New drug to beat Cancer

Scientists are confident from new research that the disease can be stopped in its tracks after tests revealed how it turns from being a benign illness into a full-blown killer.Experts now believe a rogue protein causes cells to multiply and spread, attacking the body and its vital organs with devastating consequences.They say a cure - the Holy Grail of medicine - now rests with developing drugs that can eliminate this trigger.The quantum leap in understanding of a disease which kills 160,000 in the UK each year comes as American scientists start world-first tests of a drug aimed at zapping the protein.Most tumours only become lethal once they spread, a process known as metastasis.But new research on prostate cancer sufferers shows stopping the disease could be as simple as “switching off” a molecule known as DNA-PKcs.Tonight experts said this fresh understanding of cancer, which kills 160,000 in the UK each year, was almost “as good as a cure”.Dr Karen Knudsen, professor of cancer biology at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, where the research was undertaken, said: “Finding a way to halt or prevent cancer metastasis has proven elusive.We discovered that a molecule called DNA-PKcs could give us a means of knocking out major pathways that control metastasis before it begins.