Israeli scientists have claimed that very soon they'll have the secret weapon to beat cancer once and for all, and find a complete cure to the tormenting disease within a year.
A team of researchers in Israel told The Jerusalem Post Monday that they had created an antidote for cancer — a drug called MuTaTo, meaning multiobjective toxin — that will work immediately and take mere weeks to destroy all cancerous cells in the body.
The experts even claimed the drug's side effects will be next to nothing, especially when compared to traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
"Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market," Dan Aridor, the lead scientist in the study, said.
"Our solution will be both generic and personal," Aridor of Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi) said, pointing out that the drug won't be affected by mutations — which is the reason why most treatments fail, as once cancer cells start mutating and spreading rapidly they can become resistant to therapy.
"We made sure that the treatment will not be affected by mutations; cancer cells can mutate in such a way that targeted receptors are dropped by the cancer."
MuTaTo is comparable to an antibiotic and incorporates a multipronged approach using an amalgamation of several peptides for each cancerous cell, making it much harder for these malignant cells to evade treatment.
"Instead of attacking receptors one at a time, we attack receptors three at a time – not even cancer can mutate three receptors at the same time," AEBI CEO Dr. Ilan Morad said.
Morad added that MuTaTo also targets cancer stem cells, therefore eliminating recurrences.
The drug has not yet reached human trials, but the scientists say preclinical trials in mice have shown promising results.
