Promising Way in Getting Cancer Cells to Destroy Themselves

The latest attack against cancer is through a new method that triggers cancer cells to destroy themselves while keeping the healthy cells untouched. Tulane University researcher W T. Godbey has developed the treatment.

While clinical trials with human patients are two to three years in the future, the treatment has been successful in animal models.

Tulane has received a patent for the treatment, whereby Godbey takes a gene from a cancer cell, extracts the current DNA message from the gene and replaces it with a code that instructs the cell to kill itself.

"We sort of trick the cancer cell," says Godbey, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. "When a cell expresses a gene it doesn't look at the message; if it recognizes the promoter it transcribes the message. Here the message is to express key proteins that cause self-destruction."

Only cancer cells have the specific protein that will bind to this promoter; normal healthy cells do not, says Godbey.

Other gene delivery methods have been tried before, but because his method targets only COX-2 expressing genes there are no bystander effects that would result in damage to healthy tissue.

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The targeted treatment developed in Godbey's lab has been proven successful on several carcinomas. Most recently, the gene therapy treatment has been shown to have exceptional cancer-killing actions when tested on bladder cancer in mice.

This is a cancer that is especially difficult to treat due to a protective layer around the bladder wall, Godbey says.

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The results are published in the journal Cancer Gene Therapy.

Source-ANI