Scientists from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) created a new combined method to stop the growth of the most common cancer in the liver - hepatocellular carcinoma. To help chemotherapy cope with this disease, the researchers turned off the mechanism in the liver of laboratory mice that blocks programmed cell death - apoptosis.

The main function of this mechanism is the destruction of damaged cells. From 50 to 70 billion cells die from apoptosis daily in an adult organism. The body usually blocks this mechanism to prevent the destruction of healthy cells.

The essence of the new approach is to turn off the mechanism that prevents the death of cells in the liver. Once the mechanism is turned off, cells become more sensitive to chemotherapy, which should kill tumor cells and prevent their division. To direct apoptosis against cancer cells, scientists used nanoparticles for delivering miRNA - short double-stranded RNA molecules- to the liver of animals. Although miRNA penetrates the entire liver, tumor cells are most sensitive to chemotherapy, since they quickly divide. That is why they die, and normal cells survive.

The authors of the study note that their method can potentially be applied to other types of cancer.