With a ‘biological computer,’ scientists look to target cancer while sparing healthy cells
The holy grail of cancer drug targets is akin to a unicorn horn: a marker that only cancer cells have, clearly distinguishing them from healthy cells. In reality, nearly all cancer drug targets are also found on many healthy cells, leading to serious off-tumor toxicity that — in extreme scenarios — can be fatal.
Synthetic biologist Kobi Benenson might have a way around that. Inside an engineered virus, he and his colleagues at ETH Zurich packaged a programmable genetic circuit that uses multiple targets to build a profile of a cancer cell. Detailed in a mouse study recently published in Science, it’s a nanoscopic biological computer that roams through the body, executing a program that seeks to recognize and kill cells matching that cancer profile, but spares healthy cells that don’t fit all the criteria.
