Israeli scientists claim they have made a breakthrough in devising a cure for cancer which could be proven within months.
(Updated version of the previous article.)
Known as MuTaTo, or multi-target toxin, the new anti-cancer drug is being touted as “a disruption technology of the highest order,” as The Jerusalem Post reported.
Dan Aridor, the head of Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd (AEBi), said his small team of scientists had developed an all-around treatment or “complete cure for cancer”:
“Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market… Our solution will be both generic and personal.”
The cure is expected to render the disease manageable in the same way that the “triple-drug cocktail” made AIDS a survivable disease.
The treatment is based on SoAP technology, a platform designed by AEBi, that the paper describes as providing “functional leads to very different targets.”
The MuTaTo treatment will act as a cancer antibiotic which uses a web of cancer-targeting peptides to attack cancer cells simultaneously, wrapping around them in an octopus-like manner and attacking them from multiple angles, using a strong peptide toxin to eliminate them.
Because the peptides are so small, they'd go undetected by the immune system and avoid counter-attacks that commonly lead to side effects like nausea.
AEBi CEO Dr. Ilan Morad touted the potential treatment as more advantageous than antibodies and also cheap, small, and easy to produce and regulate.
Given that an estimated 18.1 million new cancer cases were diagnosed across the world in 2018 alone – making every sixth death on Earth a result of cancer and ranking it as the second leading cause of death in the world – the news is exciting.
Critics, however, remain skeptical about the cure, mainly because the only study done so far was performed on mice. The inventors themselves even concede that human trials will take a while to start and complete.
In his blog post, Dr. Leonard Lichtenfield, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the American Cancer Society (ACS), has urged the public to stay “aware that this is far from proven as an effective treatment for people with cancer, let alone a cure,” noting that while the Israeli team has devised an “interesting approach,” someone should bear in mind that “the process to get this treatment from mouse to man is not always a simple and uncomplicated journey.”