Improving the Odds for Cancer Patients

Treating cancer has traditionally been a bit of a crapshoot.

Yes, you can use radiation to destroy the cancer cells — but at the same time, you're damaging surrounding healthy tissue. The alternative: spare the healthy cells, but risk allowing some cancer cells to thrive.

Now, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) believe they've found a process that can actually protect healthy cells from radiation while effectively treating cancer. According to an article in Science Daily, "In mouse experiments, they found that blocking a molecule called thrombospondin-1 from binding to its cell surface receptor, called CD47, affords normal tissues nearly complete protection from both standard and very high doses of radiation."

What's more, the new approach actually may make it easier to destroy cancer cells fully. So far, the researchers aren't completely sure why this is the case, though there are several theories. One possibility is that the treatment makes the cancer cells more susceptible to chemotherapy. Another is that uninjured cells surrounding the cancer are better able than radiation-injured cells to "improve blood flow to allow naturally occurring anti-tumor immunity to reach cancer cells more easily."

Whatever the reasons for the success of this new approach, the news is wonderful. With luck, it could mean that radiation treatment will be safer and more effective in the relatively near future.

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