Linda at the end of a very hard hike
I have long
been interested in these things called Micro RNA. In fact, I wrote about them seven years ago:
At the time
I seem to have hoped that they might provide a means to swiftly eradicate
ovarian cancer. Well, of course, they
didn’t. But now arrives welcome news of
a promising miRNA study. Before you read
about it, you might profit by reading the link above, to brush up on your basic
biology.
Well,
anyway, some diligent researchers in Virginia seem to have shown that a certain
miRNA has the welcome property of stifling angiogenesis in tumors. Angiogenesis, as you will recall, is the
process of growing blood vessels, needed to allow new tissue to
survive. As tumors by definition are
fast-growing blobs of tissue, they have a great need for efficient
angiogenesis. A particular brand of
miRNA appears to deny them that. Read
about it in Dr. Collins’ NIH blog:
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