Leaf Extract Against Colorectal cancer

Here is a study suggesting that Ginkgo biloba L. leaf extract may be beneficial against colorectal cancer by affecting important cell signaling pathways that mediate that disease. The authors state: “The outcomes of the present investigation encourage the use of Ginkgo biloba L. leaf extract as a complementary and alternative therapeutic approach to abate CRC.”  As always consult your own physician; in my opinion, “complementary” may be useful, but “alternative” (as in use this but do not use traditional medical treatments) is a mistake. I have heard of too many horror stories of patients eschewing regular treatment for alternatives and then dying if a curable cancer because they realized, too late, that the alternative was really no alternative at all.  But, again, I am not a medical doctor and I am only giving my own opinion based on scientific background as well as personal experience and anecdote.  I would urge all cancer patients to follow the advice of their oncologists and, of course, ask whether other things can complement treatment.

More On Combination Drug Therapy For Cancer

Combination drug therapy for cancer has been thought to always involve the drugs working together in an additive or even synergistic fashion.  However, one study shows that in some cases, the efficacy of drug combinations is solely due to patient-to-patient variability in response and the independent action of the drugs.  So, assume you have two patients, Bill and Mary, both with the same type of cancer, and they are given combination therapy with drugs A and B.  The traditional idea was that success would be due to A and B both working equally in both patients, or working synergistically; this new study suggests that in some cases, if you don’t know in advance which drug is best for what patient, you give both, and maybe Bill responds to A and Mary to B, and you see a success that you would not have seen if you had given both patients either A or B – so you get 100% success instead of 50%. Keep in mind that there are of course cases where combination therapy does wok additively or synergistically.  Abstract:

Combination cancer therapies aim to improve the probability and magnitude of therapeutic responses and reduce the likelihood of acquired resistance in an individual patient. However, drugs are tested in clinical trials on genetically diverse patient populations. We show here that patient-to-patient variability and independent drug action are sufficient to explain the superiority of many FDA-approved drug combinations in the absence of drug synergy or additivity. This is also true for combinations tested in patient-derived tumor xenografts. In a combination exhibiting independent drug action, each patient benefits solely from the drug to which his or her tumor is most sensitive, with no added benefit from other drugs. Even when drug combinations exhibit additivity or synergy in pre-clinical models, patient-to-patient variability and low cross-resistance make independent action the dominant mechanism in clinical populations. This insight represents a different way to interpret trial data and a different way to design combination therapies.

Cancer Field Effect

Here is a paper on the cancer field effect, an idea that states than an entire area of a tissue can be altered in some way to predispose that area to develop cancer. Of interest is the possibility that diet, lifestyle (including smoking), etc. can alter the tissue microenvironment to create a "field of susceptibility" to cancer. Hopefully such research can fulfill the promise of "personalized prevention and treatment strategies for precision medicine;" however, until then, controlling diet and lifestyle to prevent cancer, to the best of your ability, is the optimal behavior modification to do.

The term 'field effect' (also known as field defect, field cancerization, or field carcinogenesis) has been used to describe a field of cellular and molecular alteration, which predisposes to the development of neoplasms within that territory. We explore an expanded, integrative concept, 'etiologic field effect', which asserts that various etiologic factors (the exposome including dietary, lifestyle, environmental, microbial, hormonal, and genetic factors) and their interactions (the interactome) contribute to a tissue microenvironmental milieu that constitutes a 'field of susceptibility' to neoplasia initiation, evolution, and progression. Importantly, etiological fields predate the acquisition of molecular aberrations commonly considered to indicate presence of filed effect. Inspired by molecular pathological epidemiology (MPE) research, which examines the influence of etiologic factors on cellular and molecular alterations during disease course, an etiologically focused approach to field effect can: (1) broaden the horizons of our inquiry into cancer susceptibility and progression at molecular, cellular, and environmental levels, during all stages of tumor evolution; (2) embrace host-environment-tumor interactions (including gene-environment interactions) occurring in the tumor microenvironment; and, (3) help explain intriguing observations, such as shared molecular features between bilateral primary breast carcinomas, and between synchronous colorectal cancers, where similar molecular changes are absent from intervening normal colon. MPE research has identified a number of endogenous and environmental exposures which can influence not only molecular signatures in the genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and interactome, but also host immunity and tumor behavior. We anticipate that future technological advances will allow the development of in vivo biosensors capable of detecting and quantifying 'etiologic field effect' as abnormal network pathology patterns of cellular and microenvironmental responses to endogenous and exogenous exposures. Through an 'etiologic field effect' paradigm, and holistic systems pathology (systems biology) approaches to cancer biology, we can improve personalized prevention and treatment strategies for precision medicine.

The anti-cancer drugs are in your medicine cabinet

Did you read about the recent findings that aspirin may prevent some types of cancer not only through suppressing inflammation, but also through decreasing the levels of 2-hydroxyglutarate, and thus, interfering with the metabolism of neoplastic cells?  

This report followed a series of publications that revealed the beneficial effects of vitamin C against some common types of cancer. 

It seems that in addition to good diet and physical activity, some cancer prevention drugs are already in our medicine cabinets.

PS. Here is a link for more on vitamin C and cancer.