More than 20% of breast cancers make abnormally protein, called HER2 (epidermal growth factor receptor 2). When these proteins found on the surface of the cancers cell, this protein helps them grow uncontrollably which also cause poor prognosis.
But now good news for HER2-positive breast cancer patients, scientists developed DNA nanobots that find HER2 breast cancer cells and destroy.
Current therapies for HER-positive breast cancer include monoclonal antibodies, in which HER2 cells bind and direct to the lysosome where these are degenerated.
Minimizing HER2 slowdown cancer and trigger cancer cell death. But monoclonal antibodies therapy have severe side effects.
In a study has identified the the sequence of DNA, called aptamer which can found and binds HER2 and then redirect to lysosome same as monoclonal antibodies do.
But its serum wasn’t stable so they tried another way adding to DNA nanostructure called tFNA, which could increase its anti-cancer activity and biostability.
To find its result researchers team designed DNA nanobots which consist tFNA with attached HER2 aptamer.
When injected into a mouse, nanobots found in the bloodstream more than twice as the free aptamer.
Next, to find its effect on breast cancer cells, researchers added nanobots to tree breast cancer lines in Petri dishes and this this show that they kill only HER2-positive cell lines.
More than that tFNA allowed mores aptamer to bind with HER2 cells than without nanobots.
Nanobots are less expensive and much easier than conventional treatments for HER2-positive breast cancer. Although researchers said that it needs improvement before using this method conventionally in the clinic.
Source
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b01320
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