The team believes the method could be ideal for various uses including repairing tissue after a heart attack and delivering cancer drugs to
kill tumor cells left behind after surgery.
Not exact matches
In human
cells and in mice, the virus infected and
killed the stem
cells that become a glioblastoma, an aggressive brain
tumor, but
left healthy brain
cells alone.
Special strains of the adenovirus, the researchers say, have been altered to deploy anticancer genes within
tumors,
killing cancer
cells while
leaving healthy ones unscathed.
«The chemotherapy drug
killed the CA125 - positive
cells and
left behind the
cells armed with the capacity to regrow the
tumor.»
The treatment
killed cancerous
cells in the mice, shrunk their
tumors and
left them with fewer side effects.
The standard treatment
kills the bulk of the
tumor cells but often
leaves the stem
cells intact to regenerate the
tumor.
«Removing the
tumor leaves behind a cavity that you could fill with our material, which would provide some therapeutic benefit over the long term in recruiting and
killing those
cells,» Appel says.
Blocking the enzyme causes the cancerous
cells to die, so the company is working with a telomerase inhibitor, imetelstat, that it hopes will
kill tumor cells while
leaving healthy ones unharmed.
An ideal chemotherapeutic agent is expected to specifically
kill tumor cells, cause the least amount of undesirable side effect, and
leave normal
cells unharmed.
Today's effective treatment options can actually cure the disease by
killing off the abnormal
tumor cells while
leaving the normal thyroid
cells undamaged, resulting in a normal life span for many affected cats.