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Scientists Invent 'Cancer-Killing Pill' that Doesn’t Affect Healthy Cells

A picture taken on August 27, 2019 in Nantes, western France, shows pills, tablets, suppositories and pharmaceutical drugs. (Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP) (Photo credit should read LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)
A picture taken on August 27, 2019 in Nantes, western France, shows pills, tablets, suppositories and pharmaceutical drugs. (Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP) (Photo credit should read LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)
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Scientists Invent 'Cancer-Killing Pill' that Doesn’t Affect Healthy Cells

A picture taken on August 27, 2019 in Nantes, western France, shows pills, tablets, suppositories and pharmaceutical drugs. (Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP) (Photo credit should read LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)
A picture taken on August 27, 2019 in Nantes, western France, shows pills, tablets, suppositories and pharmaceutical drugs. (Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP) (Photo credit should read LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)

A team of scientists have created a “cancer-killing pill” that has appeared to “annihilate” solid tumors, leaving healthy cells unaffected.

According to Sky News, the new drug has been in development for 20 years, and is now undergoing pre-clinical research in the US.

Known as AOH1996, it targets a cancerous variant of a protein called proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA).

AOH1996 is being worked on by City of Hope, one of America’s largest cancer research and treatment organizations.

Professor Linda Malkas, who has been developing the drug, explained: “In its original form, PCNA is ‘critical’ in the replication of DNA, and the repair of all ‘expanding tumors’. However, PCNA can uniquely be altered in cancer cells.”

Unlike radiotherapy, which harms both healthy and cancer cells, “the drug targets PCNA only in cancer cells without affecting the healthy ones,” she added.

“PCNA is like a major airline terminal hub containing multiple plane gates. Our cancer-killing pill is like a snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells,” she said.

The team noted that their first trials involved animal and human cell models, and the initial results are promising, but they still need a clinical trial in humans.

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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File

The amount of farmed seafood we consume -- as opposed to that taken wild from our waters -- is soaring every year, making aquaculture an ever-more important source for many diets, and a response to overfishing.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tons of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago.

Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species.

Fast-growing species

The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing

Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle.

Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tons in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed.

"We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said.

Asia main producer
Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tons -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023.

"For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said.

At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly.

"It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said.

He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource".

Seaweed

Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production.

Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tons. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said.

He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants.

"And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said.