How sugars hide cancer
These questions, based on the Science News article "Cancer's sweet cloak," highlight observations about cell-surface sugars and their ability to hide cancer cells from the immune system.
Educator Guide: Cancer’s Sweet Cloak
About this guide
The article “Cancer’s sweet cloak” describes how cancer cells coat themselves with extra sugars to avoid detection from the immune system, and how therapeutics in development might destroy that protective sugar coating. In this guide, students can focus on details in the article, follow connections to earlier articles about cancer, explore cross-curricular connections to other major science topics and analyze a graph of data from one of the cancer experiments featured in the article.
This Guide Includes:
Archives track a long war
Students will explore the history of cancer therapy research by searching the Science News archive.
Biomolecules from many angles
These discussion prompts cover molecular structures and properties of sugars, proteins and lipids, as well as questions related to the immune system and cancer.
Mowing down cancer cells
Working in pairs, students will analyze a graph of data from one of the cancer experiments described in "Cancer's sweet cloak."