Member-only story
Violet Extract Boosts Brain Cancer Drug’s Performance
But there isn’t enough of it to do more tests
Article via LabRoots
Cyclotides are small, ring-shaped proteins produced by plants to defend them from certain insect pests and bacteria. Now, scientists say they could also help boost the effectiveness of chemo drugs for treating brain cancer.
Previous studies have shown that these plant peptides complement other oncology pharmaceuticals — they can improve the performance of doxorubicin against breast cancer cells.
Glioblastoma is a very aggressive and often lethal form of brain cancer — after receiving a diagnosis, patients’ median survival time is around a year. There is only one approved chemotherapy for glioblastoma on the market: a drug called temozolomide, or TMZ. Sadly, half the patients have glioblastomas that are resistant to TMZ, and the other half can develop resistance relatively early in their treatment cycles.
A recent study provides a light at the end of the tunnel. A combo of cyclotides and TMZ increases the tumor-killing potency of the treatment by up to eight-fold. “Phase contrast microscopy of glioblastoma cells exposed to cyclotides alone and coexposed to TMZ indicated shrunken, granular cells with blebbing, and the most pronounced effects were observed with coexposure treatments of…
