We all know that using tobacco products is a sure way to be on the road to asthma, emphysema, and lung cancer. New research, putting a kind of reverse engineering twist to that carcinogenic scenario, is using tobacco to fight cancer. Scientists at Stanford University are manipulating the tobacco plant to make as a vaccine to fight a type of lymphatic cancer. Once injected, the personalized vaccine prompts the body's immune system to attack cancer cells. So far the technique has been used on 16 cancer patients. Not only was it safe, but 70 percent of the patients' immune systems responded to this tobacco vaccine.
It's pretty ironic to use tobacco to fight cancer, but apparently vaccines made from plants are far less expensive than those made using animal cells. Let's hope this is a breakthrough in the fight against cancer.
on Yahoo! |
Wow, that's really interesting!