Cancer on Michael’s Domain

The War on Cancer

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Wednesday, October 1, 2025, is the European Day of Foundations and Donors. Since we receive close to zero basic research funding, my research is absolutely dependent on external funding. As much of our government’s R&D funding has shifted from academic to commercial research (“business funding”), foundations are keeping cancer research in Finland alive. In the past, a significant amount of money has also been coming from taxpayers’ money. Most people associate this with US President Richard Nixon, who declared War on Cancer in 1971. However, the politically supported “War on Cancer” was not, as often claimed, started by Nixon. The war against cancer had been a priority of politicians of a very different kind almost 40 years earlier.

Re-purposing the growth factor VEGF-C

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

An eLIFE digest features our recent publication about VEGF-C ( https://elifesciences.org/digests/44478/re-purposing-the-growth-factor-vegf-c ). Even though our research did not deeply delve into the function of VEGF-C during reproduction, the reviewers comments and our answers (under the “Author response” heading) give more insight than the publication itself. We did not include the sperm motility data in the manuscript. Although sometimes stunning in its magnitude, we did not always measure increased sperm motility in response to active VEGF-C. As is common knowledge, sperm as a biological sample is of highly fluctuating consistency and quality. Interestingly, a paper in eLIFE published two years ago gives some additional insight in what we might be dealing with: Sperm competition risk drives rapid ejaculate adjustments mediated by seminal fluid . This paper shows that the swimming speed of sperm is rapidly regulated by males depending on the social situation (presence of a female or a male competitor). Imho, such factors seem to be almost impossible to control when dealing with human samples…However, the title ambiguously also refers to cancer. Based on our data, we speculate that VEGF-C can be repurposed from being lymphangiogenic to being angiogenic, and further, to be metastasis-promoting.

A Very Short History of Antiangiogenic Tumor Treatment

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I covered the antiangiogenic tumor treatment topic in the Cancerbio Summer School (CBSS) 2017. As a review I recommended the following: Weis SM, Cheresh DA. Tumor angiogenesis: molecular pathways and therapeutic targets. 2011. Nature Medicine 17:1359-70. http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v17/n11/pdf/nm.2537.pdf

Let's beat cancer together!

Sun, 07 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Sawan and me registered as “The Jeltsch Laboratory” team to the Helsinki Twilight Run , which is a charity event to support the Finnish Cancer Foundation . However, Sawan caught a summer flu and had to skip the whole event. My goal was to stay below 1 hour and I managed. There were actually more participants from the RPU (Research Programs Unit) ; I ran into Tiia and Julia. Maybe we should next year start as a joint RPU team (or whatever the RPU will be called if we really manage to change our name)?

Growth factor regulation of lymphangiogenesis

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

All cells in our body need oxygen and they receive it via the circulating blood. That’s why the vascular system is the first organ system to function in a developing embryo. Before the heart starts pumping, the embryo’s need for oxygen has to be met by diffusion alone. But diffusion is sufficient only until the embryo reaches a size of several millimetres. Tumours face the same problem, when reaching a similar size. Both the developing embryo and the solid tumor can only continue growing if they manage to establish a circulatory system that supplies them with oxygen and nutrients. While cancer depends on the pathological growth of blood vessels, other diseases are caused by insufficient vascular function. E.g. in cardiovascular disease the blood vessels cannot deliver enough oxygen to the heart muscle. Apart from the cardiovascular system there is another vascular system: the lymphatic system. It functions mainly in tissue drainage and immune defense against pathogens. Similar to the cardiovascular function, the lymphatic system plays an important role in several diseases. E.g. in lymphedema patients suffer from swollen limbs because lymphatic vessels are absent or not functioning properly. And the spread of cancer (“metastasis”) seems to be intimately related to the lymphatic system as the cancer cells use the lymphatic vessels as pathways to travel within the body.

My first appearance on Finnish TV (YLE1)

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The documentary Syövän nälkäkuolema (Starving Cancer to Death) was produced by the Finnish broadcasting company YLE within the series Tutkittu Juttu . It focuses on cancer, cancer research and new cancer therapies such as antiangiogenic therapy and aired on 1st of March, 2005.You can watch the video here .