Big news in the medical research field today, as a small team of scientists claims to have found a complete cure for cancer, believing they will be able to offer the treatment within the next year.
According to an article published in the Jerusalem Post, the treatment was developed by a team of experts in Israel, and it will supposedly work like an antibiotic for cancer.
"We believe we will offer in a year's time a complete cure for cancer," said Dan Aridor from Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies, the company the treatment is being developed for.
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"Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market."
Although this sounds like some kind of modern-day wizardry, the experts involved in the remedy's advancement are confident that this will change the course of history, in terms of the degenerative disease.
The innovators started off by looking at why other cancer-fighting treatments had failed in the past, which company CEP Dr Ilan Morad explained was because most cancer drugs attack a specific target on, or in the cancer cell.
Their treatment, which they refer to as 'MuTaTo', uses several cancer-targeting peptides on a single cancer cell at once, along with a cancer-destroying toxin.
Morad said: "We made sure that the treatment will not be affected by mutations; cancer cells can mutate in such a way that targeted receptors are dropped by the cancer.
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"The probability of having multiple mutations that would modify all targeted receptors simultaneously decreases dramatically with the number of targets used.
"Instead of attacking receptors one at a time, we attack receptors three at a time - not even cancer can mutate three receptors at the same time."
The doctor went on to explain that other drugs have failed because they don't destroy cancer stem cells, adding: "If it does not completely annihilate the cancer, the remaining cells can start to get mutations again, and then the cancer comes back, but this time it is drug resistant."
Even hints at a cure for cancer are big news - according to statistics, every sixth death is a result of cancer, making it the second leading cause of death in the world after cardiovascular diseases. As one of the biggest scares in the modern world, it's no surprise this is welcome news for thousands of people worldwide.
But before we get too excited, apparently the treatment has only been tested on mice so far. However, they're now looking to launch a round of clinical trials which could be completed within a few years and would make the treatment available in certain cases.
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So yes, there's a way off before this MuTaTo is deemed safe to bring to the market. But this certainly is a leap in the right direction, in the quest to find a cure for one of the most fatal diseases in the world.
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