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Breeding Cancer-Proof Mice
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "In an article at New Scientist, research scientists at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina have been able to breed a cancer-proof mouse. The lucky new finds, some 700 cancer-proof mice, have the ability to destroy numerous different kinds of cancer cells in their bodies very efficiently without the use of T-cells (white blood cells). Instead the body's innate immune system attacks the tumor cells and ruptures them with neutrophils and macrophages. What is so astounding within early findings is that the power of these mice to resist cancer seems to be unlimited and as well, a genetic trait able to be passed down to further generations without the negative results of previous mouse breeds with autoimmune diseases."
We are evolved to be resistant to cancers. Our cells have many built in mechanisims to prevent and destroy cancerous cells.
Unfortunately, our body's mechanisms aren't quite good enough. But by that point in our life, we've already reproduced, and evolution can no longer help us.
We're already doing that, and the results have been pretty promising. There's a good review written up by my honours supervisor here.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
Mice and rats in the wild don't die of cancer. Usually they get eaten. Sometimes they pick up other diseases. If nearly all human beings were eaten by some creature higher on the food chain--say, dragons--before the age of thirty, humans wouldn't have to worry about cancer, either. Lab animals only get cancer when
a) they are kept in clean cages and cared for so that they live for years beyond their 'normal' lifespan,
b) researchers deliberately induce tumour formation, and/or
c) the mice have been bred (or genetically altered a la Harvard mouse) specifically to be susceptible to cancer.
~Idarubicin