Why did Maarten van der Weijden swim? Well, for that – Groningen – DVHN.nl



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In one of the studies for which Maarten van der Weijden swam together in August, a new puzzle piece was discovered. UMCG researchers have published articles on this subject in the scientific journal Cancer Cell

. In the month of August, Van der Weijden swam in almost eleven cities, and raised five million euros for cancer research. Researchers want to know why cancer cells will grow again if they have been successfully fought by chemotherapy.

A group of international researchers led by Professor Jan Jacob Schuringa of the Groningen University Medical Center has unveiled the underlying mechanism. In many forms of leukemia, chemotherapy attacks fast-sharing blood cancer cells. But stem cells also produce cells that divide more slowly, which chemotherapy simply misses. As a result, the cancerous blood cells reappear after a while.

Proteins "betray" leukemia

Researchers have discovered proteins on the outside of cancerous blood cells that do not appear in healthy blood cells. If they have recognized these cancerous blood cells from their proteins, they can also isolate them. In this way, they could develop drugs that only attack leukemia cells.

In the end, thanks to this knowledge, researchers hope to be able to prepare a cocktail for each patient with drugs for its combination of specific DNA error, and align them to find the proteins, and so the good cancer cells. This is what is called "personalized medicine".

More information can be found in UMCG magazine KennisInzicht

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