Scientists have just announced a major breakthrough in oncology after discovering a new method of precisely targeting and destroying cancer cells.
For years, cancer treatments have involved the destruction of the deadly cells.
However, the current methods often cause damage and pain as they wreak havoc on neighboring healthy cells and tissues.
According to a recent study, scientists have discovered a new method of targeting harmful cells using light for precise destruction.
The new method is so precise that it only destroys the cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed.
The study was published in the Journal of Molecular Biology.
In a press release, the study’s lead researcher, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign biochemistry professor Kai Zhang, said:
“Usually, treatments for cancer use pharmacological induction to kill the cells, but those chemicals tend to diffuse throughout the tissues and it’s hard to contain to a precise location.
“You get a lot of unwanted effects.”
The researchers deploy optogenetics, an approach that uses optical systems to control cell functions, to focus a light beam on a target smaller than one cell.
“That is how we can use light to very precisely target a cell and turn on its death pathway,” Zhang added in the press release.
In addition to killing the cancer cell, another intended outcome is to trigger the immune system to respond to the light.
Zhang said that the ruptured cells release cytokines, a type of small protein, attracting white blood cells that help the immune system fight infection.
By killing cancer cells, the researchers hope to train T-cell white blood cells to recognize and attack the cancer, Zhang said.
The researchers made the cells respond to light by borrowing a light-activated gene from plants and inserting it into intestine cell cultures.
They then attached those genes to the genes for a protein, RIPK3, that regulates necroptosis, a form of cell death caused by various stimuli.
Teak-Jung Oh, a graduate student and the paper’s first author, said the light activation process causes the RIPK3 proteins to cluster together.
This process mimics the natural death pathway.
“Understanding the cell signaling pathway for necroptosis is especially important because it has been known to be involved with diseases like neurodegenerative disease and inflammatory bowel disease,” said Oh.
“Knowing how necroptosis affects progression in these diseases is important.
“And if you don’t know the molecular mechanisms, you don’t really know what to target to slow the progression.”
This news follows another major breakthrough in cancer treatments.
As THAIMBC News reported, a world-renowned American surgical oncologist has just revealed that ivermectin has successfully cured cancer in multiple patients.
Cancer surgeon Dr. Kathleen Ruddy announced that the miracle drug has been used to save the lives of terminally ill patients.
Dr. Ruddy revealed that the so-called “horse dewormer” has stunned doctors by triggering dramatic recoveries in those suffering late-stage cancer.
Ruddy said the drug was tried on three patients who had exhausted all other cancer treatments.
She revealed that the patients went from their deathbeds to making a full recovery and being completely cancer-free in under a year after taking ivermectin.
One patient had a grim future when the cancer had spread so much that he was expected to soon die.
This man had stage four prostate cancer, Ruddy explains.
He had tried all the conventional protocols before doctors told him that there was nothing more they could do.
When the man had nothing left to lose, he started taking ivermectin and the results were astonishing.
Within six months, the metastatic lesions began to disappear, according to Dr. Ruddy.
In under a year, “he was out dancing for four hours,” three nights per week, she revealed.
Ruddy revealed that every other patient threatened with ivermectin saw the same miraculous recovery.
She noted that the probably of all of the patients recovering coincidentally while taking ivermectin was “zero”
“It’s like winning the lottery on the first three tickets you ever buy,” she explained.
