Healthy cells eventually die once no longer useful while cancerous ones dodge this suicide path - but scientists may have a solution
A new treatment for cancer which kills cancerous cells and leaves healthy ones untouched could revolutionise treatment, scientists have claimed.
Unlike healthy cells, which eventually self destruct once no longer useful, cancer cells dodge this suicide path.
Instead the cells grow out of control, causing tumours to form.
The scientists, based at the UCL Cancer Institute, believe they have fixed this fault in lung cancer cells, by reprogramming the cells to self destruct.
Through using lung cancer cells and mice, the scientists showed that the combination of two drugs, TRAIL and a CDK9 inhibitor, changed the molecular modifications in the cell suicide process, forcing the cancer cells to self-destruct.
This new drug combination, which will be presented at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Liverpool next week, could pave the way for new treatments.
However the researchers stressed that the drug combination is in early stage development, to potentially treat non small cell lung cancer.
Lead researcher, Professor Henning Walczak from the UCL Cancer Institute, said: "Igniting the fuse that causes lung cancer cells to self-destruct could pave the way to a completely new treatment approach - and leave healthy cells unharmed.
"The next step of our work will see how this approach works in other cancer types, and we hope it could ultimately lead to testing this technique in trials to see if it can help patients."
Nell Barrie, senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK, added: "This important research builds on the progress we've made to understand the routes cancer cells use to stay alive.
"Understanding and targeting these processes will move us closer to our goal of three out of four people beating cancer within the next 20 years.
"There's an urgent need to save more lives from lung cancer and we hope these findings will one day lead to effective new treatments to help lung cancer patients and potentially those with other cancer types too."
