PREVENTING METASTISIS

If I were to sprawl out on the sand this way now - it would take four people to get me back on my feet!

Johns Hopkins University is in Baltimore.  Despite that disadvantage it has one of the best medical research facilities anywhere.  One of the biggest frogs in that large pond surely must be Dr. Denis Wirtz.  Dr. Wirtz is vice provost for research and director the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center for JHU.  He also has several other appointments and titles.  To verify that Dr. Wirtz is a big cheese I entered his name in Google Scholar, and got 12,500 hits.  (For comparison, I entered my own name – and got 498 hits.   And I worked pretty hard for a long, long  time!)     

One of Dr. Wirtz’s colleagues is Dr. Hasini Jayatilaka, a post-doc.  Dr. J is smart, gorgeous, and female.  Together Drs. W & J have published results of a study performed on animals (mice, almost certainly) that gives promise of a new weapon in the war against cancer.

Background in a nut shell:  When folks die of cancer it almost always is from a metastasis; only about 10% of cancer victims are done in by the primary tumor.  Apparently cancers secrete certain proteins that tell cancer cells to detach themselves from the main mass, make their way into the blood stream, and float off to do mischief elsewhere.  These proteins are “Interleukins”; members of a family that has many functions, mostly benign.  However, two of them act as signals to trigger metastasis.  It appears that Drs. W & J have identified two drugs already in existence that, in effect, clog up the receptors on a cancer cell and prevent the Interleukin signal from doing its job.  So – still not a cure, but a damned promising step forward none the less.

Trumps budget includes big cuts for medical research.  It probably is DOA.  Write your Congress persons to make sure.

Here is the link:  https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-05-cellular-cancer-ability.htm