Interesting. Scientists at the Uni of Salford might just have made a breakthrough in cancer research and treatment.

I’ll provide a link to the full articles but here’s the gist.

Turns out that within a group of cancer cells there’s some, around 0.2% of them, that are particularly active and aggressive.

If I read it right, these 0.2% are the major problem ones. They are the ones capable of causing tumours, illness, and death. Where do they come from? The research suggests they somehow have defied the natural ‘cell death cycle’ and in doing so have become somewhat supercharged by mitochondrial hyperfunction. In doing so they have become particularly energised and somewhat difficult to ‘kill’. Again. They have a high level of what experts call ‘stemness’, which in their instance, means they have a high ability to cause life threatening cancers.

“Most cancer patients die because of the spread of tumour cells to distant sites, known as metastasis…. The evidence is increasingly that metastatic cancer stem cells, fuelled by mitochondria, are responsible. Yet, most chemotherapy targets the bulk cancer cells. *Some chemotherapy even makes cancer stem cells proliferate more.”

(*Perhaps in some instance the chemo kills the more placid cancer cells, leaving the more resilient cancer stem cells alive, and in doing so, increasing the resources available to them? Much in the same way as a low does of antibiotics kills weaker bacteria?)

Have a read of the article here. It’s surprising how comprehensible it is.

Thanks to Hal Gatewood for the image. It has nothing to do with cancer but it looks great.