Nanorobot Antibodies to Treat Cancer

According to the American Cancer Society, cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, second only to heart disease, and there are approximately 1.9 million new cancer cases and 609,360 cancer deaths in the US annually. Evidently, the currently available cancer treatments are unable to prevent a large portion of deaths. As a new treatment method, Yanay Ofran, PhD, is working on nanorobot antibodies to treat cancer.

Ofran published a study in ScienceDirect in 2018 on the computational design of antibodies with his colleague Sharon Fischman. In that study, the researchers concluded that “computational methods can be utilized as a means to guide the search for biologically relevant antibodies, focusing on specificity and affinity determinants to target a particular region of the antigen. Such an approach would allow for the design of epitope-specific antibodies that will have the desired effect on the function of the targeted protein.”

The computational design of antibodies reduces the current limitations of antibody treatments. According to the Times of Israel, until recently, antibody treatments were restricted to either human or animal antibody characteristics that were extrapolated and mass-produced.

With this in mind and research under his belt, Ofran and his team developed a way to surpass these limitations by digitally designing antibodies on a computer and using amino acids to create them in a process similar to 3D printing. This procedure allows the team of researchers to combine characteristics from the antibodies of multiple organisms, yielding more diverse and potentially more effective outcomes.

“Antibodies are very successful, but the way they are used in medicine today utilizes only a fraction of their capability,” he told the Times of Israel. “Our mission is to take antibodies and seize on the fact they are safe, stable, and easy to use and can stay on the shelf for years to unlock their full ability.”

The new treatment called AU-007 is currently being researched in Australia after being developed by Ofran and his company Biolojic Design. As the study continues, researchers and oncologists will wait in anticipation of the results. If effective, these nanorobot antibodies could potentially revolutionize cancer care and enhance precision medicine.