Tag Archives: cancer

The Yew Tree: From Foe to Friend

For thousands of years, people have used the poisonous materials from the yew tree to fight their battles. Ancient people used the extract from the bark to coat the tips of their war arrows, rendering them deadly. The Romans used the same substance to assassinate political leaders. In the modern era, the yew tree is fighting a new opponent: cancer. A chemical, Taxol, which is derived from the plant is one of the most prevalent chemotherapeutic agents used today to battle cancer.

roman-eating

The poisonous properties of the yew have been known for thousands of years Source: Wikimedia Commons

Taxol, or paclitaxel, is toxic to cells because it disrupts the mitosis process. Mitosis is when a cell splits into two identical daughter cells. It is essential to maintain an healthy and growing organism. When the yew plant is ingested, cells cannot divide because of the these anti-mitotic properties of paclitaxol. Division halts and the cells die, which can eventually result in the death of the whole organism. These anti-mitotic properties are why Taxol works as an agent against cancer. This is because cancerous cells have mutated so that they divide uncontrollably. As Taxol disturbs cell division, it can efficiently kill certain types of cancerous cells such as breast and ovarian cancer.

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The Yew Tree                                                           Source: Wikimedia Commons

The yew tree still holds some secrets: unlike many drugs originally derived from plant sources, there is no entirely synthetic pathway that reproduces the naturally derived compound. That is to say, for this chemotherapy to have full effect, it still needs materials acquired from yew trees. As the National Cancer Institute reports, a manufacturing technique has been developed recently which combines synthetic compounds and the chemicals from the yew bark. This has made the drug more accessible and affordable, but Taxol currently used in cancer treatment is still plant-based.

With a chemotherapeutic drug like Taxol, doctors scientists use the same properties of the substance that has been killing us for thousands of years to kill the enemy within us: cancer.

How Taxol Works (Source: Cancer quest)

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-Megan Wolf

Coffee and cancer mortality

Coffee has been a really important component of human diet and has been known the acute effect that maybe harmful on human health. As we know, coffee also contains beneficial compounds such as antioxidants, though the net effect of coffee on human health is also uncertain.

Recently, there is an organization which is called “JACC” in Japan. They assessed to the association of coffee with the all-cause and total cancer mortality. They followed up 110792 subjects aged 40-79 at baseline by conducting a large-scale cohort, aand then grouped them into four categories according their daily coffee intake: consuming less than 1 cup, 1 cup, 2 or 3 cups, and 4 or more cups. They also adjusted the other factors which maybe associated with the cancer mortality and coffee consumption such as smoking status, drinking status, and sleep length. The linear trend in the risk of mortality was assessed by treating the number of cups of coffee intake per day as ordinal variable. Further analysis stratified by baseline age in addition to gender was also conducted.

After they followed up for 16 years, the results showed the mortality was decreasing with the increased coffee consumption in both men and women. However, in women there was a slight risk elevation at the highest coffee consumption level compared with the second level. The result of further analysis, with exclusion of those with past medical history or those died early, th erisk of cancer mortality did not show any association with coffee comsumption in men, but was slightly reduced with increasing coffee consumption in women. The results also indicated the women aged 40-59 at baseline showed a slightly non-significant decreasing trend with the increasing coffee intake. However, the women aged 60-79 showed the risk reduction was only at the 2nd and 3rd level.

Youwen Zhang
Oct 2nd, 2016

Techniques Preventing Cancer Metastasis in Development

When I was 8 years old, my friend’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Several years later her aunt was also diagnosed with breast cancer. For my friend, developing cancer is not imminent, however the thought of developing cancer is a terrifying idea for her. There is no doubt that almost everyone knows someone in their life who has been diagnosed by cancer, whether it be a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance. In my opinion, to fight against cancer the only way is to entrust the development of cures to the scientific community.

Cancer is menacing disease caused via changes to genes that control the way cells function. In the 21st century cancer has been the most renowned disease. The mortality rate of this disease is no laughing matter as an estimated 1,685,210 patients will be diagnosed with cancer and of those, 595,690 will die during 2016 in the United States alone. While many researchers are feverishly looking for cancer cures that kills cancer, others have been investigating methods to halt cancer from spreading throughout a patient’s body. MIT’s Natalie Artzi, a research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), and Tel-Aviv University’s Noam Shomrom have developed a new technique that may help prevent cancer metastasis.

Cancer Metastasis

Cancer Metastasis, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Metastasis is the spread of malignant cells from one organ or part of the body to another. Artzi and Shomrom’s new gene therapy technique involves applying microRNAs to cancer tumours. MicroRNAs are cellular RNA fragments that prevents the production of a particular protein. In their research Artzi and Shomrom identified that the protein Palladin plays a key role in the metastasis of breast cancer cells. Their experiments led to the discovery that miR-96 and miR-182, types of microRNAs, decreased the expression of Palladin, thus hampering the cancer cells capabilities to spread.

microRNA

microRNA, courtesy of Andres Zapata https://vimeo.com/52646065

 

With this new gene therapy technique in development, many types of cancers can be halted so long as the correct microRNAs are applied to the cancer sites. I  feel that this research is an immense step towards defeating cancer. Artzi and Shomon’s technique coupled with already known cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy,  can effectively halt the metastasis of early-stage cancer tumours. Thus, potentially saving thousands of patients in the United states, and millions around the world. Nonetheless, cancer would likely never be extinct until a definitive cure is found. However as members of the scientific community, we must do our best in following Artzi and Shomon’s footsetps by developing new techniques and treatments in hopes of saving the lives of people we know.

– Nelson Yu