A research team from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, used spider silk to address a problem that challenged researchers for years: the inability to benefit from a key weapon in their fight against cancer, the protein p53.
The p53 protein protects our cells from cancer and is an interesting target for cancer treatments. The problem is, however, that it breaks down rapidly in the cell. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now found an unusual way of stabilizing the protein and making it more potent. By adding a spider silk protein to p53, they show that it is possible to create a protein that is more stable and capable of killing cancer cells.
