Current cancer treatment focuses on killing tumor cells to stop them from spreading throughout the body, but now researchers say they have found a new approach that could lead to less toxic therapies.
Researchers say that "hardening" cancer cells instead of killing them shows promise in fighting pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease. The process could be used to halt other types of cancers as well, they say.
The roots of the project go back to 1997, when Douglas Robinson, professor of cell biology at John Hopkins Medicine, was researching how certain compounds affect cell shape and division.
Now, Robinson’s team has devised a way of screening compounds for the desired cancer-stopping effect. They have identified a compound, 4-HAP, that affects the skeleton of the cancer cells, hardening them and theoretically stopping them from dividing.
The team is now testing 4-HAP in mice with pancreatic cancer.
The drug is already in use in some countries as a treatment for jaundice. If it shows effectiveness against pancreatic cancer, it could potentially make it to market relatively quickly, Robinson said.
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