Zheng Cui is a biochemist currently serving as an Associate Professor of Pathology (Tumor Biology) at Wake Forest University. As an oncologist and a cancer researcher Cui has proposed the unique idea that certain individuals (estimated at 10% to 15% of the human population) naturally produce a special kind of white blood cell that contains an inherent resistance to cancer. This idea is extremely controversial within the cancer biology community. These white blood cells, in Cui's view, could potentially be extracted from donors and given to cancer victims, thus endowing them with cancer resistance. Cui's research seems to indicate that the resistance includes many types of cancer. Cui's research is based on experiments on mice. These experiments resulted in Cui being able to cure cancer in several otherwise terminally sick mice. Cui is proposing eventual experimentation of the technique on human subjects.

In 2003 Cui published his discovery of mice possessing a powerful innate immune system which rendered them resistant to cancer, and able to cause regression of cancer.[1] These mice were designated SR/CR (Spontaneous Regression/Cancer Resistant).[1] Cui was unable to create or understand the mechanism of creation of the SR/CR mice. Cui subsequently published a number of other papers demonstrating the capabilities of SR/CR mice, the last one published in 2010.[2] The following year he published a study showing that the leukocytes of humans possess varying degrees of "cancer killing activity".[3]

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References

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  1. ^ a b Cui Z, Willingham MC, Hicks AM, Alexander-Miller MA, Howard TD, Hawkins GA, Miller MS, Weir HM, Du W, DeLong CJ (2003). "Spontaneous regression of advanced cancer: identification of a unique genetically determined, age-dependent trait in mice". PNAS. 100 (11): 6682–6687. Bibcode:2003PNAS..100.6682C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1031601100. PMC 164507. PMID 12724523.
  2. ^ Riedlinger G, Adams J, Stehle JR Jr, Blanks MJ, Sanders AM, Hicks AM, Willingham MC, Cui Z (2010). "The spectrum of resistance in SR/CR mice: the critical role of chemoattraction in the cancer/leukocyte interaction". BMC Cancer. 10: 179. doi:10.1186/1471-2407-10-179. PMC 2875217. PMID 20438640.
  3. ^ Blanks MJ, Stehle JR Jr, Du W, Adams JM, Willingham MC, Allen GO, Hu JJ, Lovato J, Molnar I, Cui Z (2011). "Novel innate cancer killing activity in humans". Cancer Cell International. 11: 26. doi:10.1186/1475-2867-11-26. PMC 3170245. PMID 21813015.