British experts help to develop cancer-killing nanomachines

NANOMACHINES which can drill into cancer cells, killing them in just 60 seconds, have been developed by scientists.

The tiny spinning molecules are driven by light, and spin so quickly that they can burrow their way through cell linings when activated.

In one test conducted at Durham University, the nanomachines took between one and three minutes to break through the outer membrane of a prostate cancer cell, killing it instantly.

Dr Robert Pal, of Durham University, said: “We are moving towards realising our ambition to be able to use light-activated nanomachines to target cancer cells such as those in breast tumours and skin melanomas, including those resistant to existing chemotherapy.

“Once developed, this approach could provide a potential step change in non-invasive cancer treatment and greatly improve survival rates and patient welfare globally.”

The scientists, whose work is reported in the journal Nature, created several different light-activated motorised molecules designed to home in on specific cells. Dr James Tour, a member of the international team from Rice University in Houston, US, said: “These nanomachines are so small that we could park 50,000 of them across the diameter of a human hair.”

♦ US regulators yesterday approved the first gene therapy against cancer – a treatment that uses a patient’s own immune cells to fight leukaemia. The treatment is a type of anti-cancer immunotherapy, known as a CAR-T cell therapy. “This marks the first-ever CART cell therapy to be approved anywhere in the world,” said Joseph Jimenez, of the drug company Novartis. “It uses a new approach that is wholly personalised by using a patient’s own T-cells.”