A New Drug Cure For Bladder Cancer That Took Veteran Actor Vinod Khanna's Life

The breakthrough discovery involves a drug created from a protein derived from a malaria parasite known as VAR2CSA.According to the researchers from the University of British Columbia, the drug is found to be effective in chemotherapy-resistant bladder cancer, which is the the fifth most common among the numerous types of cancer.        

       Chemotherapy is the primary weapon in treating bladder cancer. But unfortunately, extremely aggressive bladder tumors are almost impossible to treat as they are resistant to chemotherapy, with the anti-cancer drugs refusing to make their way into the tumours.Because it requires life-long surveillance, bladder cancer is the most expensive cancer to treat on a per patient basis for the NHS.

        The researchers describe their newly developed drug in a paper recently published in the journal European Urology.“This is the first study in which researchers put the concept of using malaria proteins for cancer therapy into a direct clinical context,” Mads Daugaard, an assistant professor of urologic science at the University of British Columbia said.“There is a massive clinical need to find new treatments for bladder cancer and we saw an opportunity to target this disease with our new malaria drug,” said Daugaard.

In the study, highly aggressive bladder cancer tumours that were resistant to chemotherapy were implanted in the bladder of mice.The researchers then treated the lab mice with the malaria drug.After 70 days, they found the tumours responded dramatically to the malaria drug and 80% of the treated mice were alive, whereas the untreated ones succumbed to bladder cancer.

Meanwhile, Indian actor and politican Vinod Khanna died on Thursday, April 27, 2017, after a prolonged battle with bladder cancer. Reports claim the veteran Bollywood actor was suffering from advanced bladder carcinoma (bladder cancer).