original mouse.
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After those results, researchers took a closer look at these white blood cells in people, finding younger people often have cells with strong cancer-fighting abilities. Now scientists plan to recruit 500 volunteers under age 50 and test their blood for these properties. The top 100 cancer fighters in the group will be asked to donate blood to the effort.
The white cells will then be transfused into 22 cancer patients with tumors that either never responded to traditional treatment, or have stopped responding to it.
If the study is effective, it would be another arrow in the quiver of treatments aimed at cancer, research team member Mark Willingham, M.D., was quoted as saying.
The scientists have dubbed the new treatment Leukocyte InFusion Therapy, or LIFT.
SOURCE: Understanding Aging Conference, June 28, 2008
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