Dec. 12, 2008 In a new tactic in the fight against cancer,
Cornell researcher Michael King has developed what he calls a
lethal "lint brush" for the blood -- a tiny, implantable device
that captures and kills cancer cells in the bloodstream before
they spread through the body. The strategy, which takes
advantage of the body's natural mechanism for fighting
infection, could lead to new treatments for a variety of
cancers, said King, who is an associate professor of biomedical
engineering. In research conducted at the University of
Rochester and to be published in an upcoming issue of the
journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, King showed that two
naturally occurring proteins can work together to attract and
kill as many as 30 percent of tumor cells in the bloodstream --
without harming healthy cells. King's approach uses a tiny
tubelike device coated with the proteins that could
hypothetically be implanted in a peripheral blood vessel to
filter out and destroy free-flowing cancer cells in the
bloodstream. T