Saturday, 12 October 2013

Mice With Human Cells & The Work Of Brain Tumor Research

By Robert Sutter


As you can probably imagine, efforts within the medical field are going to be had in a number of different fashions. Some of them may include the usage of mice, which isn't hard to see why. They react to certain therapies in different ways, which means that the results could most likely play into human usage as well. Brain tumor research is no exception and it seems like there has been some attention brought to human cells in mice recently, which has gone on to earn my attention as well.

According to Science Daily, John Hopkins researchers have been working hard to see how mice react to a certain FDA-approved drug. However, in order to make this viable in the field of brain tumor research, the mice were treated as they had human tumor cells in their bodies. What's even more interesting than this is that the drug showed a halting of such tumors and there was no trace to be found as well. To say that this story deserves the attention of organizations like Voices against Brain Cancer would be an understatement.

The story spoke about the IDH1 gene in particular, which was expanded upon back in 2008. This particular gene is seen in 70 to 80 percent of tumors and it is oftentimes mutated. One of the things to take into account is that, with said mutation brought into effect, the brain may not be able to put glucose to use, meaning that the energy typically brought from it cannot be utilized. As you can see, there are challenges to be had in this level of research.

Everyone is going to be different in terms of the condition they have, meaning that different methods are going to be set in place. Tumors may be prevalent but the specific types couldn't be more different from one another in terms of how they are structured. Many different components can be brought into account in order to help research along. Knowing that there is a chance for these tumor cells to slow own before ultimately fading away brings a sense of hope to this matter in the medical field.

I believe that there is a great amount of work to be done in the field of brain tumor research and this story is proof of it. I have to believe that this kind of research is one of the most extensive and all you have to do is look at how complicated these growths are to see it. There's a great amount of success to be had with the trial spoke of in this article. I believe that said success can be transitioned into human use but it's going to take some time.




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