A paper describing the research was published online Sept. 21 in Nature Chemical Biology. Cochran, Associate Professor and Amato Giaccia, professor of radiation oncology, share senior authorship of the paper. The lead author is Mihalis Kariolis, a former graduate student in Cochran’s Stanford lab who is now a postdoctoral scholar in Giaccia's lab.
Presently doctors try to slow or stop metastasis with chemotherapy, but these treatments are unfortunately not very effective and have severe side effects.
The Stanford team's research show that metastasis can be stopped, without side effects, by preventing two proteins – Axl and Gas6 – from interacting to initiate the spread of cancer cells to other parts in the body from the original site where cancer originated. Their experiments were successful in cancer affected mice.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/september/metastasis-protein-therapy-092114.html
The article was published in Mumbai Mirror of 23 September 2014.
