A group of researchers led by Queensland University in Australia developed a cancer drug that avoids the usual sickness and hair loss by just using a fat-rich coating.

The new treatment specifically closedown genes in tumour cells that causes cancer while sparing normal healthy tissues.

Thus far, the cancer has been treated with the help of surgical operation, radiation therapy or chemotherapy.

Radiation and chemotherapy result in side effects such as hair loss.

But, the researchers said that by making use of coatings rich in fats can lead to gene-silencing and deactivate particular genes that involved in hair loss.

Lead researcher Sherry Wu said that the new technique involving the use of fats rich coatings, will accelerate the application of RNA interference or gene-silencing, a technology that can inactivate individual genes.

The researchers used the same technology in mouse models and saw a 70% fall in the size of cervical tumors.

“The traditional ways of packaging these drugs into suitable carriers are often complex and labour-intensive. The resulting products are also unstable at room temperature which is obviously not ideal for their clinical use.”

“In order to deliver these gene-silencing drugs safely and efficiently into tumour tissues in the body, we have to package them in lipid-rich carriers,” Wu said.

Co-researcher Nigel McMillan said, “We are excited about our findings and we are currently investigating the feasibility of combining this gene-silencing technology with low dose chemotherapeutic agents in cancer treatments.”