This innovative technique, using existing calcium ions in tumors and tested effectively in mice, offers a prospective new technique for cancer treatment.Activation of calcium channels results in a fatal increase of calcium ions into tumor cells.Calcium ions play a vital role in cellular functions, yet can end up being hazardous at raised levels. A research study group led by Juyoung Yoon of Ewha Womens University in Seoul, South Korea, together with teams from China, has now taken benefit of this process and established a synergistic antitumor drug that can open calcium channels and thus trigger a fatal calcium storm inside the growth cell.Mechanism of the Antitumor DrugThe researchers targeted 2 channels, the very first one in the external membrane, and the other was a calcium channel in the endoplasmic reticulum, a cell organelle that likewise shops calcium ions. Direct exposure to near-infrared light effectively set off the mechanism of action, and the tumor disappeared after a few days in mice that got the preparation.The authors stress that this ion influx approach may also be helpful in associated biomedical research areas where a comparable system might activate ion channels various from calcium in order to find new therapeutic approaches.Reference: “Photo-Controlled Calcium Overload from Endogenous Sources for Tumor Therapy” by Jing-Jing Hu, Lizhen Yuan, Yunfan Zhang, Jing Kuang, Wen Song, Xiaoding Lou, Fan Xia and Juyoung Yoon, 08 January 2024, Angewandte Chemie International Edition.DOI: 10.1002/ anie.202317578 The study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the National Research Foundation of Korea.