Ovarian cancer is a kind of gynecological cancer with high mortality. Even after surgical treatment, more than 80% patients will relapse. (Photo/Huang Zhiwen) Professor Lai from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the General Hospital of the Three Armies said that the 5-year survival rate of patients with ovarian cancer is only 20% to 30% due to postoperative drug resistance. How to solve the problem of drug resistance and recurrence is the biggest challenge in the treatment of ovarian cancer at present.
In order to break through the bottleneck of ovarian cancer treatment, Dr. Lai Zheng Hong's research team tried to explain the recurrence and drug resistance of cancer with the concept of "tumor stem cells". After the research team isolated cancer stem cells from human ovarian cancer cell lines, they put them into drug research and development experiments. In order to shorten the time for drugs to enter clinical trials, the team screened 1250 drugs on the market, trying to find drugs that can resist cancer stem cells. Finally, three kinds of drugs that no one has tried are selected for animal experiments, and it is found that Nike snail, a parasite drug once used in Taiwan Province Province, has the best effect.
Dr Lai Zheng Hong's team found that Nike snail, a drug used to kill tapeworms in the past, can inhibit the growth of cancer stem cells and reduce the recurrence rate of ovarian cancer. (Photo/Luo Huiwen) Taiwan Province Province also used "Nike Snail" to fight tapeworms in the early days. This old medicine is not imported from China, but it is still widely used in backward countries to kill cats and dogs and eliminate snails in agriculture. In the animal model experiment of ovarian cancer, the research team changed the oral Nike snail medicine into injection, and injected it into the abdominal cavity of experimental mice, and injected10 mg per kilogram every day for 5 days every week. Three weeks later, it was found that the abdominal cavity of mice injected with this drug was quite clean and there were no cancer cells. On the other hand, the abdominal cavity of mice that were not injected was full of cancer stem cells.
Dr. Lai Zheng Hong said that after the operation, it is still possible that the remaining tumor stem cells will continue to absorb nutrients from the human body. The anti-cancer mechanism of Nike snail is to interfere with these tumor stem cells, so that the nutrients absorbed by them can not be converted into energy smoothly, so that the food eaten by tumor stem cells is equivalent to not eating, and then naturally wither and die, thus achieving the effect of inhibiting tumor recurrence.
The research results have been published in the important journal Molecular Cancer Therapy published by the American Society for Cancer Research, and the new use of Nike snail has applied for global patent protection (PCT/ World Patent Cooperation Treaty).
Many foreign studies have also confirmed that Nike snail can inhibit the recurrence of colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer and some breast cancers.