RIYADH, 1 February 2007 — A medical research team led by a Saudi woman cancer specialist has achieved a major breakthrough in the treatment of lymphoma, a tumorlike enlargement of lymph node.
The research team led by Dr. Khawlah Al-Koray, a senior cancer research specialist at the Riyadh-based King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, identified the gene that spreads the fatal disease and developed a way to chemically destroy it, Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday. The breakthrough comes after two years of painstaking research.
Lymphoma is a fatal disease characterized by the formation in various parts of the body of new growths resembling lymphatic glands in structure.
The KFSH team identified the gene (called AKT) after discovering its ability to determine the growth of malignant cells.
The researchers then continued their experiments on how to stop the activities of the gene and finally succeeded with a minute chemical device called 2940002YL. They found that 24 hours after the device was sent to the nucleus of the cancerous cell, the cell began to disintegrate and stop growing.
After completing their laboratory experiments the team applied their findings on 100 Saudi cancer sufferers, 52 percent of whom carry the AKT genes. Most of the patients responded positively to the experiment.
More than 65 percent of the lymphoma identified in the Kingdom is the type called DLBCL, which responds to the treatment. The findings were published in January in an American journal called Blood, published by the American Society of Hematology.
Besides Dr. Al-Koray, the research team included Dr. Shihabudin Khan, Dr. Azhar Hussein, Dr. Abdul Khaled Siraj, Dr. Adnan Ezzat, Dr. Hesan Al-Solh, Dr. Fouad Al-Dayel, Dr. Brachnet Bavi and Dr. Asem Balgomi.
