A Molecular Grappling Hook Could Keep Cancer Drugs Trapped Inside Tumors
Ben Sullivan
Getting a cancer drug to a tumor is only half the problem. Within hours of arrival, many therapeutics begin to drift, diluted by blood flow, expelled by pumps embedded in cancer cell membranes, or simply diffusing into surrounding healthy tissue before they’ve had a chance to work. The tumor, in other words, doesn’t hold onto them. And that failure of retention, more than anything else in drug development, might explain why treatments that look promising in the lab so often disappoint in the...