Israeli Scientists Find A Way To Destroy Cancer Without Harming Healthy Cells

Researchers around the world are striving hard each day to find a cure for cancer, and now it looks like scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have gotten really close.

Reuters

Reported first by Jerusalem Post, they recently revealed that they¡¯ve stumbled upon the ¡®Achilles¡¯ heel¡¯ of cancer cells that could help it be taken down in an instant, and it¡¯s all linked to the irregular number of chromosomes in a cell.

In case you remember your school science classes, you¡¯d remember that humans have 46 chromosomes -- two sets of 23 -- however, cancer cells alter this due to a variety of changes during cell division which results in chromosome segregation and cause a condition called aneuploidy.

ALSO READ: Scientists Invent Laser Surgery To Kill Cancer Cells Without Harming Healthy Tissues

This specific condition is known to cause common genetic disorders and is also a clear indicator of cancer cells. Not all cancer cells show this condition, however, it is seen commonly in 90 percent of solid tumours and 75 percent of all blood cancers.

Researchers are of the belief that by understanding how aneuploid cells function, how they¡¯re different from normal cells, and finding its weak spot could help kill cancer cells.

Researchers took about 1,000 cancer cell cultures from patients and looked at them in a lab using advanced bioinformatic methods in order to define the degree of aneuploidy. After ascertaining the cancer cell¡¯s degree of chromosomal instability, scientists observed and compared their sensitivity to various drugs.

They discovered that the aneuploid cells were very sensitive to perturbation of the mitotic checkpoint -- a cellular mechanism that allows proper splitting of chromosomes during cell division.

Dr Uri Ben-David of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University explained, ¡°That enabled us to identify unique vulnerabilities of the aneuploid cells that we went on and characterized in depth at the molecular and cellular level. We found that if you inhibit the proteins of these pathways, the aneuploid cells are more sensitive to this interference than normal cells. Therefore, they make for attractive targets for drug discovery and drug development.¡±

Reuters

The research highlights that by focussing at the chromosomal abnormalities could help in the development of more effective cancer treatments in future as they could focus on developing a drug specifically to target aneuploidy.

Ben-David added stating that the idea is not just to kill cancer cells but actually do it while keeping human cells intact, ¡°Killing cancer cells is very easy: You can pour bleach on them and they will die, but the hard part is to do it without killing normal cells. This is why it¡¯s a major breakthrough.¡±