PROTEIN SEEMS TAME BUT TRULY HEROIC

I have always admired the Swedes. They are not at all like the image our European ancestors had of Vikings hitting everyone in sight with a broad ax. In fact, what I observed were citizens who were so law-abiding that they would not cross the street, even when the cross-walk sign was obviously broken.

I recall visiting Stockholm back in 1957. It was winter and yet there were a couple of department stores with no front doors. They had invisible curtains of hot air blowing down from the lintel and being pulled in at the threshold so that the cold air was kept on the outside of the building and the customers simply walked through.

News reports indicated that they had warships hidden in caves in the fjords and runways built into the sides of small mountains from where the aircraft emerged at take-off speed.

They had telephones that had the dial hidden in the base of the phone; styles many years ahead of the unattractive North American models.

These were, and are, a creative people.

I digress. This story is about creativity in research.

An article in an old copy of Discover Magazine caught my attention at the library. It seems that Catharine Svanborg, an immunologist and physician at a Swedish University, made a remarkable discovery. When mother's milk was mixed with cancer cells, it was found that something in the milk compelled cancer cells to die. This happened with every type of cancer cell that was tested.

As is often the case, there was a bit of serendipity at play in these findings. Her team of student researchers were not looking for cancer cures in their obscure little university laboratory when this happened. Students had been, in fact, researching infectious diseases at the time.

This particular thesis project was specifically orchestrated to pinpoint how mother's milk, a terrific germ-fighter, blocks bacteria from infecting other cells.

Svanborg observed something momentous under the microscope. The cells exposed to breast milk were dying. The process, known as apoptosis, in which the body rids itself of old and unnecessary cells, was taking place. This process is normal for healthy cells but seldom observed in cancerous cells. The cells were (to use her words) committing suicide and being recycled. Since cancer cells unnaturally reproduce in a rampant and uncontrolled manner, this was indeed a remarkable observation.

Dr. Svanborg was aware of some of the benefits of feeding mother's milk to infants, such as there being statistically fewer cases of pneumonia, ear infections and upper respiratory tract infections. She wanted to know more.

She undertook a library study of other published scientific papers in this field and found that breast milk had previously been found to protect against cancer. Studies revealed that childhood lymphoma is nine times higher in bottle-fed infants and the risk of carcinoma is also elevated. She found that mother's milk protects the infant against a slew of diseases, including diarrhea, lower respiratory infection, otitis media, bacteremia, bacterial meningitis, botulism, urinary tract infection, necrotizing enteroclitis, sudden death syndrome, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and allergic diseases. (List taken verbatim from the Discovery text.)

These initial findings took several years of testing and re-testing before the results were published for the scientific community. The paper was met with some skepticism, as you might well imagine. After all, the properties of milk had been well researched in the past.

The American Cancer Society read of the studies, and gave the university a $200,000 grant to continue the work, the first such research grant outside the US, apparently.

The effective agent in milk turns out to be a well-known protein called alpha-lactalbumin. One scientist said that it is like a comic book hero. To the casual observer it leads a quiet life, but a swashbuckling role emerges under close scrutiny.

Ain't Nature great!

I suppose that it is only a matter of time before someone will patent another one of Nature's gifts to humanity. You probably will be able to get a 'genetically engineered mother's milk tonic' at your local pharmacy.

Before I leave I would like to say an overdue, "Thanks Mom."

Have a nice day.