查看文章

The specific identification and ablation of cancer cells is a long-standing problem in medicine that has not been fully solved. Cancer cells differ from normal cells in their ability to proliferate and survive in an uncontrolled manner, a consequence of mutations that drive the constitutive activation of intracellular signaling pathways. Signals commonly activated in cancer have been targeted for suppression by drugs, but these drugs are limited by toxic effects from inhibiting normal signaling as well. We considered a fundamentally different approach to cancer treatment in which oncogenic signals are detected and then, instead of being suppressed, are co-opted to trigger a therapeutic program. Here, we describe a method, Rewiring of Aberrant Signaling to Effector Release (RASER), in which a compact synthetic signaling pathway detects an oncogenic signal with high specificity and then rewires it to a …