About cancer.
Cancer is a disease that makes some cells in the body grow too much. Our body is made of tiny cells. Normally, these cells grow, divide, and die in an organised way. But sometimes, some cells grow too much and form tumours.
Not all tumours are dangerous. But some tumours can spread and harm healthy cells. These tumours are called cancer.
New approach to fight cancer.
Scientists are finding new ways to fight cancer. They got an idea from the process of organ transplants to help stop cancer.
When someone gets a new organ, like a kidney or liver, the body can see it as something that doesn’t belong and tries to attack it. This is a problem for people with organ transplants, especially if the organs come from animals like pigs.
Scientists these days are also studying how to use pig organs to help with the lack of donated human organs, like livers and kidneys.
Cancer scientists thought, "What if we use this reaction of the body to fight cancer?" They decided to trick the body into thinking that cancer tumours are pig organs using a virus. This way, the body attacks the tumours.
Testing of this new method.
First, scientists tried this idea on monkeys with liver cancer. When it worked well, they tested it on 23 people with different types of cancer.
The results were different. For some people, the tumours got smaller but didn’t go away. For others, the tumours stopped growing, but some came back. Two people didn’t see any good results.
Scientists are excited about this new idea but say it’s too early to know if it will work for everyone. More tests are needed to find out how well it works.
