What is it about?
Most people know that cancers can spread from one part of the body to another and settle down to create new tumour sites, a process known as metastasis. What is less well known is that some of the cancer cells in a tumour are more resistant to drug treatments and are highly aggressive. These cancer stem cells can remain when the bulk of a tumour has been killed, allowing the tumour to grow back. The molecules we have discovered are of a new type that perform in both of these areas; affecting the ability of cancers cells to undergo metastasis and targeting the aggressive stem cells.
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Why is it important?
The human body has natural defence systems against cancer and other diseases, so you might ask why don’t pharmaceutical companies just make some of those molecules for use as drugs. Well, the fact is that they are trying to do this but some things get in the way. First, the natural molecules are complicated and hard to make so the drugs would be too expensive. Second, because they are natural the body breaks them down and recycles the components before they can do the intended job. We’re developing easy ways of making complex molecules that do the job of the natural defences.
Perspectives
We don’t pretend that we can produce new pharmaceuticals in the next few years. We are trying to establish a new class of molecule, very different from the traditional ones used in that industry, that could be used to address serious problems in medicine, such as Alzheimer disease, antimicrobial resistance and cancer. You might say, we’re not trying to produce a new car, but thinking about a different mode of transport.
Professor Peter Scott
University of Warwick
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Discovery of selective, antimetastatic and anti-cancer stem cell metallohelicesviapost-assembly modification, Chemical Science, January 2019, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c9sc02651g.
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