New Peptide-Based Treatment for Pancreatic Cancer

Researchers from the University of Kent, UK are working of a new cancer treatment based of small peptides that target tumor proteins. The peptides used have an special three dimensional shape that enables then to bind and destroy cancerous proteins. Moreover, these peptides can be custom-made in order to target specific tumor proteins. The next step to make this treatment reliable and efficient would be to improve the current methods for cancer identification. If the doctors are certain about what type of cancer they need to treat, they would know exactly what peptide type and shape the patient needs. This would make treatment very side-specific, since the peptides will only attack the tumor, making it a suitable alternative for chemotherapy and radiation.

Other highly metastatic cancer head and neck cancer could use this new technology as well without the need to rely in the standard therapies.

I found the article really interesting because pancreatic cancer was a subject that came out during our lecture discussions. Pancreatic cancer is one of the deathliest types of cancer having very dim survival rates. A side-specific solution would at least improve the quality of life of the patients, while the peptides would attack only the tumors. The fact that this therapy could be custom to different types of cancer makes it a very promising alternative treatment.

Sources:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100326124917.htm

http://www.kent.ac.uk/stms/news/stories/2010/cancer.html