A new breakthrough published online in The FASEB Journal could enable doctors identify patients who could respond to breast cancer drug treatments.
The compound Nanobody is currently undergoing laboratory tests and if proven effective could signify possible breast cancer treatment since each person responds to a particular therapy. People are also susceptible to some drug or the other, so doctors need to rapidly target the patient only with the drug most likely to be most effective.
Researcher Ilse Vaneycken comments that nanobodies are strong and their nano-size allows them to be flushed out from the body without delay. The cost -effective nanobodies are also easy to develop.
A dromedary camel was first immunized with the drug HER2 to help develop specific antibodies limited to this species. All unwanted antibodies of the camel were extracted and replicated in bacteria. The team selected out of the 100 million bacterial replicates 40 Nanobodies that responded to the same location as identified by the therapeutic drugs. The team identified from this group compounds that identified breast cancer cells with the genetic HER2 tag while allowing access to cancer drugs currently in use. Nanobodies also express well, are stable and allow breast cancers to be colored and identified.
FASEB editor in chief Gerald Weissmann said this method could help target cancer cells with appropriate drugs, and could identify other discrete cancers. Other researchers involved in the research include Nick Devoogdt, Naomi Van Gassen, Cécile Vincke, Catarina Xavier, Ulrich Wernery, Serge Muyldermans, Tony Lahoutte, and Vicky Caveliers.