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Scientists from one of the leading cancer centers in the United States, the City Hope in Los Angeles they have developed a drug that can destroy the tumor but leave the other cells intact.
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The drug, the result of twenty years of research, will be called AOH1996, in honor of Anna Olivia Healy, a little girl who died in 2005 at just nine years old, for childhood cancer.
Dr Linda Malkas, who led the research, met Anna’s father shortly before he died and was inspired by the little patient’s story. The pill was designed to target a protein found in most cancers and which helps them grow and multiply in the body, Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen (PCNA), until now considered ‘uncontrollable’.
At the moment the drug has been tested in the laboratory on 70 different cancer cells – from breast, to prostate, to the brain, to ovaries – and has been found to be effective against all. However, while the initial results are promising, studies have been carried out only on cellular and animal models