On the 29th, Professor Yang Yusoo of Sungkyunkwan University and researcher Yoon Hong-yeol of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that they have developed a new type of immunotherapy that can effectively treat breast cancer, which is difficult to treat.
The target cancer identified by the researchers is "triple-negative breast cancer." Traditional chemotherapy or hormone therapy has low effectiveness, leading many researchers to seek new solutions. They also explored gene therapies, but these proved unstable in the body or caused side effects, making them difficult to use.
The researchers created a drug by attaching a short genome, "miR-34a," which acts as a tumor-suppressing gene, to an antibody that binds to a protein called "CD47," which is highly expressed in cancer cells. This drug specifically targets and attacks only the cancer cells where the antibody and gene are combined. In this process, immune cells react as well, assisting in eliminating the cancer cells.
Professor Yang Yusoo stated, "This technology transcends the limitations of existing treatments and demonstrates a new possibility for treating cancer with genes," adding, "It can be widely applied not only to breast cancer but also to other cancers."
The results of this research were published in the international journal "Small" on the 22nd.
References
Small (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202502345