From TED.com
For decades, researcher Mina Bissell pursued a revolutionary idea — that a cancer cell doesn’t automatically become a tumor, but rather, depends on surrounding cells (its microenvironment) for cues on how to develop.
She shares the two key experiments that proved the prevailing wisdom about cancer growth was wrong.
Mina Bissell studies how cancer interacts with our bodies, searching for clues to how cancer’s microenvironment influences its growth.
Why you should listen
Mina Bissell’s groundbreaking research has proven that cancer is not only caused by cancer cells. It is caused by an interaction between cancer cells and the surrounding cellular micro-environment.
In healthy bodies, normal tissue homeostasis and architecture inhibit the progression of cancers. But changes in the microenvironment–following an injury or a wound for instance–can shift the balance. This explains why many people harbor potentially malignant tumors in their bodies without knowing it and never develop cancer, and why tumors often develop when tissue is damaged or when the immune system is suppressed.
The converse can also be true. In a landmark 1997 experiment, mutated mammary cells, when dosed with an antibody and placed into a normal cellular micro-environment, behaved normally. This powerful insight from Bissell’s lab may lead to new ways of treating existing and preventing potential cancers.
What others say
“Bissell was not the first to claim that a cell’s microenvironment plays a role in the formation of tumors. But she showed how this happens…Still, she modestly maintains that her most important contribution is that she hammered away at her point for thirty years.” — Kara Platoni, East Bay Express
Now watch her video :
TITLE: Mina Bissell: Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer. TEDGlobal 2012 · 16:18 minutes · Filmed Jun 2012
See more at TED.com
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