Cancer is one of the major cause of death in this modern industrialised world. Many scientists have set out in an attempt to understand more about this disease and hope to find a cure for it. The most widely accepted approach is to design a drug which will selectively halt the prolific growth of tumour cells without harming normal healthy cells in the body. To a certain extent, some drugs currently in use in the chemotherapy of cancer like methotrexate have been successful. Radiotherapy is another contemporary means of treatment of cancer, often coupled with the use of chemotherapy. Various other interesting ideas have been presented over time including the use of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase enzyme blocking drugs like the steroid dehydroepiandrosterone, DHEA. It has been reported that increase in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase activity is related to increased cell proliferation in in vitro experiments on chemically induced tumours. 27.
There is a positive correlation between deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) synthesis and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase activity. This is due to the fact that the hexose monophosphate pathway provides crucial factors for nucleic acid synthesis in cell proliferation such as ribose-5-phosphate. Furthermore, mevalonate an intermediatory product of this pathway is able to induce DNA synthesis. NADPH on the other hand is indispensable for the synthesis of cholesterol, an important constituent of cell membranes. 27.
Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficient cells have been reported to be unable to metabolise chemicals to ultimate carcinogenic forms. A study was conducted in a lung cancer unit in Cagliari, Italy between January 1984 and November 1986 on 156 male patients with lung cancer to test the hypothesis that glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency subjects have lower risk of developing lung cancer. The conclusion was that no protection against lung cancer was afforded by glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency. Some recent critical reviews also came to the same conclusion that no inference was possible between lower incidence of cancer and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency based on their findings. 27.
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Prepared on 01 Jan 2008 by teekoonhien |
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