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Researchers decode carcinogens' role in causing cancer

Last Updated 30 September 2020, 02:11 IST

A recent paper published in journal Elsevier by Bengaluru-based researchers on the role of cancer-causing substances lays some very fundamental principles on how cancer is caused, why some patients get cancer and others don’t when exposed to the same carcinogens.

The paper also explains why some carcinogens such as tobacco produce cancer in only some individuals.

City-based doctors and researchers — Venkatesh M, Anand Subash, Gururaj Arakeri, Dr Vishal Rao U S and Peter A Brennan — have been working on the aspects of this research since late 2015. Their research was spurred by simple questions: how do people who smoke for long don't get cancer but some who do it for a few years get the disease? What is the mechanism?

"Today, we are picking up cancer in the pre-malignancy stages. We can pick it up earlier if we understand the underlying mechanism. We set out to answer who among us will get cancer and where, notwithstanding our healthy lifestyles. WHO says that by 2030, every third person will get cancer," said head and neck cancer surgeon Dr Rao, who is also an associate dean at HCG Hospital's Centre of Academic Research.

It is known that cancer cells are dependent on sugar and don't use oxygen to thrive. They do not use protein, vitamins, minerals, fibre or fat. "Our theory explains why and how a cancer cell uses a non-oxygenation pathway to grow, and how a carcinogen helps in conducting this entire operation inside the cell so that it is able to bypass the oxygen mechanism and rapidly multiply," Dr Rao added.

What the researchers found is that cancer cells achieved a level of control on biological systems that doesn't allow it to grow by not using oxygen. "Inorganic chemistry and quantum physics explain the mechanism better than the restricted field of biology. We can use this in imaging to detect cancers at a much earlier stage and reduce fatalities," he said.

The researchers have collaborated with physicists from Jyothi Institute of Technology, also in Bengaluru. "If we are able to detect the part of the body where abnormal chemistry is happening, which typically happens before cancer cells grow, we can predict the disease. We can watch the area for future development of the disease. We can focus on drugs that target only that area, which is what precision medicine is," he added.

The experiments would involve commercially available human normal cell lines and cancer cell lines which will be exposed to carcinogens such as tobacco, and examine the critical junctures where they convert themselves into cancerous cells.

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(Published 29 September 2020, 19:57 IST)

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