Cancer Therapy with Cellular automata

Cellular automata are more of a computer based concept wherein a “cell” that is created in virtual screen dependent on the neighbors. Its creation or destruction is dependent on the type of neighbors. This leads to interesting displays, dynamic scenario’s, that are always dynamic since the neighbor’s affect their other neighbors and the effect continues infinitely, sometimes leading to complete destruction or to complete growth.

A group of researchers have tried to use that effect with antibodies and DNA strands. In the biologists’ example, the antibodies are coupled to specific DNA strands. These antibodies upon binding to specific receptors on the cell surface have an effect on the binding of another antibody to the same cell or also the neighboring cell. These effects can cascade and thus the effect of binding of one antibody may encourage or discourage the antibody binding to another cell.

This effect will cascade throughout the tissue and can have impact on therapies especially cancer therapy wherein having an ability to target related cells and not affect normal cells could be very useful for targeted therapy. Obviously, there will be much work that needs to be done: target for each tumor will need to be designed, DNA as a interacting molecule may need revisiting and also much of the design of the antibodies will need to be catered to with specific molecules.

However, this was an interesting article in Nature Biotechnology and worth a look.


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