The mortal toxicant made famed in countless Agatha Christie mystery is n’t known for its health benefits . But an arsenic compound has help treat cancer of the blood sufferer for over a decade , and we ’ve just happen upon it can fight other cancer as well .
The specific compound is arsenic trioxide , and it ’s already been approve by the FDA for the discussion of humans . The arsenous anhydride is coalesce with other therapies to fight Cancer the Crab brought on by an error in a cellular signaling pathway know as the Hedgehog pathway . This signaling cascade regularize embryonic maturation and remains all-important to by rights functioning cells in grownup . malfunction in the Hedgehog pathway have been usher to induce tumors in the hide , brain , blood , and muscle .
Arsenic trioxide puzzle out in relatively low quantities by draw a blank one of the final steps in the Hedgehog pathway , foreclose a few of the jail cell ’s genes being evince that would otherwise cause runaway , cancerous growth . Other treatments presently on the market also target the Hedgehog pathway , but they do so at much earlier points in the signaling shower . That gives the malfunctioning pathway many more opportunities to mutate around the drug and relay its self - destructive messages to the cells . The arsenic treatment takes effect so late in the pathway that ’s there is nearly no chance for the malignant neoplastic disease to mutate around it .
Researchers Philip Beachy and Jynho Kim at the Stanford medical school first became concerned in arsenic as a discourse for cancer when they noticed that birth defects convey on by arsenic exposure are very similar to the physical effects of not having an active Hedgehog pathway . They found that the same small-scale amounts of arsenic trioxide that treated leukemia patients could also shut off the Hedgehog footpath , allow for a likely treatment for sufferers of many other kinds of Crab .
Arsenic trioxide work by inhibiting a protein called Gli2 from causing gene transcription in the cell nucleus . Without Gli2 , the Hedgehog pathway comes to a sudden , futile destruction . former test of this treatment on mice found that most tumors either slowed down or stopped grow completely . Best of all , this work even in cells that have already proven repellent to other drugs that target the Hedgehog pathway .
[ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ]
CancerMedicineScience
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