For the first time in the world researchers at Tel Aviv University have encoded a toxin produced by bacteria into mRNA (messenger RNA) molecules and delivered these particles directly to cancer cells, causing the cells to produce the toxin—which eventually killed them with a success rate of 50%.
Researchers induce cancer cells to 'commit suicide' with a self-produced bacterial toxin
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-cancer-cells-commit-suicide-self-produced.html
4 Comments
Teal@kbin.social · 7 pts · 3y
This sounds promising! Killing cancer while leaving other cells alone is some seriously good news.
kevinbacon@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 3y
mRNA is a hot topic for some portion of the population lol
mohKohn@kbin.social · 2 pts · 3y
crisper-cas9!
Theranostics is a great word.
Since this seems to rely on the immune system to deliver the therapy anyway, I'm wondering how it's outperforming whatever mechanism the immune system would use instead.
Narrrz@kbin.social · 2 pts · 3y
I'm guessing immune cells deliver a signal to trigger apoptosis, but cancer cells usually mutate to quash that mechanism or break its function somehow.