Laboratory scientists use silica to boost cancer-killing antibodies

Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have discovered a way to kill cancerous tumours in mice.

In collaboration with the University of Washington, the researchers found that packaging anti-cancer drugs into particles of chemically-modified silica cages helped the treatments to be more effective.

Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the findings could mean that taking pills to battle cancer in humans could be replaced by an intravenous drip of the modified particles.

Chenghong Lei from the PNNL said: "We are very excited by our preliminary results. We plan to do some additional, larger studies with animals. We hope the results hold up well enough to take it to clinical trials."

DKFZ scientists in Sweden recently revealed that people with type-2 diabetes could have an increased risk of developing cancer, especially in the liver and pancreas, although they also may have a reduced chance of contracting prostate cancer.