New Molecules Can Diagnose and Treat Cancer

In a study that could have significant repercussions for the field of cancer studies, researchers managed to produce a new type of molecule that unleashes its destructive power only on cells that have been diagnosed as cancerous.

This is tremendously important, given the personal nature of cancer. The disease has some common traits in all patients, but its forms largely differ from each other.

Each patient has his or her own specific needs and issues, as well as unique genetic and environment factors that determine the type and severity of their cancers.

As such, a one-size-fits-all approach is both impractical and dangerous. Scientists need to tailor the treatments they prescribe to each individual, and this process is prone to numerous errors.

Chemotherapy, for example, is a cocktail of drugs whose goal is to selectively kill cancer cells. But the fact that it's not that selective is obvious in the vast amount of side-effects it has on patients.

But what if a new generation of drugs could be created in such a way that they would only release their devastating power on cells that have been diagnosed as cancerous?

In other words, what researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed is a type of small RNA molecule that is capable of selectively killing only cells that have detectable mutations.

“The molecules are able to detect a mutation within a cancer cell, and then change conformation to activate a therapeutic response in the cancer cell, while remaining inactive in cells that lack the cancer mutation,” says expert Niles Pierce.

He is the co-author of a new study detailing the findings, which was published in the September 6 issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The work was conducted with funding from the US National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering.

“By de-coupling diagnosis and treatment, we can create molecules that are both highly selective and highly effective in killing cancer cells,” Pierce explains.

“Conceptually, small conditional RNAs have the potential to transform cancer treatment because they change what we can expect from a molecule. Many years of work remain to establish whether this conceptual promise can be realized in human patients,” he concludes.