Attention brilliant young minds of biomedical research, your time has finally come! The BigPharma conspiratists have been permitted to suppress the OneTrueCure for Cancer for long enough. The Bayblab Foundation has decided to finally end the fiasco once and for all. We will be awarding one BILLION CAD to the one to identifty the **ultimate** target for cancer therapy. No magic bullet required (we'll handle that), all you have to do is name the enemy. Should we go straight into the belly of the beast to strike at the tumor cells themselves? They are clearly the agressors, but these genetically labile shape-shifters might be hard to pin down... Should we go after the infrastructure, the tumor's endothelial cells that feed the tumor, or the friendly neighbourhood unknowing accomplices, the stromal fibroblasts? How about the smoke-grenading monocytes laying down the thick cover, or the extracellular matrix protein framework? Or perhaps we shouldn't be destroying bad cells, but strengthening the good guys. Cytotoxic T cells? Natural killers? Antibody-secreting B cells?What say you Bayblabbers? What do you reason is the best target for cancer therapy and why? Add your answer to the comments below and leave the rest to us...
Podcast
3 comments:
That particular tumour in the picture?
I'd recommend some A1 sauce, a fork and knife.
But I have to say that the Ultimate Target is going to have to be tailored to the tumour. Gimme my billion! O CAD=Canadian$ nevermind, you can keep it.
Tumor endothelium. Genetically stable and easy to reach systemically.
I still think Folkman had it right, "curing" cancer will involve either the destruction or the normalization of the vasculature. Even your viral treatment is mostly efficacious because of vascular shutdown.
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