The Way Towards Self-Destructing Cancer Cells

    In this article, scientists are hopeful that they can make cancerous cells trigger cell death instead of preventing it. The human body is always having its cells replaced, and the ways that our cells trigger cell death can aid in a new approach that Stanford Medicine researchers have been looking at. They want to trick the cancer cells into getting rid of themselves by bringing two proteins together to form a new compound that switches on a set of cell death genes.

    This concept originated from Gerald Crabtree, who looked at the discovery that cells can trigger their own death to maintain the overall health of the organism, in a process known as apoptosis. Researchers are using the protein BCL6, which can cause diffuse large cell B-cell lymphoma, and CDK9, which catalyzes gene activation, in order to achieve this goal. The mutated BCL6 is by the gene that causes apoptosis, and the idea is that CDK9 is tethered to BCL6 to activate the section that causes cell death.

    In testing, it was found that this method was highly effective in killing cancer cells. The molecule was also tested on mice and was found to have no adverse side effects, despite immune cells that depend on BCL6 also dying. Now, they are testing mice with diffuse large cell B-cell lymphoma to see how it reacts in a living animal and the ability to kill off the cancer.

This would be a great discovery if the live mice testing turns out to have a good success rate. If this works and moves on to other cancers, this could be an alternative to chemotherapy that has fewer adverse effects. This would help a lot of people, as chemotherapy is a very taxing process for those being treated, along with possibly being more successful in getting rid of the cancer.