Cancer Cells Fighting Themselves

In the past, chemotherapy and radiation have been used to treat cancerous cells that kill many other healthy cells in the body, but researchers at Johns Hopkins University may have discovered a revolutionary treatment for cancer. They have created a protein "switch" where an inactive strain of a cancer fighting drug that will only be deployed in the area of cancers. This will help minimize the collateral damage created by the chemotherapeutic drug.

The "switch" was created by fusing together a marker protein that can sense cancer cells and another protein that turns the inactive form, the other form of the drug, into a cancer fighting form. This drug may delivered inside the cancer cells by direct delivery of the switch protein into the cells or delivering the switch gene inside the cancer cell where it will serve as the "blueprint" from which the cell will use its own organelles to construct the protein switch. This has not been tested on humans yet, but animal testing will be coming within the year. This treatment could vastly improve the fighting power of oncologists in the near future.