One drug that was being used to treat for malaria is now being tested for a possible cervical cancer treatment. Dr. Robert Schlegel of Georgetown University Medical Center invented Gardasil, a vaccine for protecting women from getting cervical cancer. He wanted a reliable way to remove and grow cancer cells from women in the hospital for research. Schlegel then found a solution for this problem. Normally the cells die off after being in the lab for a short period of time. So, Schlegel put the cells in a bed of mouse cells that had been radiated so they would be unable to reproduce. Next he used a compound on the cancer cells to regulate growth. This keeps the cells alive so they can be studied. Because of this new method Schlegel has been able to grow 30 kind of cancer cells. His next step was to test different drugs of the cervical cancer cells he had grown. He found that a drug used to treat malaria killed the cancer cells. Now patients are being treated with the malaria drug as a test at the John Hopkins Medical Center. It is already know that the drug is safe because it is already widley used to treat malaria.
Relevance
This is relevant because we recently learned about cells in general and cancer. We learned about several ways to treat cancer like radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. This is a form of chemotherapy because it is using a drug to treat cancer.
"A Bed Of Mouse Cells Helps Human Cells Thrive In The Lab." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 09 Jan. 2015.
URL: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/07/372691919/a-bed-of-mouse-cells-helps-human-cells-thrive-in-the-lab
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How long did the process of inventing the treatment take?
ReplyDeleteHave there been any other cures discovered using this method apart from the vaccine mentioned?
ReplyDelete