‘An unholy union’: Stanford scientists create a drug that flips cancer driver into killer

Stan­ford sci­en­tists have hatched a new type of drug that can turn a can­cer pro­mot­er in­to a can­cer killer.

In a study pub­lished in Na­ture Wednes­day, re­searchers led by Stan­ford bio­chemists Nathanael Gray and Jer­ry Crab­tree de­tailed how they de­vel­oped a drug that can flip a pro­tein that typ­i­cal­ly pro­motes the growth of B cell lym­phoma in­to a pro­tein that caus­es can­cer cells to die.

The drug acts like a chem­i­cal har­ness, chang­ing how an im­por­tant B cell con­trol gene is reg­u­lat­ed by pulling in an­oth­er pro­tein that changes the first pro­tein’s ef­fect on gene ex­pres­sion.

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