Together against metastases
Scientists have found a way to increase the effectiveness of therapy for metastatic cancer variants
MSU Press Service
An international team of Russian and American scientists led by two doctors of Sciences from the Department of Chemical Enzymology of the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University has proposed a new approach to prevent metastases. It is based on the combined use of the antibiotic doxorubicin and a glycoside preparation from ginseng. The work was published in the journal Molecules (Popov et al., Probable Mechanisms of Doxorubicin Antitumor Activity Enhancement by Ginsenoside Rh2).
The most difficult problem in cancer therapy remains metastasis — the spread of cancer cells throughout the body and the emergence of new tumor foci. Even after a drastic impact (surgery, radiation therapy), there is always a high probability that there will be living cancer cells that will spread the disease to other organs. Therefore, scientists are looking for other ways of treatment.
"The development of new approaches to cancer therapy is a complex process that requires the combined efforts of specialists from different fields of science," notes Vladimir Tishkov, Professor of the Faculty of Chemistry of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Doctor of Chemical Sciences. — On the Russian side, two scientific groups took part in the project — scientists from the Far East who have been working for a long time in the field of obtaining and researching biologically active compounds from ginseng, as well as a Moscow team including researchers from several organizations. All participants from Moscow are graduates of the chemical and biological faculties of Moscow State University. Scientists from various US organizations took an active part in the work, with whom we have long established an active and fruitful cooperation."
Doxorubicin (DOX) is a well—known antibiotic and anticancer drug used, among other things, for preventive therapy after removal of a solid tumor. In this work, its combination with ginsenoside (ginseng glycoside) Rh2 was used, a compound that has the ability to damage cell membranes and probably generate reactive oxygen species. By itself, ginsenoside Rh2 also has anti-tumor activity, but is inferior in effectiveness to doxorubicin. Experiments have shown that their combination reduces the size of a solid tumor in animals more than each compound individually.
More interesting and unexpected was the fact that the injection of a combined drug (DOX + Rh2) the next day after the introduction of cancer cells to animals does not allow tumors to form at all, while individually they do not give such an effect.
"The results obtained indicate that the combined use of drugs impairs the ability of cancer cells to bind to healthy tissues, which was confirmed in a separate experiment on cell culture. Thus, in terms of practical therapy of metastatic cancer variants, the proposed combination is a very promising and highly effective approach to prevent the emergence of new foci of the disease in the body," says one of the co—heads of the project, Professor of the Faculty of Chemistry, Doctor of Chemical Sciences Irina Gazaryan.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru