Scientists at one of the most important cancer centers in the United States, the City Hope of Los Angeles have developed a drug that can destroy the tumor but leave the other cells intact. The drug, the result of twenty years of research, will be called AOH1996, in honor of Anna Olivia Healy, a girl who died in 2005 at the age of nine, from childhood cancer.
Dr. Linda Malkas, who led the research, met Anna's father shortly before she died and was inspired by the little patient's story. The pill was designed to target a protein found in most cancers that helps them grow and multiply in the body, the nuclear antigen of cell proliferation (PCNA), until now considered "uncontrollable".
At the moment the drug has been tested in the laboratory on 70 different cancer cells - from breast, to prostate, to the brain, to the ovaries - and was effective against everyone. However, even if the initial results are promising, studies have only been carried out on cellular and animal models, and the first phase of human trials has only just begun. The researchers hope that it will eventually be used alongside other treatments or as the only anti-cancer therapy.
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