Scientists at Tel Aviv University, Israel, have identified how a unique property of cancer cells could provide a new method of killing them.
Cancer cells often have an abnormal number of chromosomes, resulting in a phenomenon known as aneuploidy which can help the cell’s survival and progression of the disease.
In work published in Nature, the team showed that aneuploid cancer cells taken from patients were more susceptible to some drug treatments, as they were more sensitive to disruption during cell division.
The team hope that this will improve cancer treatment by providing a way to specifically target cancer cells, avoiding healthy cells, and will now go on to replicate this study in mice.