WGBH Podcast

Blood Vessels Help Tumors Grow

Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels. Dr. Fulkman believed that there was a chemical in tumors that allowed blood vessels to grow. He devised an experiment to prove his theory. A tumor was inserted into the cornea of a rabbit. The cornea rarely contains blood vessels. After a while, blood vessels started growing in the cornea directed straight toward the tumor. In two weeks, the tumor grew 16,000 times its normal size. After the tumor was removed all the blood vessels disappeared.

It was discovered that tumors secrete heparin to attract blood vessels. Now that we know this, the fight against cancer has gotten a lot stronger. If we can find a molecule that stops blood vessels from growing, then the cancer can be defeated.

Showing more than one podcast related to a certain subject can help a student identify what he or she is most interested in. When choosing a podcast to write an entry about, I found myself listening to topics that interested me. There was a large selection of topics that had more than one podcast that was related to it. Although topics that I am interested in like environment and human anatomy and physiology did not have multiple podcasts listed.

A good idea in the classroom is to let children choose what they want to learn about. The teacher could give the class a list of topic and break the class up into groups according to which topic the students' chose. The assignment could be to write up a report on your topic or preform a presentation in front of the class. I would do this for middle school to high school aged students.