Cancer/Ricin

Patent Pending Although no approved therapeutics are currently based on ricin, it does have the potential to be used in the treatment of tumors, as a so-called "magic bullet" to destroy targeted cells.[28] Because ricin is a protein, it can be linked to a monoclonal antibody to target cancerous cells recognized by the antibody. The major problem with ricin is that its native internalization sequences are distributed throughout the protein. If any of these native internalization sequences are present in a therapeutic agent, the drug will be internalized by, and kill, untargeted non-tumorous cells as well as targeted cancerous cells.