Breakthrough in medicine: Using calcium to kill cancer cells

A new path to "eradicate" tumors in cancer has just been discovered by Chinese and Korean scientists .

New breakthrough research on cancer has just been published in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition by - a group of authors from China University of Geosciences, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hainan University China) and Ewha Womans University (Korea).

New drug causes cancer cells to be "suffocated" by calcium - (Illustration from the Internet).

According to SciTech Daily , calcium ions play an important role in cell functions but can be harmful at high levels. Therefore, the Chinese - Korean research team found a way to "suffocate" cancer cells with calcium.

They targeted two natural calcium channels in the body, which deliver the mineral into the outer membrane and endoplasmic reticulum of cells.

Channels to the outer membrane are activated by high doses of reactive oxygen species (ROS), whereas channels to the endoplasmic reticulum are stimulated by nitric oxide molecules.

To create a drug that can be introduced into the body, they "packaged" these hormones into tiny modified porous silica particles, which do not harm the body but will be recognized by tumor cells. and quickly picked it up.

After injecting these particles into the blood of laboratory mice, the drug immediately accumulated in the tumor, as revealed through biological dyes.

Finally, they used near-infrared light to activate this special drug, and the tumor disappeared after a few days!

According to the authors, this is because large amounts of calcium overload individual cancer cells, thereby quickly destroying the entire tumor.

After this unexpected success, scientists hope to be able to search for other ways to activate calcium channels targeting many different types of cancer tumors, as well as soon progress to clinical trials ( on body).