If there’s one thing that every human on earth can agree on – except maybe the black souls who are profiting off of cancer treatment – it’s that cancer needs to be eradicated.

Gone. Cured. Across the board.

Scientists are working on it, of course, and they’re intrigued by what’s making some cancer cells basically off themselves.

Stanford University researchers and gene therapy company Shenandoah Therapeutics worked together to publish a paper detailing how they can flip a switch and rewire cancer cells to “activate cell death.”

It’s a gene hack that isn’t currently applicable in a practical way, but the scientists involved say they are intrigued nonetheless.

University of California San Francisco professor Jason Gestwicki, who was not involved in the study, agrees.

“It’s very cool. It turns something the cancer cell needs to stay alive into something that kills it, like changing your vitamin into a poison.”‘

In a lab setting, researchers built molecules that attach a mutated protein (BCL6) that allows cancer cells to thrive to a normal protein that acts like a switch for nearby genes.

The result pushes cancer cells toward genes that kill them – a natural feature of the DNA that clears away old cells. If you had cancer this would, in theory, rewire the cancer cells to kill themselves off.

Louis Staudt, director of the Center for Cancer Genomics at the National Cancer Institute, explained in more detail.

“BCL6 is the organizing principle of these cancer cells. Once disrupted, the cell has lost its identity and says, ‘something very wrong is happening here. I’d better die.'”

Lead author Gerald Crabtree believes the idea could potentially affect half of all known cancers and could be targeted to spare healthy cells, too.

That said, everyone involved acknowledges there’s a long way to go.

Any step toward a cancer-free future is one in the right direction, though.