Today Meilo’s sister in law, Venus, came in to talk to us about the work that she does and a little about where she lives. Venus is a scientist that works for a pharmaceutical company. She lives in New Jersey in America. Her daughter Vicky came in with her to draw pictures to help us understand the work that she does. It was very interesting and Vicky drew some really good diagrams of the body and the cells within it which helped us a lot.

Venus talked of how the body is made up of lots of different cells and these are like building blocks that make our body. The white blood cells fight bacteria but some bacteria can try to fight back. Our immune system is amazing though and it can specifically identify the bacteria so it know to kill the bacteria straight away. Bacteria can get into our bodies through any cuts as they go into our blood stream. So remember to clean and cover any cuts to help you stop bacteria getting in and harming your body.

Venus went on to talk about cancer and how cancer cells are much bigger. Did you know that these are actually our own body cells that are out of control, they keep dividing and growing and do not function properly.

There is many ways to try and get rid of cancer. One way is to remove it through cutting it out. They take a biopsy, taking both the normal cells and the cancer cells to look at them under a microscope to look at the differences and compare them. They also compare them to look at the similarities to bacteria. However cancer cells can change so that they don’t respond to the drugs that should have helped get rid of them. Scientists use antibodies to tell what type of cell it is. They then crush the cells to look at their blueprint which helps them pinpoint how they are made up and they can then try to determine how to fight them.

Scientists are now trying a new approach to help fight cancer. They are using our own immune system to teach it to kill the cancer its self. The immune system gets tired and can’t fight these so the cancer shuts down the ‘good cells’ and stop them working. Scientists look at cancer cells and the changed cancer cells and compare this to normal cells. Therefore they want to try to revive the immune cells so they work again. They can create shapes to attract the good cells and the cancer cells closer together.

It is really important to keep your immune system healthy! Here are some ways that we knew on how to do so:

• healthy diet
• drink lots of water
• get enough sleep (this is really important!)
• and finally…LISTEN to your doctor! If he gives you medicine to take then you should do what he says as it will help you!