Researchers around the world are looking for treatments for various types of cancer. But could there be a universal drug in the future that is effective against the most common types of cancer? In any case, new studies suggest so. Scientists from the University of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the TU Kaiserslautern in Germany and the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Tel Aviv, Israel have recently found thatall cancer cellshave something in common and hope that a drug can attack that commonality. There could be therapy against many types of cancer in the future.
Could there be a universal drug for cancer?
It is a protein that enables the division of aneuploid cells in the human body. Normally, cells' chromosome division stops when they have too high or too low a number of chromosomes. This can prevent faulty cells from multiplying. However, the kinesin motoprotein KIF18A enables cancer cells to divide. When it is blocked, the aneuploid cells behave like “normal” defective cells and can no longer divide.
However, the process of division of cancer cells has not yet been sufficiently researched. However, the international team hopes that it will become clear in the future why KIF18A enables division. The scientists assume that the protein enables the cancer cells to accommodate all of the additional chromosomes. The researchers hope to be able to better understand the protein effect through further studies. This would be a very important step towards the eventual development of a universal drugagainst many types of cancer.
Such a drug could either block the protein directly or stop the process in which the protein participates. Ultimately, this would prevent the cancer cells from multiplying in the human body. Unfortunately, at the time of the study there was no such drug available for the researchers to test. But it could be developed as experts better understand cell division in the most common types of cancer.
