University of Alberta scientists discover cheap cancer-killer
Sunday, February 4th, 2007Newscientist.com reports that a drug that is commonly used to treat certain rare metabolic disorders has been found by a group of University of Alberta scientists to cause cancer cells to self-destruct. Cancer cells have shut off their mitochondria, and thus don’t get the usual signals sent by mitochondria that tell an abnormal cell to die. This drug turns back on the mitochondria, which causes the cancerous cells to die. This has been tested on both human cells cultured outside of the body, and on rats, no clinical trials on humans have been conducted yet.
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