Turning your own skin cells into cancer-killing machines

Cancer has gripped the world in its clutches, and the grip hasn’t loosened for the past 3 decades. Research into cancer prognosis and treatment has many hurdles, and these hurdles keep on increasing with increasing insight to the disease itself. In terms of glioblastoma as well, the researchers have not had much success in curing patients, as this cancer inflicts the brain, leading to death in more than 70% of patients within the first 18 months. Conventional therapies have failed to make any difference due to the blood brain barrier.

However, a groundbreaking research from Dr. Shawn Hingtgen’s laboratory at the UNC-Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy, may well be the answer to this complicated cancer enigma. The research carried out in this lab progresses from the Nobel winning cell reprogramming research, and Hingtgen’s team has successfully reprogrammed skin cells into cancer killing machines. They first genetically converted patient’s skin cells into induced neural stem cell, and later provided these stem cells with optical reporters and tumor-killing proteins to actively seek out and destroy cancer cells.