Chemo can't tell a cancer cell from a healthy one. That's the entire side-effect problem.
Nobel Prize winner Dr. Jennifer Doudna's lab just built something that can. It reads the cell's RNA, and if it finds the message for mutant p53, the single most common typo in cancer, it triggers a CRISPR enzyme to shred that cell's DNA.
One wrong letter is the trigger. Healthy cells, spared.
The killing works. In mice, a single dose roughly halved the tumors.
The unsolved half is getting it into every tumor cell in a living body. That's where every CRISPR cancer idea has stalled. Real advance, real wall.
A new CRISPR-based approach can selectively destroy cancer cells, according to a recent UC Berkeley-coauthored study. The technique opens a new frontier for treating the mutations found in nearly half of all cancers—including some of the most difficult types.
bit.ly/4e2x5aQ