On September 29th 2000 we were lucky enough to hear Dr. Malcolm Kavarana from the University of Arizona speak to us during are a weekly pizza seminar.  His topic was  “understanding Cancer to design novel chemotherapeutics.”  Dr. Kavarana spoke to us about cancer in general, but mainly glyoxalase I inhibitors, which is a new tumor-selective anti cancer agent.

There are many different diseases that are called cancer. All of these diseases called cancer involve the abnormal growth and spread of cells in the body. Some form of a carcinogen normally causes this.  When cells are healthy there life cycle is caused by natural functions of the body.  They grow multiply and die by these functions. However cancer cells will mutate and change with no normal sign from the body.  They will behave and function differently then they should. They will invade and destroy healthy tissue. These cells can spread to other parts of the body and continue to grow on their own until stopped. The cancer that some one is diagnosed with is named after the location it started in the body even though it can and usually will spread to other areas.  In America today half of all men and one third of all women will develop some cancer in their lifetime.  Today there are millions of individuals who are living with cancer, many have been cured but many will die of the disease.

There are a few different methods that are commonly used to fight the disease today.
One of these techniques is surgery; this is the oldest method used.  Before the advent of anesthesia and sterilization methods surgery brought great discomfort and additional risks to the patient.  For many types of cancer today surgery offers the best chances of a cure.  About 60% of all people who have cancer today will have some sort of surgery performed on them.

A different common treatment of cancer today is radiation.  This is where high energy waves such as x-rays or gamma rays are used to destroy cancer cells.  Radiation is targeted towards the part of the body where the cancer is located and the radiation is supposed to destroy the cancer cells.  This process does have an affect on normal cells that can’t be overlooked, but the normal cells usually recover from the treatment. The advantage of this treatment is that it can target the general area of the cancer therefore minimizing the side affects on other parts of the body.

 A different form of treatment is chemotherapy this treatment is where anti cancer drugs are taken orally or through veins.  These drugs are very powerful and cause a number of negative side effects to the patient.  These drugs are helpful when the cancer is or has spread through out the body, because these drugs reach all areas of the body.  Typically the patient will need to take a combination of drugs systematically through out their treatment.

 The following are less common but accepted treatments of cancer.  Hormone therapy is where drugs are taken that affect the hormones in the body or a hormone is surgically removed to kill cancer cells or slow their growth. Immunothearapy is a treatment where measures are taken to affect the body’s immune system in order to promote a positive response from the body’s immune system against the cancer.

Although there are many treatments for cancer today, these treatments do not always work, and cancer is still remains a very life threatening disease. As you can see from the treatments above they all have negative side affects some more than others, and none of them used separately, or in combinations will always work to cure cancer.  For this reason there is a great need to develop anti tumor agents that can selectively kill cancer cells with little or no affect to healthy cells.  Dr. M. Kavarana pointed this out to us during the seminar.  Much progress has been made in finding better drugs and techniques for curing cancer, to date thousands of new drugs have been designed and approved for use by cancer patients.  I believe that one day through the research done by individuals such as are speaker there will be a way to selectively destroy and stop the spread of cancer cells with minimal or no damage to healthy cells.

Justin St. Germain
Che E 101
12/13/00