The research for finding new cures against cancer has massively developed in the last decade. Just recently, a team of scientists from the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, has discovered a protein that is able to locate and combat cancer cells.
The protein is able to attack only the cancer cells as it ignores the healthy one and this huge discovery could help scientists create new and improved treatments for cancer.
The recently found protein was suggestively named PIP-stop
PIP-stop is found inside the body of the cells and could be the culprit for the irregular cancer cells growth.
The scientists have observed that the tumors cells contain too much PIP-stop in leukemia, neuroblastoma, lymphoma, and breast cancer forms. Excess levels of PIP-stop lead to a disorder in the regular cells-producing proteins.
“We have discovered that breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma and neuroblastoma cells have too many PIP-stops. This would upset protein function, and opens up a new avenue for developing drugs that block PIP-stop formation by kinase enzymes,” explained Michael Overduin, a biochemistry professor at the University of Alberta and the research team’s leader.
Will this protein treatment be available in the future?
We don’t know but, statistically, there have been dozens of similar breakthroughs during the last decades, and especially in the last years, and even though the cancer treatments have indeed evolved, there is no treatment to completely cure cancer which is the deadliest disease on Earth.
What next?
The new protein that can destroy cancer cells will be tested further by the team of researchers who discovered it. The researchers hope that they will be able to come up with a PIP-stop inhibitor, through intracellular kinases, which will inhibit the formation and development of cancer cells, especially for those cancer forms which have no effective treatment or the already existing treatments are not effective.
