Australian researchers have come up with a new drug which they believe has the potential to fight a wide range of illnesses and diseases including cancer, age-related blindness, heart disease and arthritis.
The super-drug called Dz13 works by switching off a master gene involved in each of these conditions.
Levon Khachigian, of the Centre for Vascular Research at the University of New South Wales, said the gene, known as c-Jun, is an important disease-causing gene and the experimental drug is designed to seek it out in diseased tissues.
Professor Khachigian, a molecular biologist, says it is like a secret agent that finds its target, c-Jun, within the cell and destroys it and is basically a 'molecular assassin'.
Professor Khachigian, says c-Jun stands out because little of it is seen in normal tissue but it is highly expressed in diseased blood vessels, eyes, lungs, joints, and in the gut and in any number of areas involving inflammation and aggressive vascular growth.
The first human test of the therapy, is planned for early next year, and will involve about 10 people with non-melanoma skin cancer.
The drug will apparently be injected into the tumours.
Professor Khachigian says animal tests showed the drug could significantly slow skin cancer growth by choking off the tumour's blood supply.
There is an acute need for better treatments for skin cancer because the main treatment at present involves surgery which can cause scarring and disfigurement.
Professor Bernard Stewart, head of South Eastern Sydney and Illawarra Health Service's cancer control program, says if the drug was proven to be effective against human skin cancer, it might also work against other solid cancers.