Cell-surface discovery could alter Cancer Treatment

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered a new strategy for attacking cancer cells that could fundamentally alter the way doctors treat and prevent the deadly disease. By more selectively targeting cancer cells, this method offers a strategy to reduce the length of and physical toll associated with current treatments.
"We think we have a way not only to more specifically target cancer cells, but a way that could become a frontline treatment for women who have cancers of many types and want to preserve fertility," said reproduction researcher John Herr, PhD, of UVA's Department of Cell Biology.
"The research opens a new field of enquiry, termed cancer-oocyte neoantigens, and reveals a previously little know fundamental aspect of cancer - that many types of cancer, when they dysregulate or go awry, revert back and take on features of the egg, the original cell from which all the tissues in the body derive," Herr said.
He and Pires have found a way to exploit this fundamental insight by developing a method for delivering medication using the SAS1B protein as a target.
"You add a SAS1B-targeted antibody with a drug on it, and within 15 minutes of contacting the cancer cells, the antibody binds at the cell surface and the antibody-SAS1B complexes begin the internalization process," Herr said.
After about an hour, the antibody-SAS1B complexes reach compartments inside the cell and release their toxic drug payload, triggering changes leading to cell death within a few days.