Amal Al-Sibai Saudi Gazette A Saudi researcher may just be in the process of creating a medical breakthrough in the treatment of cancer. Although advances have been made in its treatment and survival rates have improved in recent years, cancer is still a feared disease and its diagnosis comes as a heavy shock to the patient and family. To understand cancer, one must understand the cellular level. Normal cells have controls on the rate of division, and older cells that are not repaired eventually die and are replaced by new, healthy cells. Cancer arises when the cells abnormally grow and continue to divide without control; the cells proliferate and can invade other tissues. When cancer cells spread to other parts of the body, it is called metastasis; and there are more than 100 different types of cancer. Often cancer patients suffer not only from the disease but from the side effects of the currently available treatments because they are very invasive and aggressive. While chemotherapy and radiation attack the cancer cells, they also severely damage normal tissues; dwindling the patient's health during the course of treatment. One cancer patient shared her experience in a book written by the American science writer, Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. She said: “The side effects were a nightmare. It resulted in hair loss, vomiting, and loss of appetite. I was exhausted and depressed all the time. “My sense of taste was wiped out, but my smell was so intensified so that even the aroma of a boiled egg could bring on agonizing nausea.” Of course, each individual patient reacts differently to the drugs and treatment, but most patients endure some degree of an onslaught on healthy tissues. Dr. Mohammad Al-Zailaie, a professor,a senior consultant and a researcher at the Clinical and Experimental Dermatology Unit in King Abdulaziz University Medical Center, explained the mechanism behind these negative side effects. “The major disadvantage of most of the current anti-cancer drugs is that they do not differentiate between a normal cell and a cancerous one. “The effect of this type of anti-cancer drug on normally functioning cells could be disastrous and lethal. Consequently, many tissues and organs could be severely damaged or malfunctioned. “Common outcomes are impaired immune function, liver dysfunction, and renal impairment. Compromised immune system in effect means that the remaining cancerous cells, no matter how few they are, can still survive and flourish, which may explain the recurrence of cancer following chemotherapy,” Al-Zailaie told Saudi Gazette. Al-Zailaie's goal was to find and design an anti-cancer drug that avoids or minimizes tissue and organ damage. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said: “First, do no harm.” “Cancerous cells have a great demand for energy to carry out their very active metabolic processes and to divide and reproduce. Normal cells usually do not have this great demand for energy. “Hence, normal cells can survive for a longer period of time on lower energy levels compared to cancerous cells. “Cancerous cells cannot survive without a constant supply of energy. The main new anti-cancer drug that we designed can greatly influence or disrupt the supply of energy to cancerous cells leading to cell suicide and death. “Furthermore, the other drug we designed can hinder the passage of energy basic fuel inside the cancerous cell. The dual effect of both drugs can cause death of the cancer cell, while the normal cells are unharmed,” said Al-Zailaie. The research team performed a series of experiments on both drugs using different concentrations on skin cancer cells grown in culture plates under laboratory conditions and compared them with currently used anti-cancer drugs. They found that within a 24-hour period, all cancerous cells in culture plates were dead, while those treated with the conventional anti-cancer drugs had 30-45 percent remaining cancerous cells. The co-investigator in the research team, Professor Zohair Marzouki, professor of cellular metabolism and a senior consultant of clinical biochemistry, has thoroughly examined the critical metabolic pathways on both normal and cancerous cells. He found that the innovative drugs did not seriously affect the normal cell function. “In animal experiments in which rats were injected with cancerous cells, our innovative drugs cleared the cancerous cells from the animals within 14 days of treatment, and the animals continued to grow normally,” said Al-Zailaie. To confirm the positive results in humans as well, Al-Zailaie conducted further studies abroad, and the new drugs proved to be promising. “In a human pilot study with our collaborators outside the Kingdom, selected patients with late stage cancers –gastric adenocarcinoma, chronic granulocytic leukemia in adult – were treated for 21 days with both of our drugs and an immune booster. “Remission was induced in all treated cases for about four years, and they are still alive. Liver and renal functions were monitored throughout the period and they were within normal ranges,” said Al-Zailaie. The researchers are very excited and they believe that this type of treatment can offer a better alternative to the currently used anti-cancer drugs without any serious side effects. However, the drawback is that this treatment modality can be very expensive compared to currently available anti-cancer drugs. “We are currently in the process of extending this study to involve a large number of patients before we make the final conclusions following which, the results will be published in scientific and medical journals,” said Al-Zailaie.
