Word: melanoma
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...brain cancers but differ dramatically from colon cancers or leukemias. To look for common weaknesses among different types of cancer, the automation process tests chemical compounds directly against a range of 60 lines of living tumor cells grown in Petri dishes and representing seven leading cancer killers: colon, lung, melanoma, kidney, ovarian, brain and blood...
...technology that has evolved over the past 12 years. Each uses a virus to act as a kind of biological taxi to transport a desired gene into the nucleus of human blood cells. In one experiment, a team led by Dr. Steven Rosenberg proposes to treat malignant melanoma, a form of skin cancer, with blood cells that have been genetically altered to transform them into tiny factories for a tumor-killing protein...
Skin-cancer statistics vary accordingly. For example, the National Cancer Institute reports that from 1983 to 1987, Atlanta's melanoma rate averaged 11.6 per 100,000 people each year, while the more northerly Detroit's average was only 7.4. In Tucson, Ariz., which is close to Atlanta in latitude but has many more sunny days, the rate soars to 19, the highest...
...hormone that stimulates them, turning them into lymphokine-activated killer, or LAK, cells. Injected back into the bloodstream along with repeated doses of interleukin-2, they attack any foreign cells (including malignant ones) with great vigor. The technique has caused tumors to shrink significantly in a number of advanced melanoma patients and has apparently even effected an occasional cure...
...more advanced technique proposed by Rosenberg involves a human gene that orders production of a tumor-killing chemical. This gene would be inserted into an extracted immune cell called a tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte. Injected back into the body, the engineered TIL cells would specifically seek out and destroy melanoma cells...