Cancer researchers have discovered a way of stopping cancer cells from mutating, which improves the effectiveness of chemotherapy and immunotherapy.
But the research team from Massey University can't progress into the trial phase without further funding.
They've been working on this for 10 years, and created a molecule that can stop cancer cell mutations.
"We want to develop a drug that will suppress and stop cancer evolution," said Massey University chemist Professor Vyacheslav Filichev.
A particular enzyme is responsible for mutating the DNA in cancer cells, which leads to drug resistance and cancer treatment failure. But their new molecule can stop it.
"That will allow these drugs to work for much longer, be more efficient and ideally to eliminate cancer in the body," said Filichev.
Their findings have been published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications Journal, in an article that details how the molecule may be useful in anti-mutator and anti-cancer therapies.
Massey University biologist Dr Tracy Hale said it's a big achievement.
"It's an indication of the importance of this work that it was published in such a prestigious journal. It's very exciting and we're looking forward to progressing it further and taking it to the clinic ultimately," she said.
Because then it can be tested on patients, to ensure the molecule switches off the cancer growing in the body. Patient Voice Aotearoa chair Malcolm Mulholland said this would be incredible.
"Then we can actually stop cancer growing in patients, it's a fantastic - miraculous actually - discovery," he said.
But to take the research from a petri dish and through into a human trial phase, they need $775,000 of funding. It doesn't matter if it's private or public money, but the researchers aren't holding out hope for Government help as there were no new funds for scientific research in the Budget.
"We need to get on board and support our researchers because this could have a huge impact on the cancer community globally," Mulholland said.
