Posted on 08/02/2007 5:32:40 AM PDT by Dysart
Speak with University of Texas at Arlington cancer researcher and biochemistry professor Sharad Singhal and it's easy to come away with a conviction that you've just met one of the smartest guys on the planet.
Then turn around in the same lab and darned if there isn't another one, Sanjay Awasthi, full-time M.D./oncologist and somehow part-time biochemistry professor. Call it an intellectual tie.
Fortunately, all that brain power collaborates on research, a beneficial partnership for mankind. Their laboratory experiments with mice have stopped several types of cancer cold and in a hurry. Without harming the mice. They'll soon be ready to move on to higher-level exercises, including trials with people.
Their results have not gone without notice. The Arlington-based Cancer Research Foundation of North Texas has been providing annual five-figure grants for some time, so it would be interesting if the work of Singhal and Awasthi -- they also collaborate with five other UT-Arlington and UT Medical Branch-Galveston scientists -- turns out to be a significant breakthrough. If so, credit will have to be given to the ongoing support of the relatively small Cancer Research Foundation.
It's a simplification, but the Awasthi/Singhal research boils down to this: A protein called RLIP76 is a multidrug transporter that shows up in cancerous cells -- a sort of molecular cell train. Its presence, Singhal says, kicks off "a toxic network of biochemical signals that promotes inflammation and cancer cell growth." Inhibit or deplete RLIP76, and the network of biochemical signals that result in cancer stops. The cancer dies. The patient lives.
"The cancer cells can't survive without RLIP76," Awasthi says. "Normal cells don't need RLIP76. I think it's potentially a breakthrough of major significance."
It hasn't come easy. Physician/professor Awasthi first became interested in a do-no-harm body chemistry approach to treating cancer as an undergraduate more than two decades ago.
Likewise it has been a long haul for Singhal, who began research with this particular murderous protein 19 years ago. His laboratory computer is filled with photographs of mice with implants of lung and colon cancers.
There are unlucky mice who receive no treatment, mice with conventional chemotherapy treatments, mice that receive the RLIP76 inhibitor and mice that receive the inhibitor plus conventional chemotherapy treatments.
Singhal radiates the enthusiasm of discovery as he clicks through computer photo files of mice receiving the most successful treatment strategy -- a combination RLIP76 inhibitor and chemotherapy.
"Look!" he commands. Sure enough, the tumors disappear in days to a few weeks -- in medical parlance a complete regression. For colon, lung or melanoma cancers it's a near miraculous outcome, though there are other types -- breast cancer for example -- that don't respond. But research is still being refined.
Mice, obviously, are not people. What's needed is for more animal research to be conducted, followed by human trials. And quickly.
Singhal and Awasthi are not unknowns. Their findings have been noted extensively in medical publications of LeadDiscovery, the National Institute of Environmental Health Services, the National Institutes of Health, the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Association for Cancer Research and Cancer Research Journal. Other researchers now emulate their strategies. Their work and results are not secrets, but there's still a significant snag.
It's the usual one. Money. Their research has to be funded at a level that is far beyond the financial capability of the Cancer Research Foundation of North Texas.
Somebody needs to find them the needed buckets of research cash. And soon. It's a life-and-death deal. And maybe a future Nobel Prize deal.
Amazing, hope they get funded.
Texas seems to have a lot of strength in the university research programs on cancer. I remember reading about exciting cancer treatment ideas from Rice university awhile back.
Besides the blatantly obvious human benefit, the commercial potential is very large. Definatley the biotech for fighting the many types of cancers is a twenty first century industry.
Carolyn
PubMed Article: RLIP76/RALBP1 is a stress-responsive membrane protein implicated in the regulation of multiple cellular signaling pathways.
Sharad S. Singhal
Biochemistry
Research Associate Professor
Phone:
(817) 272-5444
FAX:
(817) 272-3808
E-Mail:
ssinghal@uta.edu
Education:
B.Sc., Agra University, India (1982)
M.Sc., Agra University, India (1984)
Ph.D., Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India (1989)
Postdoctoral Fellow: University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas (1989- 1993)
Areas of Research Interest:
Protein chemistry, enzymology, expression and regulation of glutathione S-transferases and their structural and functional interrelationships, and in the field of chemotherapy drug resistance, particularly in the mechanisms involved in mediating drug resistance to a commonly used important chemotherapy drug, adriamycin (doxorubicin).
Isolation of erythrocyte membrane protein with ATPase activity stimulated by a number of chemotherapy agents including doxorubicin, mitoxantrone, vincristine, vinblastine, and mitomycin C as well as glutathione conjugates of a number of electrophilic xenobiotics. Isolation and characterization of membrane transporters immunologically related to DNP-SG ATPase in membrane fractions of human cancer cell lines and determine to mediate ATP-dependent primary active transport of GS-E as well as chemotherapy drugs.
__________________________________________________________
Sanjay Awasthy
Biochemistry
Research Professor
Phone:
(817) 272-5444
FAX:
(817) 272-3808
E-Mail:
sawasthi@uta.edu
Education:
B.A., University of Texas at Austin (1982)
M.D., University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (1986)
Internship and Residency: Department of Internal Medicine, University of Arkansas Medical School, Little Rock (1986-1989)
Oncology Fellowship: Department of Hematology-Oncology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, (1989-1991)
Assistant Professor (1991-1997), Associate Professor (1997-1999): Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas
Research interest:
I am interested in studying reactions of glutathione with electrophiles, enzyme catalysts for these reactions, and the biological and chemical fates of the glutathione-electrophile conjugate products of these reactions. My colleagues and I have identified a novel glutathione-conjugate transport protein, RLIP76, which functions in intracellular signaling pathways and can also transport structurally unrelated amphiphilic chemotherapeutic agents. We are currently studying the role of this transporter in lung cancer cell drug-resistance and morphology.
Arghhhhh. My 7 year old does better on adverbs. This is a professional journalist.
If it was a politically correct pop-culture disease, like HIV-AIDS, the funding would be unlimited.
If they were as conniving as other cynical opportunists / scientists looking for funding today, they would tell the ‘RAT politicians that the research they’re doing ties in with anthropocentric global warming and/or HIV-AIDS, and they’d get all the funding they need.
His doctor’s researcher left no stone unturned. Unfortunately my husband died of metastatic melanoma on July 8, 2007.
Thats interesting, I wish I knew more about some of the research programs. The last idea I read that reminded me of this, involved nanotech to design a shape onto the medicine that would attach to the dendrites on the cancer cells they wanted to target. So both the nanotech work and the medical work was being done within the University of Texas system.
It should have been clear from the article that the two researchers are treating mice not humans at this point.
It would appear that they do in fact have some credibility, since their findings are widely published in peer-reviewed journals.
I’m sure your oncologist used everything at his disposal. This medicine if it turns out to be successful.. which odds show less then 10% I believe even if it manages to make it to stage 1 human trials... Would be 10 years away I would think.
Still exciting that future generations might have a quite a bit better odds of surviving then people today for some types of cancer.
Thanks for the post. I’ve added it to my favorites for future reference.
Today I visit my surgeon, five weeks after what I’ve been told was successful surgery to remove my cancer; but it can’t hurt to have this information just in case.
I am so sorry for your loss.
My parents and many other family members have died of cancer.
I just can’t believe they can’t do better than they are. and yes, too much money is going to AIDS.
UTA, that’s my Alma Mater. YEAH!!!
And not only is HIV-Aids a lifestyle illness, it’s also entirely preventable.(I’m excluding the past transfusion-related transmissions, of course.)
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