How Scientists glue two proteins together, driving cancer cells to self-destruct

 

 

Stanford researchers hope new that technique will flip lymphoma protein’s normal action  from preventing cell death to triggering it.
 

Our bodies divest themselves of 60 billion cells every day through a natural process of cell culling and turnover called apoptosis.

These cells — mainly blood and gut cells — are all replaced with new ones, but the way our bodies rid themselves of material could have profound implications for cancer therapies in a new approach developed by Stanford Medicine researchers. (SMR)

They aim to use this natural method of cell death to trick cancer cells into disposing of themselves. Their method accomplishes this by artificially bringing together two proteins in such a way that the new compound switches on a set of cell death genes, ultimately driving tumor cells to turn on themselves. The researchers describe their latest such compound in a paper published Oct. 4 in Science.

The idea came to Gerald Crabtree, MD, a professor of development biology, during a pandemic stroll through the forests of Kings Mountain, west of Palo Alto, California. As he walked, Crabtree, a longtime cancer biologist, was thinking about major milestones in biology.