http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10366968/

Quote :

""The authors show that tumor cells can mobilize normal bone marrow cells, causing them to migrate to particular regions and change the local environment so as to attract and support a developing metastasis," Patricia Steeg, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a commentary. Cells at the site of the metastasis multiply and produce a protein called fibronectin, which acts like a glue to attract and trap the bone marrow cells to create a landing pad or nest for the cancer cells. "These nests provide attachment factors for the tumor cells to implant and nurture them. It causes them not only to bind but to proliferate. Once that all takes place we have a fully formed metastatic site or secondary tumor," said Lyden. "This is the first time anyone has discovered what we call the pre-metastatic niche." Without the landing pad, the cancerous cell could not colonize the organ. "

Quote :

""This opens up the door to new concepts of how metastasis is taking place. If we can understand all these multiple processes we can develop new drugs that block each step. That way we have a much better future than just trying to treat the tumor cell, which is almost like a last step in this process," "

If a fluorescent tag or other marker can be developed for these 'specialized' bone marrow cells, it gives another way of monitoring progression/migration of the disease with molecular imaging, in addition to monitoring overactive sites of glucose uptake. This is pretty exciting news.

12/8/2005 12:45:28 PM

well h0rrah.

actually, i previously thought a tumor was just one cell that kept getting bigger. but i guess if that were the case, all his cell neighbors would just take that fucker out.

12/8/2005 1:12:17 PM

yuo thought a tumor was one giant cell?

12/8/2005 1:27:54 PM

Quote :

"well h0rrah. actually, i previously thought a tumor was just one cell that kept getting bigger. but i guess if that were the case, all his cell neighbors would just take that fucker out. "

Ugh, i dunno who taught you about cancer and apoptosis, but you learned the wrong shit.

12/8/2005 1:28:01 PM

this is awesome

12/8/2005 2:01:22 PM

Treat treat treat treat...

Get on the fucking cure already.

[Edited on December 8, 2005 at 2:08 PM. Reason : good news, but still]

12/8/2005 2:08:22 PM

^same with aids

12/8/2005 2:08:58 PM

and don't get me started on niggas and black people.

12/8/2005 2:30:17 PM

cure would be great, but until then this is a hugeeeeee leap

gg medics

12/8/2005 5:22:22 PM

sounds like a mcdonald's franchise

12/8/2005 8:13:21 PM

NEWS FLASH : theres been a cure for aids for a decade

12/8/2005 8:37:41 PM

O RLY?

12/8/2005 8:42:42 PM

Quote :

"Ugh, i dunno who taught you about cancer and apoptosis, but you learned the wrong shit."

how you gon throw "apoptosis" in a nuclear engineer's face? might as well hit him with "necrosis" while you're at it.

12/8/2005 10:14:31 PM

Quote :

"NEWS FLASH : theres been a cure for aids for a decade"

oh yeah? what's that?

12/8/2005 11:01:22 PM

there are several different ones. try a google search. only problem is none of them are faintly affordable. if youre filthy and get aids youre fien though. the one majic johnson got was 20 million dollars.

[Edited on December 8, 2005 at 11:19 PM. Reason : OMG FISHHEADS IS STUCK IN MY HEAD FOREVER!!!!]

12/8/2005 11:17:51 PM

Quote :

"OMG FISHHEADS IS STUCK IN MY HEAD FOREVER!!!!"

rawk.

there are no cures
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=356618
basically, that confirmed what i already knew (mom used to work at the AIDS hotline, and we both keep abreast AIDS in the news b/c of the interest her job fostered): that if you take the drugs quickly enough, and keep them as a sustained regimen, HIV/AIDS is more of a condition that becomes part of your life, instead of a death sentence. In situations like that, it's more like diabetes I than the way CF was until recently.

12/8/2005 11:37:57 PM

the conspiracy theory isnt that he never had it its that he was cured. that just says he had it. its a secret that there is a cure because people will feel everyone with aids is entittled to teh multi million dollar per unit cure and the government doesnt want to fund it.

this guy had kids after being found hiv positive and none of his kids/wif have hiv? dont be fooled

12/8/2005 11:46:38 PM

i'm not referring to the conspiracy theory part

Quote :

"this guy had kids after being found hiv positive and none of his kids/wif have hiv? dont be fooled"

it does happen
magic still has AIDS
news article where johnson himself is quoted as saying it's not gone, but dormant

i tried to limit my search to .gov, .edu, and .org, but the option on google that i remember being there wasnt. so a lot of the links have to be waded through, and i'm not doing that tonight. a good number are education and awareness sites, so take your pick
if you don't feel like doing it yourself, either, just call up the aids hotline
1-800-HIV-0440

12/9/2005 12:04:19 AM

of course hes not gonna tell the world hes cured. he knows its fucked up that he can be cured and 99% of people cant.

12/9/2005 12:06:41 AM

There is no cure for AIDS.

What we do have is a very effective (but very expensive) treatment regimen, known as highly-active anti-retroviral therapy. People who adhere to HAART basically live a normal lifespan.

As for the topic of the thread, I want to find the actual research involved...I hate trying to read descriptions of medical topics on news sites because they rarely have any idea of what they're talking about. Interesting concept, though.

12/9/2005 12:05:36 PM

Quote :

"magic still has AIDS"

when did he get aids?

12/9/2005 12:17:40 PM

hiv. how can a man have hiv, have 3 kids and not pass it on to anyone

12/9/2005 1:19:54 PM

Quote :

"Scientists discover how cancer spreads"

smooth and evenly. Mmm...cancer.

[Edited on December 9, 2005 at 1:43 PM. Reason : quotation]

12/9/2005 1:42:48 PM

Quote :

"hiv. how can a man have hiv, have 3 kids and not pass it on to anyone"

Pretty easily, actually.

Even mothers with HIV don't necessarily pass it on to their children.

12/9/2005 2:10:57 PM

but if you have a genetic defect that causes cancer, there's a 50% chance your kids will have it, too. And if by chance they have it and make it through life without getting cancer, THEIR kids will also have a 50% chance of having that same defective gene--else a mutated one.

...It's really depressing....

12/9/2005 4:04:00 PM

Quote :

"As for the topic of the thread, I want to find the actual research involved...I hate trying to read descriptions of medical topics on news sites because they rarely have any idea of what they're talking about. Interesting concept, though. "

I would also like to find the research, but I haven't had the time to look for it. Not only do they not know what they're talking about most of the time, but they feel the need to dumb it down for the "regular reader" in which some important details can get lost. But I think this article did a decent job in getting the basic point across.

12/9/2005 4:18:12 PM

here's a link to the nature article:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7069/full/nature04186.html

state students should have access

12/9/2005 4:30:35 PM

Quote :

"but if you have a genetic defect that causes cancer, there's a 50% chance your kids will have it, too. And if by chance they have it and make it through life without getting cancer, THEIR kids will also have a 50% chance of having that same defective gene--else a mutated one."

It's not really that simple at all.

1) Most genetic diseases don't involve a single gene, meaning the odds aren't 50%.
2) A lot of cancers result from mutations that are acquired, not inherited.
3) Even if you have a gene that is associated with cancer (i.e., BRCA-1 or 2 for breast cancer), that doesn't translate to a 100% chance of developing the disease; it's just a risk factor.

12/9/2005 5:48:54 PM

some of you people...god damn....go take some science classes please.

12/9/2005 7:51:04 PM

you people? what the fuck do you mean by "you people"?

12/9/2005 8:16:56 PM

ok, when i said that before, i ment to say that i thought one cell divided concontrolably. Reading this i seemed to gain the impression that it got another cell to turn into a cancer cell itself. upon reading it even again, I think it's probably meaning that one cell from the cancer patch broke off and went somewhere else and started dividing there. So I guess I take back what i originally tried to write, which was completley different from what i actually did write.

All cells of one cancer came from the same original cell. i think.

12/9/2005 8:24:49 PM

Typically, yes (the word for that is "monoclonal"). One cell mutates and begins to divide uncontrollably. A metastasis is a tumor in a different site, which was seeded by one of the cells from the initial tumor.

However, a tumor can develop from a stem cell, and its progeny may differentiate into different types of cells, even though they come from the same precursor.

12/9/2005 8:32:01 PM

i don't know why anyone would think they have cured HIV when they haven't even cured herpes, warts, acne, diabetes, etc...

12/9/2005 9:41:08 PM

Quote :

"actually, i previously thought a tumor was just one cell that kept getting bigger."

no, just no....

12/10/2005 3:32:02 AM

maybe if they had this shit back in my day i wouldnt be a walking side show freak today

12/10/2005 9:02:37 AM

Quote :

"Quote : "but if you have a genetic defect that causes cancer, there's a 50% chance your kids will have it, too. And if by chance they have it and make it through life without getting cancer, THEIR kids will also have a 50% chance of having that same defective gene--else a mutated one." It's not really that simple at all. 1) Most genetic diseases don't involve a single gene, meaning the odds aren't 50%. 2) A lot of cancers result from mutations that are acquired, not inherited. 3) Even if you have a gene that is associated with cancer (i.e., BRCA-1 or 2 for breast cancer), that doesn't translate to a 100% chance of developing the disease; it's just a risk factor."

I'm sorry, but that was what my doctor who specializes in cases of childhood cancer told me. And in my case, yes, I didn't inherit it, but I do have a mutated gene. There are other mutations of the same gene out there, but, also in my case, I seemed to get the impression that it was pretty much the same gene that muted in a vast majority of cases. And... for retinoblastoma, it's a childhood cancer, so if you don't have it by the age of 3 or something, it's pretty safe to say that you aren't going to get it.

also, for the record, I don't think I said anything that goes against what you were disagreeing with/clarifying. But that's completely beside the point.

12/10/2005 9:53:02 AM

well my kids are fucked then,

12/10/2005 10:10:34 AM

really depends when the gene mutated, I think, so they may be safer than you think, and as DaveOT said, many of the mutated genes just create an increased risk.

12/10/2005 10:21:42 AM

One of my best friends from High School has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I helped him get out of the hospital last sunday, but apparently he got an infection and had to come back in on tuesday. Now they are saying that it doesn't look good for him and its only a matter of time. They think he "got it" from an Exzema topical medication he was on for years and years.

I just found out about this about 2 hours ago. I feel so horrible.

12/10/2005 4:21:07 PM

Quote :

"but that was what my doctor who specializes in cases of childhood cancer told me."

doctors didn't probably just have a class in this stuff....

12/17/2005 11:25:20 PM