Scientist use sperm to deliver chemo drugs to cervical cancer cells

RESEARCHERS have devised a breakthrough method to treat cancer that uses sperm cells as mules to deliver chemotherapy drugs.

SCIENTISTS in Germany have devised a way to treat cervical cancer that uses sperm cells to deliver chemotherapy.

The promising new method could provide an alternative to standard chemo treatments as sperm cells are designed to swim through a female reproductive tract.

Chemo drugs damage normal cells along with cancerous ones, leading to side effects such as extreme fatigue and nausea and limiting the dose a patient can receive.

But if the medicine can be delivered directly to a tumour, it could ease side effects and eliminate the risk of healthy cells being destroyed.

The research team at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research filled sperm cells with common chemo drug doxorubicin and placed them in a dish containing tiny cervical cancer tumours.

Within three days, the sperm had targeted the tumours and killed 87 per cent of the cancer cells, according to the findings recently published in ACS Nano.

In a second experiment, the team placed sperm cells inside mini four-armed magnetic harnesses. When the devices slammed into a tumour, the impact caused the four arms to open and allow the drug-filled sperm to swim directly into the tumour — just as they would a female egg.

Haifeng Xu, the study’s lead researcher, told New Scientist that these “spermbots” could be successful in treating other conditions of the female reproductive tract, such ectopic pregnancies or endometriosis.

This article originally appeared on The New York Post and we republished with permission.