When bad cells go good: Harnessing cellular cannibalism for cancer treatment
O riginally published by University of California - Santa Barbara, on January 7, 2024 A Petri dish transforms into a canvas in Ph.D. student Hadley Hanson's painting of macrophages engulfing cancer cells. Credit: Hadley Hanson Scientists have solved a cellular murder mystery nearly 25 years after the case went cold. Following a trail of evidence from fruit flies to mice to humans revealed that cannibalistic cells likely cause a rare human immunodeficiency . Now the discovery shows promise for enhancing an up-and-coming cancer treatmen t. "This paper takes us from very fundamental cell biology in a fly, to explaining a human disease and harnessing that knowledge for a cancer therapy," said UC Santa Barbara 's Denise Montell. "Each one of those steps feels like a major discovery, but here they are, all in one paper." Researchers in Montell's lab published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and are now investi