Cancer kill ‘switch’ that destroys tumours from inside out found by scientists

MIRROR

Researchers at the University of California, Davis Cancer Centre have pinpointed a segment of a protein on the outside of cancer tumour cells that causes them to self-destruct when activated

Scientists have identified a cancer kill “switch” that destroys tumours from the inside out – which can potentially provide new treatments.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis Cancer Centre have pinpointed a segment of a protein on the outside of cancer tumour cells that causes them to self-destruct when activated. Experts believe this breakthrough may allow doctors to speed up existing treatments as well as new drugs to combat cancer.

CAR T-cell therapy could be used to fight against tumours in the breast, lung and prostate as it involves giving patients specially engineered T-cells the ability to find and destroy tumours. However, it struggles against solid tumours as the immune cells, which are administered to patients via a drip, “simply imply cannot penetrate the microenvironments to provide a therapeutic effect'”, according to Dr Dr Jogender Tushir-Singh, from the University of California, Davis.

CD95 receptors are found on the outside of cancer membranes and when they are activated it releases a signal that makes the cell self-destruct. Although researchers have known about the existence of these receptors for years, they have been unable to set them off. But his ground-breaking discovery Scientists…