Scientists have made a promising discovery that may help humanity's ongoing fight against cancer. They have found a new method to kill cancer cells that may be more effective than current methods of treatment.
The process is called Caspase-Independent Cell Death (CICD) and based on laboratory tests, it was able to completely eradicate tumors in colorectal cancer cells. While the finding was made after a controlled experiment using cells that were grown in the laboratory, replicating the process in humans will give cancer patients a new hope for treatment.
The CICD also offers eradicating cancer in a way that is less harmful to the patient's body and with lesser chance that the cancer will come back.
Based on their studies, scientists have found that after cells are killed off using CICD, a signal is sent to the body's immune system to attack any remaining cancer cells.
In contrast, other methods of cancer treatment use proteins called Caspases to identify cancer cells and order them to kill themselves off in a process called apoptosis. This method is how chemotherapy works, and can be effective if the correct targets are triggered. However, the therapies sometimes miss the targets, and the cancer cells do not get eradicated. The process also puts healthy cells at risk.
"In essence, this mechanism has the potential to dramatically improve the effectiveness of anti–cancer therapy and reduce unwanted toxicity," said Stephen Tait, one of the researchers at the University of Glasgow in the U.K. "Taking into consideration our findings, we propose that engaging CICD as a means of anti-cancer therapy warrants further investigation."
While the tests focused on colorectal cancer, the process can be adopted to tackle various types of cancer as well.
While the discovery is promising, it is still in the early stages, and more tests will be necessary to investigate the effectiveness of this process in humans.
