Striking with light and cutting off the “self-healing” route: Korea University develops dual-action technology to prevent cancer recurrence and metastasis

[Financial News] South Korean researchers have developed a next-generation cancer treatment that attacks cancer cells with light while also cutting off the route they use to repair themselves. The treatment was found to suppress not only cancer in the area exposed to light but also cancer that has spread elsewhere in the body, opening a new path to preventing metastasis and recurrence.
A team led by Professor Kim Jong-seung of the Department of Chemistry at Korea University said on the 29th that it had developed a dual-action anticancer agent that both depletes cancer cells’ energy and blocks their recovery mechanisms.
The study’s key finding is that an anticancer response can occur throughout the body even when light is applied to just one area. The researchers induced tumors on both sides of mice with breast cancer and exposed only one tumor to light, but the tumor on the opposite side, which was not exposed, shrank as well. Local light therapy thus produced a systemic treatment effect by activating immune cells throughout the body.
Previously, treatments used substances that absorb light and trigger chemical reactions to deprive cancer cells of energy. However, their effectiveness was limited because cancer cells activated internal enzymes to quickly replenish that energy.
The researchers focused on the fact that cancer cells use a specific enzyme (ALDH) to replenish their energy. They therefore created a new substance combining an agent that acts as an “attacker” by depleting energy with an enzyme inhibitor that acts as a “defender” by preventing the cells from replenishing it.
When the substance is administered and the area is exposed to light, the cancer cells’ energy levels fall while their recovery pathway is blocked. The energy-depleted cancer cells are destroyed, triggering an immune response. This in turn activates the body’s immune system, which goes on to attack cancer cells in other parts of the body.
Professor Kim Jong-seung of Korea University said, “This study combines a technology for attacking cancer cells with one for controlling their ability to recover,” adding, “We expect it to be used as a new cancer treatment platform for precisely controlling cancers that are difficult to treat or have recurred.”
Supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), the findings were published on the 19th in the international journal Angewandte Chemie (Angewandte Chemie International Edition).

[email protected] Kim Man-gi Reporter