Mayo Clinic Can Make Cancer Cells Normal!

By Shlomo Maital

Panos Anastasiadis

Professor Panos Anastasiadis

An exciting report recounts how Mayo Clinic scientists, in Florida, led by Prof. Panos Anastasiadis, have done the impossible – made cancerous cells healthy again.

  Here is how the London Daily Mail reported the breakthrough:    “Scientists have found a code for turning off cancer, it was announced today.  In exciting experiments, they made cancerous breast and bladder cells benign again. And they believe many other types of cancer should be in their grasp. They said that their work reveals ‘an unexpected new biology that provides the code, the software for turning off cancer’.  Most importantly, it uncovers ‘a new strategy for cancer therapy’.  In landmark research, Mayo Clinic scientists made cancerous cells benign again. And they believe many other types of cancer should be in their grasp.”

   What the scientists did, is inject micro-RNA into the cancerous cells, which turned off the cells’ desperate cancerous need to divide again and again, and spread.  

  According to the Daily Mail:  “The work is still at an early stage but brings with it hope that cancer will take fewer lives in the future. Unlike conventional cancer drugs, which work by killing cancer, the  work aims to disarm it and render them harmless.  The breakthrough focuses on a protein called PLEKHA7 that helps healthy cells clump together.  The research showed it to be missing or faulty in a range of cancers.  When this happens, key genetic instructions to the cells are scrambled and they turn cancerous. A research team, led by Panos Anastasiadis, was able to reset the instructions – turning off the cancer.  Experiments in a dish showed that human cells from highly dangerous bladder cancers can be made normal again.   Dr Anastasiadis said: ‘Initial experiments in some aggressive types of cancer are indeed very promising.’  He thinks the approach, detailed in the journal Nature Cell Biology, would apply to most cancers, other than brain and blood cancers.”

    For years, scientists have sought a new approach to treating cancer, other than the some 200 drugs used for chemotherapy, that are toxic and cause great suffering, and often do not work. 

      Perhaps this is the ‘silver bullet’ breakthrough?