Word: tumorous
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Based upon the research of a Harvard affiliated doctor, Avastin is the first drug on the market that works by shutting down the blood vessels surrounding a colorectal tumor, starving it of blood and nutrients...
...free radicals. These highly reactive molecules destroy just about anything that crosses their path - particularly DNA. A glancing blow that damages but doesn't destroy a cell could lead to a genetic mutation that allows it to keep on growing and dividing. The abnormal growth is still not a tumor, says Lisa Coussens, a cancer biologist at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco. But to the immune system, it looks very much like a wound that needs to be fixed. "When immune cells get called in, they bring growth factors and a whole slew...
Precisely how it?s doing that is baffling experts, for the killer, known as devil facial tumor disease (DFTD), is as mysterious as it is disfiguring. Today Mooney?s team are checking their 50 traps - lengths of PVC pipe pierced with air vents and nestled in shady spots - measuring, weighing and attaching microchips to healthy and sick devils as part of a new statewide monitoring program. There?s still no diagnostic test, so the team must check the face and gums of every animal, disinfecting each trap as they empty it. But there?s no missing the disease...
...transmitted and how it progresses. Until such questions are answered, radical options such as relocating devils onto offshore islands remain too risky. No one knows if DFTD could jump to livestock or people, and it?s so cryptic, Loh says, that pathologists cannot agree on what sort of tumor it is: ?The only things we?re certain of are that it?s spreading and that it?s affecting animals in the prime of their lives...
COLON: There's a good alternative to the dreaded colonoscopy. Tests showed that virtual colonoscopy, which images the colon by combining C.T. scans, can be as reliable at detecting tumors--provided the right 3-D software is used. And in the first trial of its kind, Avastin, a drug designed to starve a tumor by cutting off its blood supply, showed promise against colon cancer when used in conjunction with chemotherapy. Doctors are exploring its use against other solid tumors...