The discovery, led by a Mexican student, opens up new possibilities for cancer treatments other than immunotherapy that do not have inflammation as a side effect.
A group of scientists from Mexico and Spain managed to identify and artificially create a component that can attack cancer cells and preserve healthy cells. The discovery could be used in new cancer treatments.
The leader of the research, Martín Samuel Hernández Zazueta, who is doing a doctorate at the Miguel Hernández University, in Spain, in collaboration with the University of Sonora, in Mexico, pointed out that they found a component in the ink of octopusescalled Ozopromide, which inhibits the development of cancer cells.
«What I obtained was a compound without previous reports that is present in octopus ink and once it was isolated and identified, we were able to determine that the compound was, in this case, the name that we already identified before the Mexican Institute of Intellectual Property. (IMPI) as ‘Ozopromide’, due to the structural characteristics it contains”, the student, who has been working on the subject for about 6 years, explained to the newspaper El Sol de México.
The researchers carried out a series of experiments and reactions that made it possible to artificially create this molecule. The results showed that Ozopromide, or OPC (‘Oligodendrocyte progenitor cell’) in its acronym in English, it has effects on cancer cell death, but does not affect non-cancer cells.
In addition, Hernández Zazueta highlighted that the component has anti-inflammatory properties, another advantage, since many treatments that include immunotherapy can result in inflammation. The purpose is to create a procedure that does not have swelling as a side effect.
Ozopromide is a potential candidate to be a drug to treat cancer, but more studies are still needed to guarantee its effects in more specific and safe models for humans.