Tuesday 17 April 2007

Thank the plants...A novel method to treat cancer

Source: Science Daily
Hey guys… I just read this interesting article… here you go…

Researchers have found out a novel way to treating cancer in humans by performing experiments in plants.

Sounds funny? I’ll clear it in a jiffy.

Basically, they have found out how the plant hormone auxin interacts with the TIR1 receptor and this TIR1 receptor has structural similarities to human enzymes that have been implicated in cancer. This interaction could prove useful for scientists to develop drugs against these proteins.

TIR1 belongs to the family of ubiquitin ligases. These are required for regulation of cell growth and proliferation. It works by the process of ubiquitination. This process involves the addition of ubiquitin molecules onto proteins which in turns marks the protein to some altered function.

Researchers have for long been breaking their heads as to how to design a drug to counter these ubiquitin ligases. Now with this discovery, the road will be much clearer now.

Researchers now say that diseases like Parkinson’s disease, colon and breast cancer in which ubiquitin ligases have been playing a major role could be treated in a much better manner now that the method to tackle these ligases has been found.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hey there! i think this is absolutely one of the coolest breakthroughs ever - at least one of the few.

thank you so much for bringing this awesome information. it's an encouragement.

my grandmother had colon cancer a long time ago (blessed to be in remission, now) but it was one of the scariest things ever to wonder what the next phone call could hold.

i run a couple blogs on live whole foods and antioxidants and one of the main concerns for most people is, in fact, cancer. so i tend to float around blogs concerning such. so thank you so much for bringing this great info.

thanks again!