Very rudimentary understanding of Cancer so if someone from a field is here please do comment: can this technique also be used for destroying Cancerous cells?
Not a biologist (but used to work next to some for a few years). But...
This molecule can distinguish between normal cells membranes and bacteria membranes. That's quite easy. Most of the difference between cancer cells and normal cells is in the nucleus, not the membrane, and most anti-cancer drugs target the stage where the nucleus replicates. So, my tentative response is "No".
Having said that, the potential ingenuity of the human race is beyond what I can image right now.
The problem is bacteria have all kinds of targets on them that our cells don't.
Drugs to attack fungi, let alone cancer, are far more difficult because we're both eukaryotes and share many, many molecular targets. The really hard part is to kill a cell that looks like our cells, but not our cells.
Doubtful. That is the problem with cancer cells - they are indistinguishable from others. I think the current bleeding edge in cancer research are ways to disable the cell mechanism that turns off the immune system near the cells.
The relationship between the immune system and cancer is incredibly complicated. There is, however, some fascinating research dealing with using pathogens that somehow preferentially infect cancer areas of the patient, to stimulate the immune system in that area:
