A team of scientists from the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology, the Institute for Problems of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the National Taiwan University have discovered that fullerene compounds can effectively kill non-small-cell lung carcinoma cells and found out the mechanisms behind their anti-tumor activity.
Lung cancer is one of the most frequently experienced and severe forms of cancer. Every year more than a million of new cases are reported all over the world and 60% of them are fatal. About 85% of all the lung cancer cases are non-small-cell lung carcinoma cases. This tumor type is difficult to treat because of aggressive metastasis (spreading into other organs and tissues), frequent relapses (recurrence of the disease) and resistance to the standard anti-tumor drugs.