Researchers induce cancer cells to 'commit suicide' with a self-produced bacterial toxin
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%.
4 replies
This sounds promising! Killing cancer while leaving other cells alone is some seriously good news.
mRNA is a hot topic for some portion of the population lol
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.
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.