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| New Hope in Finding Cures for Diseases in Sea Life: Sharks and Possible Cures for Cancer There are many new obstacles that people have to overcome. Diseases such as cancer have frightened many people into believing and purchasing anything that has the label: “it can help prevent…” With that superstition, a new hope has appeared in finding the cure for cancer. In the past few years, scientists have begun to look into sea life as a possible answer to finding cures for different type of diseases. One specific specie that has caught the interest of many people, are sharks. Although there are a lot of other life that are being researched, I believe that sharks have been in the spot life but does not currently have proof that it actually cures or even help cancer patients. The reason why sharks have been such an interesting possibility is due to the fact that there history with low counts of diseases. Sharks and rays have existed in the ocean for over four hundred million years. Their immune system has kept them from dying from various deaths: such as diseases, viruses, or infections. Although sharks do have a low risk of diseases, it doesn’t mean that they don’t get sick. Sharks do get sick, but their incidence of disease is much lower than among the other fishes. This is the key reason why many biochemists and immunologists are curious and interested in exploring the mechanisms that may explain the unusual disease resistance of these animals. Sharks apparently possess immune cells with the same functions as those of mammals, but the shark cells appear to be produced and stimulated differently. The variety of immunoglobulins, which are antibodies, produced in the mammalian immune system, sharks have only one class of immunoglobulin. This immunoglobulin normally circulates in shark blood at very high levels and appears to be ready to attack invading substances at all times. |
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