The Hindu Business Line : New weapons against cancer

In just about a year, scientists expect a ‘chewing gum’ to do the big trick of taming stomach cancer. Blended neatly into this commonly used confectionery would be the antibiotic that can kill the bacteria called H. Pylori, which causes stomach cancer.

In South India, stomach cancer is common. Eating a lot of spicy foodstuff can trigger the risk factors, say medical experts.

The good news is that extracts from pistachio nuts have shown anti-bacterial properties and can be delivered in the form of a chewable, potent drug.

A European company is close to completing trials and bringing the product to the market.

Another positive development in the fight against liver cancer is the easy availability of the Hepatitis B vaccine. With most developing countries able to access the vaccine, in which Indian companies have emerged as significant players, the incidence of liver cancer other than cirrhosis can be controlled.

Similarly, after a prolonged battle against the human papilloma virus (HPV), scientists have been able to develop vaccines and treatments that are proving effective. HPV is the main cause for cervical cancers in women and India has a large number of affected people.

Outlining these medical advances, Dr Nori Dattatreyudu, a leading US-based cancer specialist of Indian origin, says, “We are on the right track to ultimately winning the war on cancer, which has baffled scientists and defied potent treatment methods for more than a century.”

Manageable soon?

In the next decade, he argues, cancer is, in all likelihood, set to be tamed from a killer disease to a manageable one like diabetes.

For example, he says, by 2010 a simple blood test would be ready that can tell whether a person is susceptible to certain types of cancers based on genetic pre-disposition. Already, the Pap smear test used to detect cervical cancers has emerged as a handy tool for diagnosing cancers of the lung, oesophagus, neck and head.

Modern science has, using advances in biology, identified seven molecular switches that trigger the growth of cancer cells in the human body. By controlling each of these switches it would be possible to stop the cancer from spreading.

Encouraged by these successes, scientists are attempting to identify more molecular paths and switches, and understand more thoroughly the communication networks in the human cell structures, says Dr Nori, who is with the New York Presbyterian Hospital.

In short, molecular targeting therapies are rapidly improving the success rates of cancer treatment. In the last five years, such therapies, based on the exact understanding of the molecular switches that are responsible for cancer, have been introduced to fight breast cancer, lung, head and neck cancers with highly encouraging results, Dr Nori said.

For more than 50 years, “We were hitting the wrong target — nucleus. We used radiation, chemotherapy, with limited success only and with side-effects,” says the doctor, who is credited with developing a computer-controlled Pellet, which has been a boon to breast cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment.

However, in the last decade the discovery that there was a signal process emanating from the cell membrane to the centre of nucleus has dramatically altered the fundamental understanding of the mechanism of cancer formation and growth. In cancer, the cells attain immortality compared to a normal human body in which about 10,000 cells die every day, he says.

Genome Atlas

To gain an insight into these and other unknown mechanisms involved in the evolution of cancers, a global initiative to prepare the Genome Atlas of Cancer was taken up by the US in partnership with several countries and research institutes in 2005, to study 200 types of cancers. The idea is to get to the molecular basis of cancers — the key changes that occur in the genes. This knowledge is expected to help in the development of targeted molecular drugs and therapies, as well as early detection… far more than what a CT scan can do today, Dr Nori says.

With more than $250 million committed each year for at least three years for the global project, scientists are busy developing molecular fingerprints and a large database to help early detection and improved cures. .

In the US alone about 1.4 million new cancer cases were reported in 2006. In India, the incidence is 3.4-5 million new cases, going by the data available with the Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital, Mumbai. There is an urgent need to create a database with a National Cancer Registry updated exhaustively across the country, says Dr Nori, who is closely associated with the Hyderabad-based Indo-American Cancer Centre.

In India, especially in Andhra Pradesh, the incidence of lung cancer among women is very high; the causes being smoke from chulhas (charcoal stove) and frying oil in the kitchen. Even a WHO study has linked charcoal combustion produ cing lots of carcinogens to lung cancer.

In the US, fast foods rich in fat and unsaturated fatty acid are being blamed for deteriorating health standards. “I hope Indians do not repeat the same mistake and ensure that global fast-food giants and hamburgers don’t have much space in the fast developing country,” Dr Nori warns.