Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to the malaria parasite because it produces a protein that binds
readily to a sugar molecule in the placenta. This same sugar molecule is also found in most cancers. Now,
researchers have shown it is possible to attach anticancer drugs to the malaria protein and use it to deliver them
precisely to tumors by targeting the sugar. Scientists from the University of British Columbia
(UBC) in Vancouver, Canada, describes how the new approach halted the growth of various tumors in mice.
While the fact that the same sugar molecule (a type of chondroitin sulfate) is found in both the placenta and
most Cancers is not surprising, since both have cells that grow fast.
Once the team discovered that the malaria parasite uses a protein it produces called VAR2CSA to embed itself in
the placenta, they immediately saw the potential to use the process as a way to target cancer drugs to tumors. Mice implanted with three types of human tumors, the drug also showed varying degrees of success. In mice
with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the treated tumors shrank to a quarter of the size of untreated tumors. With Prostate Cancer, the drug completely eliminated tumors in two of six treated mice within a month of
administering the first dose, and with metastatic Breast Cancer, five of six treated mice were cured of the
disease.
The researchers say the mice showed no adverse side effects from the treatment and their organs were unharmed by
it.
Two companies, one in Vancouver and the other in Copenhagen, Denmark, where some of the researchers are based,
are already developing the drug and preparing it for human trials, which they believe will take 3-4 years.
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