One of the most complex challenges for modern medicine is the search for new and more effective drugs for the treatment of tumor diseases. A promising attack strategy bythese diseases is based on the design and use of peptides capable of selectively binding to membranes cancer cells. These peptides can be linked to a radioa element, able on one side of damage the cancer cell and on the other hand to conserve it localization. Such a strategy, which combines diagnostics and pathology therapy goes by the name of teranostica. Yes, high performance parallel computing is used to perform simulations of classical molecular dynamics aimed at studying the interaction between a peptide from we engineered and healthy and cancer cell membranes. The peptide has been shown to have an affinity significantly greater for cancer cells than healthy ones. Experiments with calorimetry techniques are being prepared for laboratory confirmation of the results obtained in silico.
The image shows the peptide in contact with a tumor membrane.