Friday, October 16, 2015

Malaria can be a cure for cancer?!?!


Malaria is bad, right?! Nobody wants malaria. On the other hand, cancer pretty much sucks too. Turns out, the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, has a protein involved in the parasite's invasive mechanism called VAR2CSA which binds to a specific sugar (Oncofetal chondroitin sulfate) thought to be found only in placental cells, which is why pregnant women have a higher risk for malarial infections. However, cancer cells have been found to also display this sugar. This wasn't too surprising, seeing as how both placental cells and tumor cells have rapid and uncontrollable growth.




Once researchers made this connection, they began developing a way to manipulate the VAR2CSA protein into a drug-delivering vehicle that is specific to tumor cells only so healthy cells are unaffected. In the very recent animal trials, tumors in mice infected with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma shrunk by 75% compared to untreated mice, 33% (2/6) of mice with prostate cancer went into remission, and over 83% (5/6) of mice with stage V breast cancer were completely cured. It will take a few more years to develop a system fully safe and efficient for human trials, but at least there is some hope!




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3 comments:

  1. That was an interesting observation on the part of whoever caught that. I do wonder if this form of treatment will pose additional reproductive health hazards for women in the long term, or if the effects are short lived? I know that most cancer treatment methods currently carry their own reproductive hazards as well, but this seems like it might present some highly unpleasant issues if it stuck around.

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  2. Carrie: I think so long as the target isn't a pregnant woman, there aren't any obvious dangers, and certainly none associated with the pathology of malaria.

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  3. This is really cool. The statistics given seem really promising

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