When cancer cells "commit suicide"

Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami

Wednesday, 05 November 2008

Melanom - skin cancer. RNA-Interference-Method a new hope for patients?
A new designer drug causes cell suicide in cancer cells of the black melanom. This interesting new research result was now published in "Nature Medicine". Scientists from the University of Bonn, Germany, used a newly developed method to knock out certain genes which cause cancer cell growth. They tested their medicine in mice. The team applied the RNA -Interference-Method for which two US-american scientists (Craig Mello and Andrew Fire) received the noble prize in 2006. The Nobel prize laureates discovered that small pieces of RNA, a form of genetic material, can switch on and off the activity of our genetic material, the DNA in cells.

"We used that method to bring about the cancer cells to commit suicide" explains Prof. Dr- Thomas Tüting. The RNA they used as switcher contained a sequence which stopped a certain gene in the tumor cells leading to cell death.

Additionally the scientists "masqueraded" their RNA - which inserts into the tumor cells - that it seemed to the immune system of the mice as a virus. So the immune system started to attack the tumor cells.

Two-front battle against cancer

"The charming of our method is that with one design drug we "battle against" the tumor cells on two front lines which makes it hard for the tumor to find a way out", says Prof. Dr. Gunter Hartmann another team leader of the labs which participated in that research. This could improve the success of therapies against cancer in the future.

But the doctors emphasize that it is still too early to speak of a new break through as the test on humans is still lacking and nobody can say if the tumor cells would react as in the mice.

The approach however is very promising and further research will be done.

Source:
- IDW-Online

- Poeck et al. (2008): 5'-triphosphate-siRNA: turning gene silencing and Rig-I activation against melanoma. Nature medicine, 2 November 2008; doi: 10.1038/nm.1887

Tag it:

Add as favourites (13) |

Quote this article on your site | Views: 1077 | E-mail

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.