Healthy Elders May Hold Key to Fighting Cancer
University of California News/April, 2015
Could the immune systems of healthy seniors hold clues for beating the most aggressive form of breast cancer?
New evidence from the Scripps Research Institute suggests that some seniors may have successfully fought cancer without ever knowing it, developing antibodies that may hold promising avenues for new therapies.
Scripps researchers have begun mining the DNA in blood samples from the so-called "wellderly" — healthy adults age 80-plus — for the secrets to their long lives.
In the process, they've homed in on antibodies that bond with a type of cancer cell for which there is no targeted therapy.
“I thought that the human immune system is really our best defense against cancer,” says Brunie Felding, an investigator at Scripps. “The wellderly have had a healthy long life. My question was: Do these people have antibodies we should look into?”