Tuesday, February 9, 2010

An Early Warning System For Cancer

Image: Immune tracer: This image shows the overexpression of cancer-associated glycan structures (green) on proteins in cancer cells. The cells’ nuclei are stained in blue. Credit: Kirstine Lavrsen

From Technology Review:

Autoantibodies could alert doctors to cancer development.

A new screening tool developed by scientists in Denmark may help detect the earliest stages of cancer by taking advantage of the body's own defenses. The researchers constructed a microarray system that analyzes patients' blood for a specific class of immune agents called autoantibodies. These are agents that attack the body's own tissue, targeting what they perceive as "foreign" cells, such as specific molecules on the surface of tumors.

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