Important Break Through In Breast Cancer – Stem Cell
According to the Canadian Press this is a pretty exciting time! Scientists at the BC Cancer Agency have had one of those breakthroughs that often don’t come in the entire lifetime of a career. But for some scientists this is a brand new day with brand new hope since the role of stem cells in the development of breast cancer has been established
What does this mean for women? Well today it might not mean much but for our daughters, our granddaughters, and the women of the next generation it could mean a lot. In 10 to 15 years its hoped that there will be much better treatments developed off of this information.
This is a significant development by all standards. What seems to happen is normal breast stem cells malfunction and this is the underlying cause of breast cancer. This is what triggers the development of breast cancer.
If scientists are able to understand just how breast cancer starts and what goes wrong with the stem cells they will be able to do a much better job of targeting the cells they need to stop from regenerating and causing the breast cancer to spread.
The study used normal breast stem cells and transplanted them into mice that were bred with immune systems that would not reject the human tissue. They allowed the stem cells to grow an entire new mini milk producing mammary gland – it’s quite amazing where we’ve gone in the world of science.
The actual details of how stem cells affect the development of breast cancer isn’t nearly as important to us everyday folk as the fact that scientists have made the discovery and once again we realize there is certainly hope for a cure!
