CHEMOTHERAPY BREAKTHROUGH

Current chemotherapy programmes can slow cancer progression and save lives, but these powerful drugs affect both healthy and cancerous cells. Once ingested or injected, chemotherapy medications move throughout the body indiscriminately, affecting healthy cells along with those that are responsible for disease and causing undesirable side effects, such as hair loss, gastrointestinal issues and fatigue. Now, Professor Teck-Peng Loh from Nanyang Technological University and colleagues have designed DNA-based nanogels that only break down and release their chemotherapeutic contents within cancer cells, minimising the impacts on normal ones and potentially eliminating painful and uncomfortable side effects.