Nobel Prize winner uses winning finding to treat own cancer
Ok.... a little tiny bit misleading. Some of you probably would have read this already.
But this is extremely interesting. A fight for life that united a field : Nature News
A fight for life that united a field
Nobel-prizewinner Ralph Steinman tried to beat his cancer with vaccines based on the dendritic cells he discovered.
Lauren Gravitz
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/1110...8163a-i1.0.jpgRalph Steinman used his findings to help design treatments that may have prolonged his life.Rockefeller Univ.
After a young Ralph Steinman co-discovered a new type of immune cell in 1973, he spent years battling to prove its importance in defending the body against pathogens, and to show how it could be used to fight disease. Thirty-four years later, he would look to that same cell to try to save his life.
Dendritic cells — named for their tree-like branches — direct and regulate the body's immune system by programming other cells to recognize and destroy intruders. Steinman, a physician–scientist at The Rockefeller University in New York, set his sights on using the cells in vaccines to prevent chronic infections, such as HIV and tuberculosis, and in cancer therapies. So when he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in March 2007, it was only natural that he would pin his hopes on the cells that had been his life's work. Together with collaborators around the world, he designed therapies that made use of his own dendritic cells.
"He was running an experiment on himself and was willing to help out with every kind of study. He wanted to help himself, but he also viewed it as an incredible opportunity to learn something," says Ira Mellman, who worked with Steinman to develop his treatments and is vice-president of oncology research at the biotechnology firm Genentech in South San Francisco, California....A fight for life that united a field : Nature News
Formatting is horrible, just go to the link to read it more easily.
