Might it just be as simple as turning cells back to normal? A new study has found a simple injection is enough to return cancerous cells back to healthy tissue.

As MNR Daily reports, a team of scientists at the Mayo Clinic’s cancer unit in Florida were able to turn cancerous bladder and breast cells back to normal by injecting them with a microRNA molecule. Cancer occurs when cell regulation is disrupted and abnormal cells grow wildly and uncontrollably. In this study, however, the protein PLEKHA7 turned the cancer-proliferation into benign cell clusters.

Lead author Panos Anastasiadis called the technique “an unexpected new biology that provides the code, the software for turning off cancer.”

So far all tests have only been conducted in tissue in a test tube, so it is too soon to understand if the same technology would work on tissue in a human body. However, the initial results are promising enough that research will continue.

Ideally, injecting cancer cells with the protein will halt their advances, preventing metastasis and continued survival of the affected cells. Anastasiadis explained, “By administering the affected microRNAs in cancer cells to restore their normal levels, we should be able to re-establish the brakes and restore normal cell function.”

Stay tuned.