TWO chemists have devised a way to whip up a dose of poison inside a cancer
cell. By killing malignant cells while sparing normal ones, the new technique
could knock out tumours without the side effects of traditional
chemotherapy.
These serious side effects occur because chemotherapy drugs often kill
healthy cells along with cancerous ones. To get around this problem, some drugs
target receptor chemicals on the surfaces of tumour cells. But most receptors
appear on the surface of normal cells, too. So researchers have begun targeting
strands of genetic material that are found only inside cancer cells.
For example,…
