EAST LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - Michigan State University received a national award this week for a breakthrough cancer treatment.

“Some very fundamental work studying bacterial cell division led to the most important cancer drug we have today, Cisplatin,” said Doug Gage, Vice President for MSU Research and Innovation.

In 1965, a group of Michigan State University researchers accidentally discovered a new cancer-fighting drug: Cisplatin.

Since then, cisplatin has become the industry standard for cancer-fighting chemotherapy treatments.

“What started out as trying to study the effect of magnetism in bacteria led to what later became this really important drug, Cisplatin, something so important coming out of not what it was necessarily intended,” said Gage.

Unexpected discoveries like Cisp

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