
Some 15 to 20 percent of all breast cancers are triple-negative, meaning they lack receptors for estrogen, progesterone and human epidermal growth factor type 2. They have the worst prognosis of all breast cancers and very limited treatment options. Finding a treatment that distinguishes between cancer cells and normal cells has been especially challenging.
A novel precision medicine strategy described today in Science Advances offers an intriguing ray of hope. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, with bioengineers at the City College of New York (CCNY), showed that dually-targeted, antibody-guided nanoparticles, loaded with an existing chemotherapy drug, markedly improved tumor targeting, decreased tumor and metastatic growth and dramatically improved survival in a mouse model of triple-negative breast cancer. There were no observable side effects.
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