Anish Vij
In the US, cancer is the second most likely thing to kill you after heart disease - so it's good news scientists have taken a step closer to stopping it in its tracks.
A new 'cancer-stopping' drug - found to 'annihilate' solid cancerous tumours - is now being tested on humans.
Known as AOH1996, it has been in development for 20 years, and is undergoing early studies in the US.
Anna Olivia Healy, born in 1996 died when she was only nine after being diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer neuroblastoma and is who the drug is being named after.
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Professor Linda Malkas and her team have been working on the drug for two decades, which, they claim, is now able to target a protein in all cancers, including the cancer that lead to Anna's death.
The protein, proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), was once thought too challenging to aim targeted therapies at.
PCNA in its mutated form encourages tumours to grow by aiding DNA replication and repair of cancerous cells.
Prof Malkas and her team at the City of Hope in California, one of the United States’ largest cancer research and treatment organisations, said their targeted chemotherapy appears to 'annihilate' all solid tumours in preclinical research.
The drug still needs to go through rigorous safety and efficacy testing and large-scale clinical trials before it can be used widely.
But the first patient received the potentially cancer-stopping pill in October with the phase one clinical trial still ongoing and expected to last for at least two years.
Patients are still being recruited to the trial.
Prof Malkas said: “PCNA is like a major airline terminal hub containing multiple plane gates.
“Data suggests PCNA is uniquely altered in cancer cells, and this fact allowed us to design a drug that targeted only the form of PCNA in cancer cells.
“Our cancer-killing pill is like a snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells.”
The professor called the results 'promising' but made clear that research has only found AOH1996 can suppress tumour growth in cell and animal models.
Lead author of the study, Long Gu, said: “No-one has ever targeted PCNA as a therapeutic because it was viewed as ‘undruggable’, but clearly City of Hope was able to develop an investigational medicine for a challenging protein target.”
The study – titled 'Small Molecule Targeting of Transcription-Replication Conflict for Selective Chemotherapy' – was published in the Cell Chemical Biology journal.
Our fingers are well and truly crossed.