New Breakthrough: 'Hack' Tumors, Turn Cancer Cells Into Pills

A new method by American scientists could help solve even cases of treatment-resistant cancer.

According to Live Science, a research team from Pennsylvania State University (USA) has developed a method to turn some cancer cells into "traitors" , destroying the remaining cells in the tumor.

More specifically, they "hacked" certain genes in some cancer cells, changing their evolution and turning them into "pills" right inside the tumor.

Pennsylvania State University's experiment has had initial success against the most common form of lung cancer - (Photo AI: Anh Thu).

The new study targets treatment-resistant cancers. The authors chose non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) – the most common type of lung cancer – as their test.

Most NSCLC cells develop resistance to the most common cancer drug used for the disease, erlotinib , about a year after treatment. This can lead to a relapse.

According to a paper published in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology, researchers have developed a technique to introduce two "suicide genes" into NSCLC cells in a laboratory dish.

One gene, when combined with the cancer drug erlotinib, confers resistance to the drug to cells. It may sound counterintuitive, but this allows the modified cells to survive and dominate the tumor.

They call it 'trapping.' Once they've helped the edited cells survive and grow, they stop using erlotinib.

The second suicide gene is then activated by a harmless molecule called 5-FC . Cleverly, this second gene codes for an enzyme that helps cells convert 5-FC into a poison, called 5-FU , that kills cancer.

Finally, the modified cells that are strong enough to not be overwhelmed by other cells are introduced into the tumor.

They then act like poison pills, but not to the body, but to the tumor. They rapidly grow and massively release the poison 5-FU, destroying the remaining diseased cells.

In the mouse experiment, after about 20 days of treatment, the transformed cancer cells outnumbered the untransformed cells around them. By day 80, the tumor volume had shrunk to zero.

The research team is continuing to work to perfect the method and move toward clinical trials.