Word: cancerous
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Scientists have known for more than two decades that cancer is a disease of the genes. Something scrambles the Dna inside a nucleus, and suddenly, instead of dividing in a measured fashion, a cell begins to copy itself furiously. Unlike an ordinary cell, it never stops. But describing the process isn't the same as figuring it out. Cancer cells are so radically different from normal ones that it's almost impossible to untangle the sequence of events that made them that way. So for years researchers have been attacking the problem by taking normal cells and trying to determine...
Throw a few more cancer cures on the pile. Researchers from UCLA and Maryland-based Human Genome Sciences have discovered two new angiogenesis inhibitors -- proteins that can starve a tumor by choking off its blood supply -- called METH-1 and METH-2 that may be 50 times more effective than anything currently being studied. TIME science writer Christine Gorman says that while success in the lab is all well and good, she warns that advances like these have a long history of turning into dead ends. "Angiogenesis inhibitors have a 20-year history of disappointment when they?re tried outside...
...More promise may lie in a sort of mimicry, studying the body?s own approach to fighting cells that go bad ? and Thursday saw some success on that front too. Publishing in Science magazine, a team from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston have identified a protein, called Fas ligand, that they think is the body?s own treatment for skin cancer from within. You may know it as peeling. "The body?s traditional respose to mutation is ?You change, you die,?" says Gorman. "When a skin cell sustains enough sun damage to its DNA that it may turn...
...enclosed garden, where he meditates daily. Right now he is strictly following a diet geared to blood type, which requires him to eat lots of red meat. "Type Os can eat chocolate, just can," he says, unwrapping an organic chocolate bar. And later: "Type Os are almost immune to cancer...
Different pollutants work differently. Some, such as PCBs, are subtle. A female striped bass produces 6 million eggs in a lifetime. If some die from PCBs, it won't be noticed. But humans are also affected when they eat fish contaminated by PCBs; the chemicals can cause cancer and disrupt the functioning of hormones in the body. Other forms of pollution, like nitrate and phosphate runoff from farms, kill the ecosystem by starving fish. These nutrient pollutants are found in fertilizer and in sewage, and they cause excessive growth of aquatic plants when they hit the water. Algae, during their...