A research group at the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Zurich (UZH) has developed a promising new technology that fights cancer with few side effects. “We trick the tumor into eliminating itself through the production of anti-cancer agents by its own cells,” said postdoctoral fellow Sheena Smith, who led the development of the delivery approach, in a UZH press release. As research group leader Andreas Plückthun explains, the therapeutic agents, such as therapeutic antibodies or signaling substances, stay in the body exactly “where they’re needed instead of spreading throughout the bloodstream where they can damage healthy organs and tissues”.
They are transported to the right place in the body by acting like a Trojan horse: a common respiratory virus called adenovirus is modified to deliver genes for cancer therapeutics directly into tumor cells, getting past the immune system undetected. Once inside tumor cells, the delivered genes serve as a blueprint for therapeutic antibodies, cytokines and other signaling substances, which are produced by the cancer cells themselves and act to eliminate tumors from the inside out.
The UZH researchers call their technology SHREAD: SHielded, REtargeted ADenovirus. Its potential applications go beyond the fight against cancer. Currently, it is being applied by the Swiss National Science Foundation in a project aimed at finding a treatment for Covid-19. “By delivering the SHREAD treatment to patients via an inhaled aerosol, our approach could allow targeted production of Covid antibody therapies in lung cells, where they are needed most,” Smith explains.
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