Nail down the cure for cancer, and you’re going down in the history books.

That’s exactly what a small team of Israeli scientists reckon they’ll have ticked off by the end of the year, calling it the first ever “complete cure”.

Better news still, they claim that the cure will be “brief, cheap and effective and will have no or minimal side-effects”.

Forbes reports:

“We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer,” said Dan Aridor, chairman of the board of Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi), a company founded in 2000 in the ITEKincubator in the Kiryat Weizmann Science Park in Ness Ziona, Israel…

“Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market,” Aridor said. “Our solution will be both generic and personal.”

Called MuTaTo (multi-target toxin), researchers said the drug is essentially “on the scale of a cancer antibiotic–a disruption technology of the highest order.”

Currently in development by AEBi under the leadership of CEO Dr. Ilan Morad, the potential game-changer in the world-wide fight against cancer will use a combination of cancer-targeting peptides and a toxin that will specifically kill cancer cells.

Not to make light of what would be one of the finest developments of the 21st century, but MuTaTo is a cracker of a name.

Sounds like an X-Men character.

Morad, the doctor mentioned above, really is talking a good game:

“Inhibiting the target usually affects a physiological pathway that promotes cancer. Mutations in the targets – or downstream in their physiological pathways – could make the targets not relevant to the cancer nature of the cell, and hence the drug attacking it is rendered ineffective…

“In contrast, MuTaTo is using a combination of several cancer-targeting peptides for each cancer cell at the same time, combined with a strong peptide toxin that would kill cancer cells specifically,” Morad [below] said.

“By using at least three targeting peptides on the same structure with a strong toxin, we made sure that the treatment will not be affected by mutations…If it does not completely annihilate the cancer, the remaining cells can start to get mutations again, and then the cancer comes back, but this time it is drug resistant,” Morad said.

He compared the cancer cure to “the triple drug cocktail that has helped change AIDS”, with one key difference:

…unlike with HIV and AIDS, where patients must take the cocktail for the rest their lives, with MuTaTo, the cells would be killed, and the patient could likely stop treatment after only a few weeks.

You can read more about MuTaTo and Morad’s claims on Forbes, but we should perhaps throw a little dampener on that party.

According to CNBC, it could take some time for that cure to hit the market:

…it can take six to seven years to bring cancer drugs from “mouse to market,” even when drugmakers receive special permissions from U.S. regulators to speed drug development, Les Funtleyder, health-care portfolio manager at E Squared Capital Management, told CNBC.

“I mean, I’d love there to be a cure for cancer, but I do not believe them in the absence of good human evidence,” he said…

The Food and Drug Administration, which declined to comment on the company’s treatment, has an extensive review process for drug approval in the United States: “Before a drug can be tested in people, the drug company or sponsor performs laboratory and animal tests to discover how the drug works and whether it’s likely to be safe and work well in humans. Next, a series of tests in people is begun to determine whether the drug is safe when used to treat a disease and whether it provides a real health benefit,” FDA says on its site.

Like most compassionate humans around the world, we wish Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. luck with their cure.

Even if they can produce this medical miracle, though, don’t expect it to hit the market any time soon.

[sources:forbes&cnbc]