Is cancer contagious? Cancer cells from one person are generally unable to live in the body of another healthy person. A healthy person’s immune system recognizes foreign cells and destroys them, including cancer cells from another person.

Then why not "infect" the tumors in the patient's body with the cells form another person's body in order to possibly kill the tumors in the patient's body along with the foreign cells.

The foreign cells could be delivered to the patient's tumors in the "sugary contrast*" that is used to identify tumors in x-rays.

"For PET imaging, patients are injected with a small amount of a radioactively marked sugar which, once in the body, reach those organs and tissues that consume a lot of sugar. Tumors consume up to 30 times more sugar then normal tissue." (why I do not consume sugar by the way)

Or, if the foreign cells would enter healthy organs and cause damage in said organs, directly inject the foreign cells in the tumors with a syringe.

However... the patient's body may kill the foreign cells injected into the patient's tumor, but not kill the patient's tumor cells.

Just a HalfBaked venture into medicine here. I would be shocked if this has not already been tried.
-- Sunstone, Jan 19 2019

There are a few problems here, alas.

First, although some cancers do metabolize sugars faster than other tissues, it's usually only by a modest factor - I think 30x is rare. And, even if it is 30x and the cancer is 1% of your body mass, most of the sugar will be metabolized by normal tissues.

Second, even if the "sugar" went exclusively to the cancer cells, you can't use it to deliver foreign cells to the cancer - sugar molecules are tiny, and cells are huge. If you attach the sugar to the foreign cells, it ceases to be sugar (as such); and if you don't attach it, it will just diffuse away from the foreign cells.

Third, even if the foreign cells managed to get into the cancer, all that would happen is that the immune system would kill the foreign cells, not the cancer cells. There might be some local inflammation, but I don't think it would do much to the cancer cells.

Finally, injecting things directly into the cancer can be done, but in this case you'd inject something to kill the cancer cells directly. The problem there is that you can't use that approach to kill all the cancer cells without also killing a lot of normal tissue, since the cancer isn't (usually) a tightly-defined and enclosed mass. If it is, surgery is generally the most effective option.

There are indeed efforts to recruit the immune system to kill cancers, but in different ways. (And, as a side note, everybody probably develops very early cancers many times during their life, and the immune system usually wipes them out before they become significant.)
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 19 2019


//the immune system would kill the foreign cells, not the cancer cells.//

What I would have said if it hadn't already been said, if probably with different words.
-- Skewed, Jan 19 2019


That's why he's paid the big bucks, [Skewed].

Well, partly that, but mostly because of his collection of compromising photos, videos and audio recordings, plus a number of samples of unsavory biological fluids.
-- 8th of 7, Jan 19 2019


<makes note to send [8th] a selection of savoury biological fluids for Christmas>
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 19 2019



random, halfbakery