A 16-year-old Indian-origin boy from UK's Surrey has claimed to have found a treatment for the most deadly form of breast cancer. Krtin Nithiyanandam believes he has devised a way to turn the triple negative breast cancer into a kind which responds to drugs. Around 7,500 women each year are diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, a type of disease which does not respond to today's most effective drugs. Many breast cancers are driven by oestrogen, progesterone or growth chemicals, so drugs that can block those fuels, such as tamoxifen, make effective treatments. "Most cancers have receptors on their surface which bind to drugs, but triple negative don't have receptors so the drugs don't work," Krtin said. Thus, it can be only treated with a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy which lowers chances of survival.

According to him, the solution lies in upping the activity of tumour suppressor gene called PTEN, which allows chemotherapy to work more effectively, so the dual treatment could prove far more effective than traditional drugs. Krtin plans to deliver the therapy in a nanoparticle containing RNA - the messenger molecule which carries instructions from the DNA. The RNA nanoparticle would be encoded to silence or boost gene activity.

Krtin said the next step in his research, which got shortlisted for the final of the UK-based young scientists programme titled "The Big Bang Fair", would be to develop a system that would allow the introduction of PTEN and ID4 inhibitors in vivo.