Name______________________________________________Period_____________________________________
CANCER WARRIOR
OBJECTIVE: We will watch the movie, Cancer Warrior, to review the scientific method and to see how these methods
lead to greater understanding of human physiology and to methods to treat homeostatic imbalances of the body, such
as cancer.
A. List or describe the general steps a scientist uses to find answers to questions. SCIENTIFIC METHODS
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B. First Exp. Of Dr. Folkman in 1961.
1. Question he was trying to answer? Could hemoglobin be dried down then have salt water added back and
still be a good blood capable of carrying oxygen and keeping tissue alive?
2. Describe the experiment. Feeds a mouse thyroid gland the reconstituted blood and looks at how the
thyroid responds
3. Results and conclusions. Thyroid gland appears to thrive
4. Next question he asked? Could the reconstituted blood support new growth?
5. Describe the experiment. Takes tumor cells from mice and puts them into the thyroid and looks for the cells
to grow.
6. Describe all the results. The cells grow for a while then stop growing.
7. What new questions came up from these results? Are these cells that stopped growing living or dead?
8. What new experiment was performed to answer this question? He takes these cells out of the thyroid
gland and puts them back into a mouse.
9. Describe the results of this experiment. Tumors grow from these cells so they were not dead. He also
notices that blood vessels are growing around and in the tumor
10.Folkman observed blood vessels in the tumor of the mice. What did he wonder? He wonders if tumors are
able to release something that that allows it to grow blood vessels around it.
11. What is angiogenesis? Blood vessel growth
Folkman wonders if blood vessel growth could be stopped would that be a new way to treat cancer?
Nobody believes that blood vessels have anything to do with cancerous tumor growth. Folkman needs to prove that
tumors make blood vessels.
12. Describe how the cornea is used to show that tumors do recruit or grow their own blood vessels. Took pieces of
tumors and put them in corneas (they usually have no blood vessels) then he observed how blood vessels began to
move into the cornea towards the tumors When he took the tumor piece out, the blood vessels disappeared.
13. Now Folkman believes that tumors can stimulate blood vessels growth so he wants to find the factor or molecule in
the body that the tumor is releasing that causes the blood vessels to grow toward the tumor. Describe the experiment
that shows that the body is making something that can stimulate blood vessel growth.
They take a piece of cloth or tissue and dip it into the purified extract and then put this into a cornea.
14. What are the results of this experiment? The blood vessels begin growing into the cornea towards the piece of
dipped wedge.
Now Falkman want to find an inhibitor to the substance that causes the blood vessels to grow. What does he do?
He uses cartilage because it stops having blood vessels in it so he thinks there may be an inhibitor to blood vessels in it.
15. Describe the experiment and t