Our unknown organ may help cancer spread

• Autores: Jessica Hamzelou
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3172, 2018, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A newly discovered network of fluid-filled channels in the human body may be a previously unknown organ, and it seems to help transport cancer cells around the body. This discovery was made by chance from routine endoscopies, which involve inserting a thin camera into the gastrointestinal tract. Newer approaches enable doctors to get a microscopic look at the tissue inside a person's gut, with some surprising results. One team using this technique to look at the bile duct had expected to find that it is surrounded by a hard, dense wall of tissue. But instead, they saw weird, unexplained patterns. They took their findings to Neil Theise, a pathologist at New York University School of Medicine. When Theise looked under the skin of his own nose with an endomicroscopy device, he saw a similar result. Further investigation of other organs suggested that these patterns are made by a type of fluid moving through channels that are everywhere in the body.