A tray containing cancer cells sits on an optical microscope in the Nanomedicine Lab at UCL's School of Pharmacy in London May 2, 2013.
(photo credit: REUTERS/SUZANNE PLUNKETT)
Breakthrough study unveils vulnerability of malignant cells with high degree of chromosomal instability and could lead to new treatments
A team of researchers led by scientists at Tel Aviv University say they may have stumbled upon the “Achilles’ heel” of cancer cells, which could in the future lead to the development of an entirely new array of cancer drugs and treatments.
According to Dr. Uri Ben-David of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, who led the research, the findings open up an entirely new avenue for medical research.
“For decades, we’ve been trying to understand why [aneuploidy] happens in cancer and how it contributes to tumor formation and progression,” Ben-David said. More importantly, he said, scientists have been trying to see “if we can take advantage of this quite unique difference between cancer cells and normal cells in order to selectively kill the cancer cells.”
The study, which was published in the scientific journal Nature and whose findings were released Wednesday, was conducted in Ben-David’s laboratory at Tel Aviv University in collaboration with six laboratories in four other countries – the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy.
“The overall vision here is that by understanding how aneuploid cells are different from normal cells, and detecting the Achilles’ heel of aneuploid cells, this could be a very attractive way to selectively kill cancer cells,” Ben-David said.
From an article in The Jerusalem Post newspaper Read the rest of the article here
What a great discovery, Israel is at the top of scientific discoveries, and we are here to bring them all to you !
