Thanks to My Biotechnology for the heads up on this one. Quite a nice blog he has going and lots of interesting items.
It seems A Korean research team has developed a way to selectively age and kill cancer cells for the first time in the world.
Donga.com reports:
The team led by Yonsei University biology professors Cheong In-gwon (47) and Lee Tae-ho (49) announced on April 3, saying, “We are the first to confirm the fact that cancer cells stop growing and start aging and eventually die when the gene ‘MKRN1’ is injected into them.”
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Professor Cheong and his team separated breast and cervical cancer cells from the body and cultured them for a month before injecting them with MKRN1 genes. As a result, the growing and dividing cancer cells began aging and finally disappeared. This was possible because the genes suppressed the function of an enzyme called “telomerase” that helps grow cancer cells, which only works on cancer cells.
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“This research was done in the lab, but it is as good as having developed an actual therapy since we’ve experimented on human cancer cells instead of those of rats,” Professor Cheong said.
Cheong anticipated, hence, good results from the clinical tests soon to be performed on real cancer patients.
The research result is reported in the latest edition of the famous biotech magazine: “Genes and Development.” (Reg. Req.)
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prying1 sez: I know I'm not up on all the news. I get most of it from the radio but it seems to me this is BIG. Wondering why there is not rejoicing in the streets over this...
Yes, it looks important to me, too. But perhaps it is wise not to start speaking of complete success immediately; there have been other apparent break-throughs that have later turned out to be less than that. I'm no medical expert and I know that modern science is endlessly inventive when it comes to getting around problems, but it strikes me that this proposed method has one enormous difficulty facing it: how does one insert the MKRN1 in such a way that it enters the cancer cells and not the healthy ones? Not that I wish to pour cold water on the news - it just feel we should wait and see yet...
ReplyDeleteOne key piece of this article was this statement.
ReplyDeleteThis was possible because the genes suppressed the function of an enzyme called “telomerase” that helps grow cancer cells, which only works on cancer cells.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/donald.slish/Telomerase.html
I agree that testing is not complete and testing on real cancer patients will let us know more but this does appear to be a big step.