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From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…
Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast
cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites,
journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and
share them with you. Today: Damsin inhibits the growth and spread of
cancer stem cells…
Environmental
scientists say all the time that “cutting down the rain forests could easily
destroy the next cure for cancer…”
The plant is
related to a plant we have lots of here, asters – you know, the tiny, “daisy”
looking plant? Found on the Great Plains in it its natural state and in most
garden stores in the spring, it’s common here in the US. THIS plant, with no
name but its scientific one, Ambrosia arborescens, is
found in the Andes mountains from Columbia down to Bolivia. The local peoples
use it as an aspirin, a Tylenol, and an antiseptic, so it wasn’t like it was
unknown.
Turned out that
used against breast cancer, it stops the growth of these things called cancer
stem cells. Cancer stem cells are highly resistant to chemotherapy because they
are, in a way, not true cancer cells – it’s more like they’re FUTURE cancer
cells.
In a way, these
stem cells remind me of viruses. Viruses aren’t technically alive –
specifically, they can’t make baby viruses without the help of another cell.
Making babies is one of the BASIC definitions of living things (of course not
ALL living things make babies! Within a species females can’t make babies
without males; but given a viable egg and a sperm cell, Humans reproduce.)
Viruses don’t make new viruses unless they invade a normal cell and take over
its normal job, forcing it to make more viruses. THAT’S why “antibiotics” can’t
kill viruses – because a virus isn’t alive, it can’t be killed. You might think
of viruses as microscopic zombies…
Stem cells aren’t
any specific kind of cancer cell – they’re a “generic” cancer cell – so chemotherapy
designed to take out breast cancer cells doesn’t work, slides off the stem
cells, which then go to a new place in the body (metastasizes) and turn into a
breast cancer cell and begins to reproduce. This is where metastasized bone,
lung, brain, and liver come from.
At any rate, the
chemical that comes from the Ambrosia
arborescens is called damsin (it can be made by Humans, too. When its
artificial, it’s called ambrosin),
and when used against cancer cells – at least in recent tests – both damsin and
ambrosin “inhibit the division and mobility of the cancer cells. This means
that the tumour becomes smaller as cell proliferation [cells dividing and growing]
decreases.”
The research is
only at the very beginning stages, BUT…if it continues to perform in animals
and Humans the way it performs in the lab, this could lead to a new and better
way to treat breast cancer!
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