For over 100 years, scientists have known that a rare and ugly relationship exists between certain cancers occurring outside the central nervous system and any related nervous system damage. In these cases, the body attacks its own cancer, but in doing so causes neurological damage. If the cancer is left untreated, the neurodegeneration could progress to severe, irreversible physical impairments and speech and vision deficits.
Photo: Courtesy of Jerome Posner |  |
  Jerome Posner | |
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About 20 years ago, Jerome Posner identified a mechanistic link for these so-called paraneoplastic disorders (PND). Working at his laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Posner, analyzing these patients' spinal fluids and neurologic abnormalities, proved that the disorders were immunologic by showing that the spinal fluid contained antibodies that bind to onconeuronal antigens located in both the tumor and the brain's Purkinje neurons.1
The finding provided diagnostic information and spurred research into the complex scientific characteristics of ...
