A research team from National Taiwan University (NTU) said it has successfully developed a model to cultivate cancer stem cells outside the human body (in vitro) through a “paracrine” mechanism, which may be further developed into medicine for increasing cancer survival rates.
The team — led by NTU president Yang Pan-chyr (楊泮池), NTU Graduate Institute of Toxicology associate professor Chen Huei-Wen (陳惠文) and NTU Graduate Institute of Oncology graduate student Chen Wan-chun (陳莞均) — spent six years to establish the first model of lung cancer stem cell in vitro cultivation.
Yang said through the replication and differentiation of stem cells people can remain active and feel young, but cancer stem cells contribute to the recurrence, metastasis and resistance to drugs of cancers, making it difficult to completely cure cancers.
Chen said through experiments with in vitro cultivation of stem cells, they found that cancer stem cells cannot survive on their own and need carcinoma-associated fibroblasts (CAF) to support their survival.
Successfully creating the in vitro cultivation environment for cancer stem cells to grow had allowed them to better understand the growth pattern of cancer stem cells, she said.
Chen said they discovered that once the links between the CAF and cancer stem cells are blocked, the growth of the cancer stem cell is also blocked, thus the model may be able to contribute to the development of medicine against cancers in the future.
“The result of this model can be applied in various ways. By killing the cancer stem cell, we gain a chance for patients to live longer and reduce the cancer reoccurrence rate,” Yang said, adding that their research result may benefit cancer treatments, or even help the development of vaccines to prevent cancer stem cells from growing.
The team’s discovery is due to be published in Nature Communications, an international academic journal, on Tuesday.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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