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New Drug That Makes Cancer Poison Itself Glasgow Sufferers Set for Trials of Treatment Against Inoperable Tumours

Posted on: Thursday, 15 September 2005, 15:00 CDT

PATIENTS in Glasgow could be among the first to benefit from a new treatment which offers hope to people with inoperable cancer.

Scientists in Bearsden have completed lab tests for a new way of making cancer cells poison themselves.

And the treatment can be injected into patients without the danger of destroying healthy cells, unlike many normal chemotherapy treatments.

The doctors have developed nanotechnology, small groups of atoms that work like machines, to alter the DNA at the heart of cancer cells.

And test results published today show they begin shrinking tumours within 24 hours, and can completely kill the cancer, bringing about a cure in some cases.

The treatment will offer fresh hope to people who have tumours in or near vital organs, including the heart and lungs, where surgeons can't operate.

And because it can be injected, it is carried to any part of the body with a blood supply.

Dr Andreas Schatzlein at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Research Laboratory explained the importance of the discovery which makes cancer cells produce a poison called TNF.

He said: "TNF is quite toxic and it works quite well in areas where it will not spread to healthy cells.

"But we wanted to find a way of injecting a treatment that will reach and destroy cancer cells in other areas."

The scientists encased a gene called TNF alpha, which makes TNF, inside a microscopic plastic coating which is absorbed by cells, especially inside a tumour.

The gene is given a chemical switch which only activates in cancer cells, turning the cell into a factory producing the poison which shrinks and kills it.

The team, led by Professor Jim Cassidy who treats patients at the Beatson Oncology Centre, hopes to use the same technology to deliver other cancer-killing genes.

And Dr Schatzlein revealed: "My ambition is to have a trial in Glasgow."

If trials are successful new treatments for previously incurable cancers could be available in about ten years' time.

Source: Evening Times; Glasgow (UK)

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