Making It Look Easy
(From ScienceDaily). The best advances in science are those that make progress look easy and obvious - always anything but in practice. Simple steps forward in the knowledge and capabilities of biotechnology can often be combined to form tools far more effective than previously existed, as demonstrated here: "bone marrow stem cells stick to adhesive proteins called selectins more strongly than other cells ... selectins grab onto a specific carbohydrate on the surfaces of white blood cells, stem cells, and cancer cells. ... King's group coated a slender plastic tube with selectin. They then did a series of lab experiments, both in vitro and in vivo using rats, with this selectin-coated tube to filter the bloodstream for stem cells. It worked ... Another exciting application of King's invention is filtering the blood for cancer cells ... As a cancer cell flows along the implanted surface, King's device captures it and delivers an apoptosis signal, a biochemical way of telling the cancer cell to kill itself. Within two days, that cancer cell is dead. Normal cells are left totally unharmed because the device selectively targets cancer cells."
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070104144824.htm