patients might be prone to carry more drug-resistant cells, based on the genes that caused chemotherapy-resistant behavior in primary tumor cells.
Finally " This highly innovative research provides a novel path forward for targeting dormant cancer cells which may be ' hiding ' from our available therapies and which may need additional drugs to root them out and improve cure rates." Said William Oh, M. D., chief, Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, and professor of clinical cancer therapeutics at The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai.
Cancer research will remain an active field until medicine wins the battle once more!
" DEEP IN THEIR ROOTS, FLOWERS KEEP THE LIGHT "— THEODORE ROETHKE
GIVE A FLOWER TO
CANCER
BY ABDALLAH ELHALABY
What if a flower could be holding light of the cure for cancer? The flower we are talking about is the one behind " Paclitaxel ", a chemotherapy drug that was found able to treat ovarian, breast, lung, pancreatic cancers and even AIDS-related rare tumors.
THE BOTANICAL MIRACLE This flower ' s tree extract, known as " Taxol ", is derived from the bark( phloem) of the Pacific Yew tree " Taxus brevifolia ", which is a small to medium-sized evergreen yew tree that grows in the northwest region of North America overlooking the Pacific Ocean hence the name.
HOW TAXOL WORKS Taxol( paclitaxel) is a microtubulestabilizing agent that attacks cancer cells and destroy them by interfering with the cell cycle. The assembly of microtubules— which are cellular constituents that play a major role in shaping the new daughter cells— is critical for the progression of the cell cycle in order to produce new cells.
If we take a look at Taxol ' s action specifically during the " metaphase " stage of cell division, we find that Taxol interferes with the spindle microtubule dynamics within the cell that ensures the correct arrangement of chromosomes before they are pulled apart towards the cell ' s poles and suggested into 2 daughter cells. Similar to the strings on a puppet, microtubules need to be held at the correct tension for the chromosomes to align. Any disturbance with this process will ultimately cause cell death. On observing Taxol-treated cells, they are found to have defects in mitotic spindle structure, chromosome separation, and cell division as a whole. These defects represent a " mitotic block " in which the chromosomes can ' t achieve a metaphase spindle configuration and can ' t progress to the following cell division steps. Subsequently, when the mitosis stops, there will be a prolonged activation of the mitosis with the activation or triggering of apoptosis or returning back into the G-1 phase of the cell cycle where the nucleic material is duplicated but not yet divided.
It ' s like a gasoline engine in an automobile. Say the motor is running and for some reason, the key in the ignition is broken or jammed and you cannot shut off the engine, and you can ' t cut the ignition wires too. So the only other way around is to pour sugar into the gasoline tank until the motor gummies up and stops. However, while cutting ignition wires would save the engine for another day( as you can just replace the wires), by placing sugar into the gas tank you have terminally destroyed the engine. The same with cancer cells that are treated with Taxol, instead of killing cancer cells by cytotoxic agents and still have cells capable of division, Taxol ruins the " engine " of the cell by interfering with microtubules and stopping the whole process at this point and drives the cancerous cell to cell suicide or " Apoptosis ".
BEFORE TAXOL RUNS OUT Taxol succeeded as a promising chemotherapy whose unique mechanism made it a front-line agent for ovarian cancer chemotherapy. But the challenges it faces are many; one of them is finding the appropriate doses schedule for it, also Taxol production has already been declining because its trees aren ' t so common and each tree gives a limited amount of the drug. But thankfully, scientists managed to manufacture paclitaxel by semisynthetic production from a natural precursor. Because after all, giving a flower to cancer could be one of the ways to conquer it.