12/29/2010 // US // Get Cancer Answers // News Desk
U.S. – A new study suggests cancer cells may facilitate their own suicide. As reported by HealthDay News, researchers found that many cancer cells have a surface protein called calreticulin that can signal immune cells to eat them. Researchers are now reportedly attempting to find a means to get the cells to destroy themselves by sending out the signal without emitting one that saves cancer cells, released by CD47 molecules, which has the opposite effect.
Dr. Ravindra Majeti, an assistant professor of hematology and study co-principal investigator, is quoted in the report as stating of calreticulin in a release, “We want to know how it contributes to the disease process and what is happening in the cell that causes the protein to move to the cell surface.”
More information about the study may be found in the Dec. 22 online publication of Science Translational Medicine.
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