Cancer Cure Accidentally Found In Malaria Treatment

“This is an extraordinary finding that paves the way for targeting sugar molecules in pediatric and adulthood human cancer, and our groups are vigorously pursuing this possibility together”, highlights Poul Sorensen, co-senior investigator of the study.

While investigating a way to create an effective malaria vaccine for pregnant women without it attacking the placenta, Danish researchers found that their experimental malaria vaccine can attack cancer cells. The scientists tested thousands of samples of cancers from leukemias to brain tumors. They grow aggressively in foreign environment.

An accidental discovery from Malaria research finds a likely cure for Cancer.

The carbohydrate’s primary objective in the placenta is to ensure its growth which serves also the same goal in tumors.

“Based on our clinical data, we helped validate that this could be applied to melanoma and lung cancers”, said Dr. Nhan Tran, an Associate Professor in TGen’s Cancer and Cell Biology Division, and one of the authors of the study.

Salanti’s research- conducted with Mads Daugaard, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Pathology at the Vancouver Prostate Center at the University of British Columbia- suggests that the carbohydrate the malaria parasite attaches itself to in the placenta in pregnant women is identical to a carbohydrate found in cancer cells.

Cancer researchers have just reported that there is a similarity between cells in the placenta and cells in the tumors which allow malaria proteins to kill cancer cells.

In the new experiment the researchers injected a combination of malaria vaccine and a toxin. They found that it reduced the lymphoma tumors to 25 percent its original size, killed off the prostate cancer in 2 out of 6 mice and prolonged the survival of 5 out of 6 mice that had metastatic bone cancer.

Thomas Mandel from the University of Copenhagen stated that the potential malaria vaccine enabled the mice outlive their untreated counterparts.

Till now, the biggest question in front of the researchers is that whether the process will work in the human body. In the news release, he said, “We’re optimistic because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumors in humans”. To pregnant women, the disease is especially lethal because it attacks the placenta-an organ that is crucial for the fetus’ development during pregnancy.