A new treatment is being tested at the University of Kansas which holds promise of defeating cancer.

Cancer kills about 1,600 people every day in the United States alone.

Although it is not a cure just yet, the combination of chemicals has been successfully blocking a protein that cancerous cells need to replicate.

The team of researchers has spent three years testing a chemical cocktail that inhibits a naturally occurring protein called HuR.

The findings were published in ACS Chemical Biology, a journal published by the American Chemical Society.

Cancerous cells are able to use HuR to replicate uncontrollably.

The inhibitor was tested on lab cultures and in mice and has proven to be successful against the types of cancer affecting the tissues of brain, breast, colon, lung, ovaries, pancreas and prostate.

The ultimate goal of the research team is to develop a treatment that would root out the cancer stem cells. Cancer stem cells can go dormant after chemotherapy or radiation treatment only to return a few months or years later. Essentially the treatment aims to ensure that the tumor will never come back again.

Researchers plan to spend the next five years running hundreds of additional tests, finding the best combination of chemicals in hopes of eventually creating an anti-cancer drug.

The team is currently testing a third generation of the inhibitor treatment, much more potent than the previous cocktails.

Researchers describe these findings are very promising and believe that they could potentially lead to a new therapy for cancer.

However, researchers do assert that the treatment is still at least a decade away from completion. They predict that 2025 would be a best case scenario.

Gerry Oginski
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