Firm trials low side-effect cancer treatment

A healthcare group today unveiled plans to test a new chemotherapy treatment for cancer that it claims could markedly reduce unwanted side-effects such as nausea and hair-loss.

Ark Therapeutics has developed Scavidin – a version of a naturally occurring molecule called avidin – which recognises the cancer-fighting drug used in radiotherapy and chemotherapy and then “shuttles” it back and forth in the body, picking up the cancer drugs and taking them to the heart of the tumour.