A research team in California has made a major breakthrough in potential cancer treatments by discovering a method to induce cell death.

Scientists from the University of California, Davis (UCD) have developed a way to destroy cells by using a crucial ‘timer bomb’ on the cells that line a tumor’s blood vessels.

These vessels regulate access to the tumor tissue, and until they open, cells intended to fight the cancer cannot reach the tumor.

Using the timer bomb technique, these barriers are triggered when the cell’s ‘death’ receptor, known as FAS or CD95, is activated.

Their findings, published on October 14 in Nature journal Cell Death & Differentiation, have been hailed as a significant advancement by the scientists involved.

“Previous efforts to target this receptor have been unsuccessful. But now that we’ve identified this epitope, there could be a therapeutic path forward to target Fas in tumors,” said Tushir-Singh, immunologist and senior author of the study.

The antibody that binds to this epitope (a specific part of the death receptor) essentially acts as the cell’s kill switch.

Once this immune checkpoint is triggered, other cancer treatments can be more effective, allowing them to target cancer cells more directly.