OVCA FIGHTS DIRTY!

                                                 LINDA AS A BAG LADY

                                                            Halloween

OVCA doesn’t fight fair!  This interesting little article details how ovarian cancer cells evade the immune system by pretending to be babies!  Fetuses, actually.

I guess I have never thought about the interaction of childbirth and the immune system.  Killer immune cells are vigilant, at all times waiting to destroy stuff that it regards as “non-self”.  When you think about it, a fetus growing inside a woman is non-self in spades!  Yet babies are born.  Clearly the body has evolved a mechanism that somehow tells the immune system “Hey, I’m non-self but harmless, so leave me be.”  Well. It seems that (somehow – way above my pay grade) OVCA cells have hijacked that trick.  Stanford researchers are hot on the trail of a way to counter this.  More power to ‘em!

Read this article; it’s good.  Actually, you can listen to it, too.

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2021/10/31/stanford-study-discovers-how-ovarian-tumors-avoid-detection-by-the-immune-system/