LIKE her inventor father, Brig.-Gen. Oviemo Ovadje (rtd), Pamela, has begun a scientific journey showing signs of a great future.
Pamela, a doctoral student at the University of Windsor, Canada along with her colleagues, has discovered cancer-killing properties in a common weed that grows around homes.
The story of their discovery, which can be accessed in Google, Pamela Ovadje, Cancer, Windsor, Canada, is like the story of Pamela's father, Dr. Ovadje, who several years ago, invented the Eat-Set machine that has won for him several awards worldwide. The machine is deployed during operations to harvest the blood of the patient for auto-reinfusion that eliminates risks of external infections and contamination.
The University of Windsor students and their supervisors discovered that the dandelion, a nuisance weed that ruins the beauty of a well-manicured lawn, holds tremendous promise.
To Pamela Ovadje and Sudipa Chatterjee, the common weed is a potential lifesaver that they believe has the ability to kill some types of cancer cells.
A dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) root extract the graduate students created in their biochemistry lab caused commercially available human leukaemia cells to effectively commit suicide within 24 hours, they reported in an article published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.
Co-authored by postgraduate student Carly Griffin, undergraduate Cynthia Tran, biochemistry professor Siyaram Pandey and Windsor Regional Cancer Centre oncologist Caroline Hamm, the article says the extract "contains components that act to induce apoptosis (cell death) selectively in cultured leukaemia cells, emphasizing the importance of this traditional medicine and thus presents a potential novel non-toxic alternative to conventional leukaemia therapy.
"It started cell death activity in leukaemia cells very quickly," said Chatterjee, who defended her master's thesis September 15. "They were almost all dead within 24 hours. In fact, they even continued to die after the extract was removed."
Dandelion extract is available in an alcohol-based formula, but the students used a water-based formula and an extraction method they developed themselves. The cancer cells were then treated with the extract and analysed. Each of the tests was repeated thrice to make sure they got the same results.
The students are excited about their results but know that seeing them transformed into actual leukaemia treatments is a long way off.
"What you see in vitro doesn't necessarily mean you'll see it in animals or humans," Ovadje cautioned.
But Dr. Pandey said their research -funded by the local Knights of Columbus, Council 9671 - provides the lab with a strong platform to test the extract on patient-derived leukaemia samples and animal models.
And the students are still hopeful the results may provide a "stepping stone" for the development of a more efficient therapy for leukaemia and possibly other diseases such as melanoma, colon and pancreatic cancer.
Chatterjee and Ovadje won awards for presentations of their research at the Third Annual Cancer Drug Discovery Symposium in Sudbury, while Griffin won a similar award for a presentation on her research on cancer and pancratistatin - a natural derivative of a Hawaiian spider lily plant that has shown promising results - at the Natural Health Products Research Society conference in Halifax in May.
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